Ebook Bad Pharma How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients eBook Ben Goldacre
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We like to imagine that medicine is based on evidence and the results of fair testing and clinical trials. In reality, those tests and trials are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors who write prescriptions for everything from antidepressants to cancer drugs to heart medication are familiar with the research literature about a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. We like to imagine that regulators have some code of ethics and let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients.
All these problems have been shielded from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale.
With Goldacre's characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for regulation. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never been seen before.
Ebook Bad Pharma How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients eBook Ben Goldacre
"Explaining Big Pharm Problems Using Pop Stars
“…the bar is very low: that drugs must only prove that they are better than nothing, even when there are highly effective treatments on the market already.“ — Goldacre, Ben "Bad Pharma: …â€
Let me explain the above:
Say there’s a drug for ‘XYZ Disease’ on the market named “ ‘Yonce †that is 80 - 85% effective in stopping growth right in its tracks. Most people use ‘Yonce, and are fairly happy with it, but nobody would mind if someone made it 100% effective.
Along comes a research company named SwiftMoney and dumps millions into research and development in hopes of marketing a competing drug to “‘Yonce†because wow ‘Yonce is a hit and SwiftMoney wants a piece of the pie.
So SwiftMoney churns out a drug named, ‘TaylorSwift,’ however, it turns out all their millions are for naught. The drug they’ve developed is only minimally effective — about 20 - 30% effective in stopping ‘XYZ Disease,’ even worse, in 10% of the subjects tested the drug actually proved harmful.
Luckily SwitftMoney is not legally required by the FDA to report, nor publish, negative results of drug trials if they don’t wish to. In that very manner SwiftMoney can carry out 10 clinical trials and publish the results from the 2 trials that had positive outcomes, and bury the 8 trials that showed no favorable outcome, or even worse showed negative outcomes. As long as SwiftMoney can prove that their drug is better than a placebo — a dummy pill — like the drug ‘Friday’ by pharmaceutical company ‘RebeccaBlack’ then the FDA will allow the marketing of ‘Taylor.’
So SwiftMoney floods the market with their subpar drug named ‘TaylorSwift’(1) and spends millions and millions in marketing to convince people that they should buy Taylor instead of ‘Yonce(2).
Trial data that shows unflattering evidence is simply withheld from doctors and patients, and this practice is commonplace. What we all really need is a nonprofit organization called KANYE to stand up and say: “Look, TaylorSwift, Imma let you market your drug, ‘cause this is a free market economy, but everybody deserves to know that ‘Yonce has the best ‘xyz drug’ of all time, up until this time.†In that way doctors and patients are making actual informed decisions.
What I’ve written about is only a small part of how nasty the whole problem truly is, I suggest picking up a copy of “Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients†by Ben Goldacre for yourselves.
Thank you for your time.
We all need Yeezus!
—ewitty
(1.) [“This means that real patients are given dummy placebo pills for no good reason, but also that drugs appear on the market which are worse than the treatments we already have.†— Bad Pharma: …â€]
(2.) ["pharmaceutical companies spend tens of billions of pounds every year trying to change the treatment decisions of doctors: in fact, they spend twice as much on marketing and advertising as they do on the research and development of new drugs. — Bad Pharma: …â€]"
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Bad Pharma How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients eBook Ben Goldacre Reviews :
Bad Pharma How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients eBook Ben Goldacre Reviews
- Bad Pharma highlights serious issues with the way the pharmaceutical industry works today. In the book Ben highlights the problems with the industry from several angles, how the tests can be tweaked, how negative tests are not published, how you can make a neutral test appear positive by sub-dividing the goals and then emphasize the fluke positive one. He also shows how the medical journals are part of the problem and the issue with ghost written articles. He shows the problems with the regulatory side as well, for example the European Medicines Agency, their lack of transparency, and how they have effectively blocked access to critical data for researchers. All through the book Ben makes use of well documented examples, and all the issues highlighted are well documented and exemplified.
The book is written in an easy to access language, and so it reads well. He does repeat himself a bit, so one more round of editing and cleanup before release would probably have been a good idea. Some readers on .co.uk have criticised this, but I don't see it as an issue.
You don't need to have a degree in medicine or a higher degree in general to understand the issues Ben highlights.
Ben Goldacre runs the Bad Science website (badscience dot net) and has previously written the book Bad Science. Where Bad Science was an attack on quackery and pseudo science, and his website to a large degree has dealt with the same topics, this book is a critical look at the pharmaceutical industry. As such it ought to silence those that have attacked Ben Goldacre for being in the pockets of the Pharmaceutical industry over time.
