Download or read book Bad Pharma written by Ben Goldacre and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2012, revised edition published in 2013, by Fourth Estate, Great Britain; Published in the United States in 2012, revised edition also, by Faber and Faber, Inc.
Download or read book Bad Pharma written by Ben Goldacre and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Big Pharma written by Jacky Law and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pharmaceutical medicine is very, very big business. The top ten players earned more than $200 billion in 2003. One drug, Pfizer's cholesterol pill Lipitor, had sales of more than $9 billion. This kind of money buys an awful lot of friends among doctors and politicians. Most of those involved in the formulation of public health policy seems happy with the present system. The trouble is that the public is starting to have doubts. There is a growing sense that the vast profits of drug companies and their control of the research agenda might not be that good for our health. Jacky Law takes the reader on a journey through the pharmaceutical business and shows how the public is quite right to be concerned about conventional medicine, as it has developed since the late 1970s. She tells a story of spectacular regulatory failure, phenomenally high prices, betrayal of the public interest and a growing awareness among ordinary people that things could be very different. Sophisticated marketing and public relations, not scientific excellence, have helped corporations to preside unchallenged over matters of life and death. It is time, Law argues, for us to take responsibility for our health, not as passive consumers of pharmaceutical medicine, but as informed citizens.
Download or read book Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime written by Peter Gotzsche and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2019-08-21 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ARE THE THIRD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH AFTER HEART DISEASE AND CANCER. In his latest ground-breaking book, Peter C Gotzsche exposes the pharmaceutical industries and their charade of fraudulent behaviour, both in research and marketing where the morally repugnant disregard for human lives is the norm. He convincingly draws close co
Download or read book Pharma written by Gerald Posner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Gerald Posner reveals the heroes and villains of the trillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical industry and delivers “a withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients (The New York Times Book Review). Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on prescription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. Now, Americans are demanding a national reckoning with a monolithic industry. “Gerald’s dogged reporting, sets Pharma apart from all books on this subject” (The Washington Standard) as we are introduced to brilliant scientists, incorruptible government regulators, and brave whistleblowers facing off against company executives often blinded by greed. A business that profits from treating ills can create far deadlier problems than it cures. Addictive products are part of the industry’s DNA, from the days when corner drugstores sold morphine, heroin, and cocaine, to the past two decades of dangerously overprescribed opioids. Pharma also uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America’s wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis. Relying on thousands of pages of government and corporate archives, dozens of hours of interviews with insiders, and previously classified FBI files, Posner exposes the secrets of the Sacklers’ rise to power—revelations that have long been buried under a byzantine web of interlocking companies with ever-changing names and hidden owners. The unexpected twists and turns of the Sackler family saga are told against the startling chronicle of a powerful industry that sits at the intersection of public health and profits. “Explosively, even addictively, readable” (Booklist, starred review), Pharma reveals how and why American drug companies have put earnings ahead of patients.
Download or read book The Truth About the Drug Companies written by Marcia Angell and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-08-09 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During her two decades at The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell had a front-row seat on the appalling spectacle of the pharmaceutical industry. She watched drug companies stray from their original mission of discovering and manufacturing useful drugs and instead become vast marketing machines with unprecedented control over their own fortunes. She saw them gain nearly limitless influence over medical research, education, and how doctors do their jobs. She sympathized as the American public, particularly the elderly, struggled and increasingly failed to meet spiraling prescription drug prices. Now, in this bold, hard-hitting new book, Dr. Angell exposes the shocking truth of what the pharmaceutical industry has become–and argues for essential, long-overdue change. Currently Americans spend a staggering $200 billion each year on prescription drugs. As Dr. Angell powerfully demonstrates, claims that high drug prices are necessary to fund research and development are unfounded: The truth is that drug companies funnel the bulk of their resources into the marketing of products of dubious benefit. Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA, and academic medical centers. Zeroing in on hugely successful drugs like AZT (the first drug to treat HIV/AIDS), Taxol (the best-selling cancer drug in history), and the blockbuster allergy drug Claritin, Dr. Angell demonstrates exactly how new products are brought to market. Drug companies, she shows, routinely rely on publicly funded institutions for their basic research; they rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are; and they use their legions of lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing rights for years. They also flood the market with copycat drugs that cost a lot more than the drugs they mimic but are no more effective. The American pharmaceutical industry needs to be saved, mainly from itself, and Dr. Angell proposes a program of vital reforms, which includes restoring impartiality to clinical research and severing the ties between drug companies and medical education. Written with fierce passion and substantiated with in-depth research, The Truth About the Drug Companies is a searing indictment of an industry that has spun out of control.
