11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

Bad Pharma
Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and
Harm Patients is a book by the British physician and academic Ben Bad Pharma
Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the
medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research
into its own products.[1] It was published in the UK in September 2012 by
the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins, and in the United States in
February 2013 by Faber and Faber.

Goldacre argues in the book that "the whole edifice of medicine is

broken", because the evidence on which it is based is systematically
distorted by the pharmaceutical industry.[n 1] He writes that the industry
finances most of the clinical trials into its own products and much of
doctors' continuing education, that clinical trials are often conducted on
small groups of unrepresentative subjects and negative data is routinely
withheld, and that apparently independent academic papers may be
planned and even ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies or their
contractors, without disclosure.[3] Describing the situation as a
"murderous disaster", he makes suggestions for action by patients'
groups, physicians, academics and the industry itself.[4]

Responding to the book's publication, the Association of the British Author Ben Goldacre
Pharmaceutical Industry issued a statement in 2012 arguing that the
examples the book offers were historical, that the concerns had been
Subject Pharmaceutical
addressed, that the industry is among the most regulated in the world, industry
and that it discloses all data in accordance with international
Publisher Fourth Estate
standards.[5]
(UK), Faber &
In January 2013 Goldacre joined the Cochrane Collaboration, British Faber (US),
Medical Journal and others in setting up AllTrials, a campaign calling
Signal
for the results of all past and current clinical trials to be reported.[6] The
British House of Commons Public Accounts Committee expressed
(Canada)
concern in January 2014 that drug companies were still only publishing Publication 25 September
around 50 percent of clinical-trial results.[7] date 2012
Media type Print
(Hardcover and
Contents Paperback)
1 Author Pages 430 (first
2 Synopsis
edition)
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Chapter 1: "Missing Data" ISBN 978-0-00-
2.3 Chapter 2: "Where Do New Drugs Come From?"
735074-2
2.4 Chapter 3: "Bad Regulators"
2.5 Chapter 4: "Bad Trials" Preceded by Bad Science
2.6 Chapter 5: "Bigger, Simpler Trials"
2.7 Chapter 6: "Marketing"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 1/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

2.8 Afterword: "Better Data"

3 Reception
4 AllTrials
5 Publication details
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 Further reading

Author
After graduating in 1995 with a first-class honours degree in medicine
from Magdalen College, Oxford, Goldacre obtained an MA in philosophy
from King's College London, then undertook clinical training at UCL
Medical School, qualifying as a medical doctor in 2000 and as a
psychiatrist in 2005. As of 2014 he was Wellcome Research Fellow in
Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.[8]

Goldacre is known for his "Bad Science" column in the Guardian, which
he has written since 2003, and for his first book, Bad Science (2008). This
unpicked the claims of several forms of alternative medicine, and
criticized certain physicians and the media for a lack of critical thinking. It
Ben Goldacre
also looked at the MMR vaccine controversy, AIDS denialism, the placebo
effect and the misuse of statistics.[9] Goldacre was recognized in June 2013
by Health Service Journal as having done "more than any other single
individual to shine a light on how science and research gets distorted by the media, politicians, quacks, PR and the
pharmaceutical industry."[10]

Synopsis

Introduction
Goldacre writes in the introduction of Bad Pharma that he aims to defend the following:

Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small
numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in
such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce
results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don't like, they are
perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any
drug's true effects. Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in a drug's life, and even
then they don't give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted
evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion.

In their forty years of practice after leaving medical school, doctors hear about what works through ad hoc
oral traditions, from sales reps, colleagues or journals. But those colleagues can be in the pay of drug
companies – often undisclosed – and the journals are too. And so are the patient groups. And finally,
academic papers, which everyone thinks of as objective, are often covertly planned and written by people
who work directly for the companies, without disclosure. Sometimes whole academic journals are even

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 2/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

owned outright by one drug company. Aside from all this, for several of the most important and enduring
problems in medicine, we have no idea what the best treatment is, because it's not in anyone's financial
interest to conduct any trials at all.[11]

Chapter 1: "Missing Data"

