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Author Ben Goldacre exposes the epidemic of pseudoscience and gives listeners the tools they need to distinguish good science from nonsense.
In this explosive expose of the drug companies and how they are ripping us off, Marcia Angell, M.D., a doctor, medical journalist, and a former editor of the respected New England Journal of Medicine, reveals the many ways in which the pharmaceutical industry has moved away from its original purpose of finding and producing useful new drugs.
Today, most doctors, dietitians, and even diabetes specialists consider type 2 diabetes to be a chronic and progressive disease - a life sentence with no possibility of parole. But the truth, as Dr. Fung reveals in this paradigm-shifting book, is that type 2 diabetes is reversible. Writing with clear, persuasive language, he explains why conventional treatments that rely on insulin or other blood-glucose-lowering drugs can actually exacerbate the problem, leading to significant weight gain and even heart disease.
It is well documented that our health-care system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms; she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. Rosenthal spells out in clear and practical terms exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship, explaining step by step the workings of a profession sorely lacking transparency.
Pandora's Lab takes us from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the United States; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart disease epidemic that followed; and from the cries to ban DDT for the sake of the environment to an epidemic-level rise in world malaria.
What does it actually mean to be rational? Not Hollywood-style "rational", where you forsake all human feeling to embrace Cold Hard Logic, but where you make good decisions, even when it's hard; where you reason well, even in the face of massive uncertainty; where you recognize and make full use of your fuzzy intuitions and emotions, rather than trying to discard them. In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes.
Author Ben Goldacre exposes the epidemic of pseudoscience and gives listeners the tools they need to distinguish good science from nonsense.
In this explosive expose of the drug companies and how they are ripping us off, Marcia Angell, M.D., a doctor, medical journalist, and a former editor of the respected New England Journal of Medicine, reveals the many ways in which the pharmaceutical industry has moved away from its original purpose of finding and producing useful new drugs.
Today, most doctors, dietitians, and even diabetes specialists consider type 2 diabetes to be a chronic and progressive disease - a life sentence with no possibility of parole. But the truth, as Dr. Fung reveals in this paradigm-shifting book, is that type 2 diabetes is reversible. Writing with clear, persuasive language, he explains why conventional treatments that rely on insulin or other blood-glucose-lowering drugs can actually exacerbate the problem, leading to significant weight gain and even heart disease.
It is well documented that our health-care system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms; she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. Rosenthal spells out in clear and practical terms exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship, explaining step by step the workings of a profession sorely lacking transparency.
Pandora's Lab takes us from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the United States; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart disease epidemic that followed; and from the cries to ban DDT for the sake of the environment to an epidemic-level rise in world malaria.
What does it actually mean to be rational? Not Hollywood-style "rational", where you forsake all human feeling to embrace Cold Hard Logic, but where you make good decisions, even when it's hard; where you reason well, even in the face of massive uncertainty; where you recognize and make full use of your fuzzy intuitions and emotions, rather than trying to discard them. In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes.
In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one's own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life.
What does everyone in the modern world need to know? Renowned psychologist Jordan B. Peterson's answer to this most difficult of questions uniquely combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the stunning revelations of cutting-edge scientific research. Humorous, surprising, and informative, Dr. Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street.
Going against the conventional wisdom reinforced by the medical establishment and Big Pharma that more screening is the best preventative medicine, Dr. Gilbert Welch builds a compelling counterargument that what we need are fewer, not more, diagnoses. Documenting the excesses of American medical practice that labels far too many of us as sick, Welch examines the social, ethical, and economic ramifications of a health-care system that unnecessarily diagnoses and treats patients.
Blockbuster drugs - each of which generates more than a billion dollars a year in revenue - have revolutionized the industry since the early 1980s, when sales of Tagamet alone transformed a minor Philadelphia-based firm into the world's ninth-largest pharmaceutical company. In Blockbuster Drugs, Jie Jack Li tells the fascinating stories behind the discovery and development of these highly lucrative medicines, while also exploring the tumult the industry now faces as the "patent cliff" nears.
In his most ambitious work yet, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans' belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality by radical life extentionists, extropians, transhumanists, cryonicists, and mind uploaders, along with utopians who have attempted to create heaven on earth.