Download or read book Sickening written by John Abramson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inside story of how Big Pharma’s relentless pursuit of ever-higher profits corrupts medical knowledge—misleading doctors, misdirecting American health care, and harming our health. The United States spends an excess $1.5 trillion annually on health care compared to other wealthy countries—yet the amount of time that Americans live in good health ranks a lowly 68th in the world. At the heart of the problem is Big Pharma, which funds most clinical trials and therefore controls the research agenda, withholds the real data from those trials as corporate secrets, and shapes most of the information relied upon by health care professionals. In this no-holds-barred exposé, Dr. John Abramson—one of the foremost experts on the drug industry’s deceptive tactics—combines patient stories with what he learned during many years of serving as an expert in national drug litigation to reveal the tangled web of financial interests at the heart of the dysfunction in our health-care system. For example, one of pharma’s best-kept secrets is that the peer reviewers charged with ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the clinical trial reports published in medical journals do not even have access to complete data and must rely on manufacturer-influenced summaries. Likewise for the experts who write the clinical practice guidelines that define our standards of care. The result of years of research and privileged access to the inner workings of the U.S. medical-industrial complex, Sickening shines a light on the dark underbelly of American health care—and presents a path toward genuine reform.
Download or read book On the Take written by Jerome P. Kassirer M.D. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all know that doctors accept gifts from drug companies, ranging from pens and coffee mugs to free vacations at luxurious resorts. But as the former Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine reveals in this shocking expose, these innocuous-seeming gifts are just the tip of an iceberg that is distorting the practice of medicine and jeopardizing the health of millions of Americans today. In On the Take, Dr. Jerome Kassirer offers an unsettling look at the pervasive payoffs that physicians take from big drug companies and other medical suppliers, arguing that the billion-dollar onslaught of industry money has deflected many physicians' moral compasses and directly impacted the everyday care we receive from the doctors and institutions we trust most. Underscored by countless chilling untold stories, the book illuminates the financial connections between the wealthy companies that make drugs and the doctors who prescribe them. Kassirer details the shocking extent of these financial enticements and explains how they encourage bias, promote dangerously misleading medical information, raise the cost of medical care, and breed distrust. Among the questionable practices he describes are: the disturbing number of senior academic physicians who have financial arrangements with drug companies; the unregulated "front" organizations that advocate certain drugs; the creation of biased medical education materials by the drug companies themselves; and the use of financially conflicted physicians to write clinical practice guidelines or to testify before the FDA in support of a particular drug. A brilliant diagnosis of an epidemic of greed, On the Take offers insight into how we can cure the medical profession and restore our trust in doctors and hospitals.
Download or read book Drug Truths written by John L. LaMattina and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-03-02 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book answers the questions about the process and costs of pharmaceutical R & D in a compelling narrative focused on the discovery and development of important new medicines. It gives an insider's account of the pharmaceutical industry drug discovery process, the very real costs of misperceptions about the industry, the high stakes--both economic and scientific--of developing drugs, the triumphs that come when new compounds reach the market and save lives, and the despair that follows when new compounds fail. In the book, John LaMattina, former president of Pfizer Global Research and Development, weaves themes critical to a vital drug discovery environment in the context. This is a story that Dr. LaMattina is uniquely qualified to tell.
Download or read book Government Big Pharma and The People written by Mickey C. Smith and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pharmaceuticals constitute a relatively small share of the total Health Care expenditure in most developed economies, and yet they play a critical role in the ongoing debate over how best to advance, improve, and afford Health Care. Despite this, and perhaps because of this, the industry has had, for many years, an outsized claim to fame and controversy, praise and criticisms, and support and condemnation. Unfortunately, many participants in the debate do not fully understand the complexities of the industry and its role in the overall Health Care system. The analytical tools of economics provide a strong foundation for a better understanding of the dynamics of the pharmaceutical industry, its contribution to Health and Health Care, and its dual and often conflicting priorities of affordability and innovation, as well as the various Private and Public Policy initiatives directed at the sector. Everyone is affected by Big Pharma and the products they produce. At the Drug store, the physician’s office, in front of the television, in everyday conversations, Drugs are a part of our lives. Society shapes our values toward Drugs and Drugs shape society. ("The Pill" and minor tranquilizers are good examples.) And, of course, the way Congress deliberates and Big Pharma responds has a huge impact on how Drugs affect our lives. This book is well-researched on the subject of the pharmaceutical industry, its struggles with Government, and its relationship to the consumer from the early twentieth century until the present. The Dynamic Tension between the three participants – Government, Big Pharma, and the People – is described and explained to lead to an understanding of the controversies that rage today. The author describes how the Government, its many investigatory efforts, and the ultimate legislative results affect the industry and the consequences of their activities are explored in light of their effects on other players, including the patients and consumers who rely on both Government and Big Pharma for their well-being and who find sometimes unexpected consequences while giving special attention to the attitudes, beliefs, and misadventures of less-than-optimal Drug use. Stakeholders are identified with physicians as a major focus, as well as describing the significance of prescriptions as social objects and the processes by which physicians make choices on behalf of their patients. The author ties it all together with how Big Pharma affects and is affected by each of these groups. The author utilizes his 50-plus years’ experience as an academic, practicing pharmacist, and Big Pharma employee to describe the scope of the pharmaceutical industry and how it affects us on a daily basis, concluding with an inside look at Big Pharma and how regulations, marketing, and the press have affected their business, both good and bad.
