I recently wrote a review of Ben Goldacre's latest book, Bad Pharma, for Medical Writing, the journal of the European Medical Writers Association. That review is reproduced below.
By Ben Goldacre, published by Fourth Estate,
2012. ISBN 978-0-00-735074-2 (paperback) 448 Pages. £13.99
Bad Pharma is the latest book by the well known
anti-quackery campaigner Ben Goldacre, and attempts to explain to us
that medicine is broken. Despite the title, he criticises not only
the pharmaceutical industry, but also regulators, doctors, academic
clinical researchers, ethics committees, and various other players in
the world of clinical research. His take home message (I don’t
think a spoiler alert is really needed here!) is that we simply can't
trust the evidence that we see about the efficacy and safety of drugs
in common use.