In his best seller Wheat Belly, Dr. William Davis changed the lives of millions of people by teaching them to remove grains from their diets to reverse years of chronic health damage. In Undoctored, he goes beyond cutting grains to help you take charge of your own health. This groundbreaking exposé reveals how millions of people are given dietary recommendations crafted by big business, are prescribed unnecessary medications, and undergo unwarranted procedures to feed revenue-hungry healthcare systems.
The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.
For decades we have been taught that fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better, and that the key to a healthy weight is eating less and exercising more. Yet despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Taubes argues that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates, like white flour, easily digested starches, and sugars, and that the key to good health is the kind of calories we take in, not the number.
We all know the dangers of sugar and salt: but the danger attributed to the second white crystal has more to do with getting too little of it, not too much. Too little salt can shift the body into semi-starvation mode, causing insulin resistance, and may even cause twice as much fat to be absorbed for every gram that's consumed. Too little salt in certain populations can also actually increase blood pressure as well as resting heart rate.
Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. Surveying the 20-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innovations, this volume provides a readily understandable introduction to the foundations of epigenetics.
Why do we do the things we do? More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful, but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs and then hops back in time from there in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history, from prehistoric times to the present. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: "Gastronomy governs the whole life of man."
Science’ hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science, becoming a 400,000 copy bestseller. Now Ben Goldacre puts the $600bn global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. What he reveals is a fascinating, terrifying mess.
Doctors and patients need good scientific evidence to make informed decisions. But instead, companies run bad trials on their own drugs, which distort and exaggerate the benefits by design. When these trials produce unflattering results, the data is simply buried. All of this is perfectly legal. In fact, even government regulators withhold vitally important data from the people who need it most. Doctors and patient groups have stood by too, and failed to protect us. Instead, they take money and favours, in a world so fractured that medics and nurses are now educated by the drugs industry.
The pharmaceutical industry spends more on marketing than it does on research and development. New diseases are invented in order to swell profits. It distorts and suppresses the results of clinical trials if they are unfavourable. Patients' pressure groups are covertly sponsored by pill manufacturers. Its offences are countless and the consequences are felt by us all. What we trust to cure us may be ineffectual or actually harmful. Patients are harmed in huge numbers.
Ben Goldacre is Britain’s finest writer on the science behind medicine, and ‘Bad Pharma’ is a clear and witty attack, showing exactly how the science has been distorted, how our systems have been broken, and how easy it would be to fix them.
evidence based, passionate and practical, i now definitely going to change my attitude to reps and promotional activities
Brilliant. Important book which is well performed. Hopefully read by many doctors and policy makers.
If you could sum up Bad Pharma in three words, what would they be?
Capitalism and Health.
What did you like best about this story?
Dr. Ben Goldacre follows up his introductory book "Bad Science" with a more-detailed critique of Big Pharma.
Excellent insight from a doctor well-versed in prescribing and the frustrations of Big Pharmaceuticals hiding and manipulating trial data, not to mention having a stranglehold over regulators.
However, since Dr. Goldacre is a doctor, his solutions are limited in scope. He does not have a critique of the Financial power structures, where medicine is just one sector. He does not grasp that the Medicine system is working exactly as it is designed to do, it is working quite perfectly! It is designed for profit, and thus the oligarchs will continue to accumulate wealth regardless of the good and harm that results. This is Capitalism. Without a critique of Political Economics/Power structures, there can only be cheap band-aids and no structural fixes.
For a greater understanding of Political Economics and Power structures, highly recommended to read:
-Matt Taibbi: "Griftopia" (a very fun introductory read!)
-David Graeber: "The Democracy Project", "Debt: The First 5000 Years"
-anything by Michael Hudson, research professor of Economics and author of "Super Imperialism"
-George Orwell: "Homage to Catalonia" (classic!)
Bad Pharma tells the story of how we know way too little about the drugs we use every day. The author describes complex research in an easily understandable way, and is straight forward about his opinions.
The narrator is excellent, reading the book as if he had written it himself. In portions of the book where the author writes about especially infuriating topics, the narrators voice becomes angry, reflecting the anger of the listener as one realises that the pharmaceutical industry will go to great lengths to sell their drugs.
What made the experience of listening to Bad Pharma the most enjoyable?
So this broke my heart, but it is informative and reasoned and complete and gently worded and...you can't easily fault it, except that it will tell you things that you don't want to know.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
We don't know anything we think we know about drugs...and that is terrifying.