Download or read book Big Pharma written by John Prieve and published by Publishamerica Incorporated. This book was released on 2006-04-01 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Jack Ford ascends the corporate ladder at a powerful pharmaceutical company, he is exposed to the ultimate in corporate espionage, deception, and graft. To avoid federal prosecution, he is forced to cooperate with FDA agents and become an unwilling whistleblower.
Download or read book Bottle of Lies written by Katherine Eban and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2019 New York Public Library Best Books of 2019 Kirkus Reviews Best Health and Science Books of 2019 Science Friday Best Books of 2019 New postscript by the author From an award-winning journalist, an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals fraud and life-threatening dangers on a global scale—The Jungle for pharmaceuticals Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true? Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing—and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects. The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.
Download or read book Bad Science written by Ben Goldacre and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever wondered how one day the media can assert that alcohol is bad for us and the next unashamedly run a story touting the benefits of daily alcohol consumption? Or how a drug that is pulled off the market for causing heart attacks ever got approved in the first place? How can average readers, who aren't medical doctors or Ph.D.s in biochemistry, tell what they should be paying attention to and what's, well, just more bullshit? Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. He has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window. But he's not here just to tell you what's wrong. Goldacre is here to teach you how to evaluate placebo effects, double-blind studies, and sample sizes, so that you can recognize bad science when you see it. You're about to feel a whole lot better.
Download or read book Bad Pharma written by Ben Goldacre and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the bestselling 'Bad Science', which mercilessly exposed the evils of bogus, pseudo-scientific remedies, Ben Goldacre puts the global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope.
Download or read book Owning the Sun written by Alexander Zaitchik and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers of Bad Blood and Empire of Pain, an authoritative look at monopoly medicine from the dawn of patents through the race for COVID-19 vaccines and how the privatization of public science has prioritized profits over people Owning the Sun tells the story of one of the most contentious fights in human history: the legal right to produce lifesaving medicines. Medical science began as a discipline geared toward the betterment of all human life, but the merging of research with intellectual property and the rise of the pharmaceutical industry warped and eventually undermined its ethical foundations. Since World War II, federally funded research has facilitated most major medical breakthroughs, yet these drugs are often wholly controlled by price-gouging corporations with growing international ambitions. Why does the U.S. government fund the development of medical science in the name of the public only to relinquish exclusive rights to drug companies, and how does such a system impoverish us, weaken our responses to crises, and, as in the cases of AIDS and COVID-19, put the world at risk? Outlining how generations of public health and science advocates have attempted to hold the line against Big Pharma and their allies in government, Alexander Zaitchik’s first-of-its-kind history documents the rise of privatized medicine in the United States and its subsequent globalization. From the controversial arrival of patent-wielding German drug firms in the late nineteenth century to present-day coordination between industry and philanthropic organizations—including the influential Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—that stymie international efforts to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, Owning the Sun tells one of the most important and least understood histories of our time.
Download or read book Saving Normal written by Allen Frances, M.D. and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From "the most powerful psychiatrist in America" (New York Times) and "the man who wrote the book on mental illness" (Wired), a deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. These challenges are a normal part of being human, and they should not be treated as psychiatric disease. However, today millions of people who are really no more than "worried well" are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and are receiving unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world's most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of thousands of years, and into the hands of "Big Pharma," who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances cautions that the new edition of the "bible of psychiatry," the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), will turn our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of "normal" people into "mental patients." Alarmingly, in DSM-5, normal grief will become "Major Depressive Disorder"; the forgetting seen in old age is "Mild Neurocognitive Disorder"; temper tantrums are "Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder"; worrying about a medical illness is "Somatic Symptom Disorder"; gluttony is "Binge Eating Disorder"; and most of us will qualify for adult "Attention Deficit Disorder." What's more, all of these newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of the mental health industry: those who desperately need psychiatric help are left shamefully neglected, while the "worried well" are given the bulk of the treatment, often at their own detriment. Masterfully charting the history of psychiatric fads throughout history, Frances argues that whenever we arbitrarily label another aspect of the human condition a "disease," we further chip away at our human adaptability and diversity, dulling the full palette of what is normal and losing something fundamental of ourselves in the process. Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity.
Download or read book Bottles of Lies written by Katherine Eban and published by . This book was released on 2019-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true? Katherine Eban's Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing--and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects. The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings?"--Dust jacket.
