Bad Pharma

The book I read to research this post was Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Ben is a doctor in England so a lot of this book is from an english perspective. This book is about that when a new drug is approved it often has no advantages over existing drugs and many have horrendous side effects the logic of the powers that be being that they should give doctors plenty of choice. Many of these so called drug trials are suppressed if they give bad results for a drug. Many drug trial results are never published and if they give bad results and are published the data is often skewed. An example of this is maybe a drug is ineffective but found a good result for chinese people between 55-75 years old even though it's ridiculous. It may be there was only a small number in the group that match that criteria but all the same it's published. Interestingly the drug companies spend more money advertising drugs than they do on research. Many doctors were trained 20 years ago when the medical treatment system was completely different and they turn to journals often owned by the drug companies for the latest information. Also if they receive training it's often provided by the drug companies by people who promote their products. Most people in the medication industry mean well but it does need policing more stringently. Drug companies often test drugs on homeless people who are desperate for the payment or people in third world countries who often aren't informed they are guinea pigs. Some doctors take payments off the drug companies and in Britain they don't need to declare it to anyone. As you can probably see there is a lack of impartial drug data. This book is a pretty interesting read.