Ben Goldacre has done society a big favour by writing this book. I definitely recommend reading it if you want to understand more about how US and European health care works and what can be done to improve it in the future. - Explaining Big Pharm Problems Using Pop Stars
“…the bar is very low that drugs must only prove that they are better than nothing, even when there are highly effective treatments on the market already.“ — Goldacre, Ben "Bad Pharma …â€
Let me explain the above
Say there’s a drug for ‘XYZ Disease’ on the market named “ ‘Yonce †that is 80 - 85% effective in stopping growth right in its tracks. Most people use ‘Yonce, and are fairly happy with it, but nobody would mind if someone made it 100% effective.
Along comes a research company named SwiftMoney and dumps millions into research and development in hopes of marketing a competing drug to “‘Yonce†because wow ‘Yonce is a hit and SwiftMoney wants a piece of the pie.
So SwiftMoney churns out a drug named, ‘TaylorSwift,’ however, it turns out all their millions are for naught. The drug they’ve developed is only minimally effective — about 20 - 30% effective in stopping ‘XYZ Disease,’ even worse, in 10% of the subjects tested the drug actually proved harmful.
Luckily SwitftMoney is not legally required by the FDA to report, nor publish, negative results of drug trials if they don’t wish to. In that very manner SwiftMoney can carry out 10 clinical trials and publish the results from the 2 trials that had positive outcomes, and bury the 8 trials that showed no favorable outcome, or even worse showed negative outcomes. As long as SwiftMoney can prove that their drug is better than a placebo — a dummy pill — like the drug ‘Friday’ by pharmaceutical company ‘RebeccaBlack’ then the FDA will allow the marketing of ‘Taylor.’
So SwiftMoney floods the market with their subpar drug named ‘TaylorSwift’(1) and spends millions and millions in marketing to convince people that they should buy Taylor instead of ‘Yonce(2).
Trial data that shows unflattering evidence is simply withheld from doctors and patients, and this practice is commonplace. What we all really need is a nonprofit organization called KANYE to stand up and say “Look, TaylorSwift, Imma let you market your drug, ‘cause this is a free market economy, but everybody deserves to know that ‘Yonce has the best ‘xyz drug’ of all time, up until this time.†In that way doctors and patients are making actual informed decisions.
What I’ve written about is only a small part of how nasty the whole problem truly is, I suggest picking up a copy of “Bad Pharma How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients†by Ben Goldacre for yourselves.
Thank you for your time.
We all need Yeezus!
—ewitty
(1.) [“This means that real patients are given dummy placebo pills for no good reason, but also that drugs appear on the market which are worse than the treatments we already have.†— Bad Pharma …â€]
(2.) ["pharmaceutical companies spend tens of billions of pounds every year trying to change the treatment decisions of doctors in fact, they spend twice as much on marketing and advertising as they do on the research and development of new drugs. — Bad Pharma …â€] - Probably the most important book I've read this year. While I've been sceptical of Big Pharma for a long time, I was shocked and horrified to know just how bad things are. There are massive issues around funding, loopholes for approvals, and not publishing unfavourable results skewing the safety and efficiency perceptions of drugs. Bad Pharma isn't anti science - rather the opposite - Ben Goldacre is a doctor and science journalist, and advocates for sticking to the scientific method, full disclosure and advocating for the interest of the patients - not the drug companies. I can't recommend this enough.
- I've always enjoyed when Penn &Teller do a truck and fool me,explain HOW they fooled me ,and then ,having just explained how they do it,fool me once again as they repeat their trick! I find it less enjoyable wen pharmaceutical companies repeatedly pull the wool over my eyes,but I REALLY appreciate Dr. Goldacre showing me so many ways that Pharma uses to trick me . Again and again. What I don't fully understand,as a long-practicing physician in the twilight of my career,is how Pharma can repeatedly change primary outcomes for trials ,rewrite a protocol and pass off negative results as positive results. Well,I didn't understand this before,nor did I understand the prevalence of that cute maneuver, but at least now I understand how commonplace it is and how complicit or willfully stupid the journal editors are who let this go on. Ionnidis' famous article on how what u read in journals is likely NOT true was amazing. This book is just astounding in explaining the old Mark Twain quote "It ain't what u don't know that gits u (or is it your patient?)in trouble, it's what u know for sure that just ain't so." This enjoyable vade mecum explains almost exactly how we get to know so much for sure that" just ain't so." Thanx Dr Goldacre.