Any additional comments?
This is a harder ride than Bad Science, but it was worth it.
I am an infectious disease physician. 'Bad Pharma' is a book about the failure of implementing evidence based clinical medicine, the factors contributing to it and the fake fixes. This is an eye opener, useful for all MDs whether involved in clinical trials, receiving pharma reps or going on conference trips with pharma and other “jollies”. (we all say that we are not influenced…) Also interesting is the conflict of interest that Journals have in publishing clinical trials.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful
A brilliant, witty, shocking and important look at the failures involved in our medicines, not just of the companies themselves but also of regulators, academics who literally hire out their names and reputations and others.
It isn't at all difficult to follow, you need no specialist knowledge, it isn't dry or dull and it talks about things that affect us all.
It is a book that matters and one that will help you make informed decisions about your own health.
Hopefully it will galvanize enough change that in the future we will know if the medicines we take and buy as a society actually do what they claim to.
If I could only recommend one book I have read, it would honestly be this one.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Essential to anybody remotely related to the medical field. A thought provoking piece for everyone else. A riveting listen - the reader really takes in the author's persona and many many topics that makes one stop and question what so many take for granted in and about the medical field.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Bad Pharma?
At the end, the reader interviews the author! Fantastic exchange, also funny moments as the listener till that point associates the voice of the reader to that of the author.
Have you listened to any of Jot Davies’s other performances? How does this one compare?
No
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Realisation how large the problem is that is set out by the author
Any additional comments?
This is a little heavy on the science and medical terms. Even as a doctor, I had to concentrate on a few parts to make sure I didn't lose track. Someone less familiar with the medical world might want to have the book at hand for reference (the print has a glossary, references etc).
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
really enjoyed Ben's other books but this is just hard going and to in-depth. love the way information is presented and so clearly laid out
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
This brilliantly written yet terrifying book on the world of scientific drugs trials - needs to be read by all. How we are deceived by pharmaceutical companies and how doctors go about prescribing dugs on this biased information is scary and needs to be addressed immediately by all involved. A must read for everyone especially those in the world of scientific research.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
This is a must listen/purchase book. If you loved Bad Science and or ever will need modern medicine then you need to listen to this book.
Brilliant 5*
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
More pure gold from Ben Goldacre... his last book 'Bad Science' was a great book, and this one doesn't disappoint... though it is quite a disturbing expose of our broken healthcare system. Very well researched and written, and read by a competent and easy-on-the-ears narrator. I wasn't entirely surprised at the level of corruption in the healthcare industry as revealed in these pages, though I wasn't aware just how many players were implicated. Issues that unfortunately involve most of us, but concern very few of us.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Brilliant book, which I highly recommend. The author is inspiring in terms of his thoroughness and clear challenges to the pharma industry, reps, doctors etc. While I do support Goldacre's views - I consider they don't take into account the need medicine (NHS) has in funding that emerges from big pharma. We are in a capitalist culture and so big money and profits drive everything. This is sad but it is reality. We need a benevolent dictator...maybe Goldacre would be a good one!! Read this book!
What made the experience of listening to Bad Pharma the most enjoyable?
this is an interesting and engaging look at why we take the drugs we take. how they come to be and how effective they are and are not.
What other book might you compare Bad Pharma to, and why?
Do read all of Ben Pharma books there are well worth it
Any additional comments?
I'm a Healthcare Profesional and I found this fascinating its definitely changed my approach to drugs and Vaccines. PS This is not an all drugs are bad, kind of book, in this book Ben sets out the issues and challenges and in finding the good evidence to help you I and regulators make informed choices about what works and what does not.
This is a well-researched, revealing, and in so far as possible balanced book.
The narrator does a very good job and reads it as if the work were his own.
The one thing that distracted from my enjoyment was that the sound recording is very "mushy". It almost sounds as if the narrator is speaking through a flannel. At the end of the book there is an interview between the narrator and the author and this was fine with good clarity, so that confirmed my view that there was something not quite right with the main recording of the book.
It's a well thought out and eye opening book. As Ben progressed through the horrible things going in the the medical industry at the moment, it just got more intense. Heavy information through out the chapters. But don't worry as after each chapter, he summarises and suggests ways we could progress in a positive direction. Brilliant book, definitely worth a look.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful