• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre

P

pickledpepper2

Well-Known Member
Messages
129
Just started reading this, am quite shocked at its contents. Anyone else read it here? What do you make of it?


Read Simon Singh's book on alternative medicine just before, which sort of pushes the opposite view.
 
you only have to look at the whole MMR/Autism thing and Dr Wakefield to see the effect of badly designed trials/investigations.

That is one of the books I keep meaning to read, but haven't got round to it yet.
 
I'm just starting "Bad Pharma", but have been reading his blog and "Bad Science". What I like about his writing (apart from the humour) is the transparency and clarity of his writing. It makes a nice change from so many books on science subjects.



Sent from my brain.
 
Bloomin' 'eck!

Just saw a video of him!

Here's me thinking he was some sober academic type when he could easily pass for a stand up comedian!


I haven't got to the part about statins in his book but am obviously very keen to read what he says about them.
 
OMG you people just realized this XD

I've been posting links like this every other day in the Marijuana thread, because I saw some interesting charts on drug-related hospital admissions and fatalities and thought it interesting that pharmaceuticals topped the list above all illicit drugs combined. Don't think people don't abuse painkillers either, because the only real difference between street heroin and 'legit' medication is purity ;) They are still heavy, addictive, dangerous narcotics.

As for everything else people pop pills for, did anyone ever stop to read the multitude of listed side effects in the small print? And when someone is seriously harmed by taking these drugs even as prescribed no one at the Pharma companies gets in trouble. They sponsor too much of the media. They are untouchable and run on the basis of amassing profit just like any other business. Some medication is absolutely necessary perhaps, but the PRIMARY objective of those people is not to make people well. It's to make money.


Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
Just under a quarter of the way through the book.

I noticed the company Roche got it quite badly for withholding information about unpublished clinical trials from researchers.

They are the same company behind the Accucheck range many of us use.
 
Have a think about what keeps us diabetics alive - medicines.
Where have they come from? Pharma companies.
Several of the "trials" that Goldacre mentions were being carried out by doctors wanting to get a paper published (to further their career) and were NOT being undertaken by any pharmaceutical company.
There are regulations that cover clinical trials and it would seem from Goldacre's book that these need to be tightened.
Surely that is what the goal should be.
 
Pumpfan said:
Have a think about what keeps us diabetics alive - medicines.

There are regulations that cover clinical trials and it would seem from Goldacre's book that these need to be tightened.
Surely that is what the goal should be.
Click to expand...

It's the reported resistance to this from the pharmaceuticals and regulators that is so shocking - if it has been represented correctly that is.


Goldacre's point about the potential to make poor decisions based on incomplete data is a valid one, no?
 
Back
Top