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Bad Pharma

How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

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Bad Pharma

By: Ben Goldacre
Narrated by: Jot Davies
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About this listen

Shortlisted for: Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year – Specsavers National Book Awards 2012

'Bad 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.

©2012 Ben Goldacre (P)2012 W F Howes Ltd
Biological Sciences Physics Witty

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Excellent

Excellent book. Meticulously researched and very clearly presented. And the revelations are quite shocking! Highly recommended!

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Insightful

Interesting and insightful.
Concerning
Easy to listen
Whistleblowing
I enjoyed the book very much
Thank you

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Information intensive

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.

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I will never look at medications the same again

it was a little bit tooin-depth, all doctors and medical students need to read this book.

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Brave and defiant book

kudos to goldacre for having the Kahunas to lay out the endemic and complex problem of big pharma in medical practice, literature, education and beyond

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Very comprehensive but very anti-pharma

Whilst this story is very comprehensive and covers lots of examples of the negativities of pharma it’s goes way to far. There is no positives about what good pharma has done - only negative - as of 2020 most of these examples are out of date,
Incorrect and only 1 example per case and not everything happens the way the author lays out. Clearly this author is very anti-pharma and the reader needs to keep this in mind.

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repetitive

I get that he's trying to hammer a point home but the repetition is so dull

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