In "Missing Data," Goldacre argues that the clinical trials undertaken by drug companies routinely reach conclusions
favourable to the company. For example, in a 2007 journal article published in PLOS Medicine, researchers studied
every published trial on statins, drugs prescribed to reduce cholesterol levels. In the 192 trials they looked at, industry-
funded trials were 20 times more likely to produce results that favoured the drug.[12]

He writes that these positive results are achieved in a number of ways. Sometimes the industry-sponsored studies are
flawed by design (for example by comparing the new drug to an existing drug at an inadequate dose), and sometimes
patients are selected to make a positive result more likely. In addition, the data is analysed as the trial progresses. If
the trial seems to be producing negative data it is stopped prematurely and the results are not published, or if it is
producing positive data it may be stopped early so that longer-term effects are not examined. He writes that this
publication bias, where negative results remain unpublished, is endemic within medicine and academia. As a
consequence, he argues, doctors may have no idea what the effects are of the drugs they prescribe.[13]

An example he gives of the difficulty of obtaining missing data from drug companies is that of oseltamivir (Tamiflu),
manufactured by Roche to reduce the complications of bird flu. Governments spent billions of pounds stockpiling this,
based in large part on a meta-analysis that was funded by the industry. Bad Pharma charts the efforts of independent
researchers, particularly Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Collaboration Respiratory Group, to gain access to
information about the drug.[14]

Chapter 2: "Where Do New Drugs Come From?"

In the second chapter, the book describes the process as new drugs move from animal testing through phase 1 (first-
in-man study), phase 2, and phase 3 clinical trials. Phase 1 participants are referred to as volunteers, but in the US are
paid $200–$400 per day, and because studies can last several weeks and subjects may volunteer several times a year,
earning potential becomes the main reason for participation.[15] Participants are usually taken from the poorest
groups in society, and outsourcing increasingly means that trials may be conducted in countries with highly
competitive wages by contract research organizations (CROs). The rate of growth for clinical trials in India is 20
percent a year, in Argentina 27 percent, and in China 47 percent, while trials in the UK have fallen by 10 percent a year
and in the US by six percent.[16]

The shift to outsourcing raises issues about data integrity, regulatory oversight, language difficulties, the meaning of
informed consent among a much poorer population, the standards of clinical care, the extent to which corruption may
be regarded as routine in certain countries, and the ethical problem of raising a population's expectations for drugs
that most of that population cannot afford.[16] It also raises the question of whether the results of clinical trials using
one population can invariably be applied elsewhere. There are both social and physical differences: Goldacre asks
whether patients diagnosed with depression in China are really the same as patients diagnosed with depression in
California, and notes that people of Asian descent metabolize drugs differently from Westerners.[17]

There have also been cases of available treatment being withheld during clinical trials. In 1996 in Kano, Nigeria, the
drug company Pfizer compared a new antibiotic during a meningitis outbreak to a competing antibiotic that was
known to be effective at a higher dose than was used during the trial. Goldacre writes that 11 children died, divided
almost equally between the two groups. The families taking part in the trial were apparently not told that the
competing antibiotic at the effective dose was available from Médecins Sans Frontières in the next-door building.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 3/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

Chapter 3: "Bad Regulators"

Chapter three describes the concept of "regulatory capture," whereby a regulator – such as the Medicines and
Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK, or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United
States – ends up advancing the interests of the drug companies rather than the interests of the public. Goldacre writes
that this happens for a number of reasons, including the revolving door of employees between the regulator and the
companies, and the fact that friendships develop between regulator and company employees simply because they have
knowledge and interests in common. The chapter also discusses surrogate outcomes and accelerated approval, and the
difficulty of having ineffective drugs removed from the market once they have been approved.[19] He argues that
regulators do not require that new drugs offer an improvement over what is already available, or even that they be
particularly effective.[20]

Chapter 4: "Bad Trials"

"Bad Trials" examines the ways in which clinical trials can be flawed. Goldacre writes that this happens by design and
by analysis, and that it has the effect of maximizing a drug's benefits and minimizing harm. There have been instances
of fraud, though he says these are rare. More common are what he calls the "wily tricks, close calls, and elegant
mischief at the margins of acceptability."[21]

These include testing drugs on unrepresentative, "freakishly ideal" patients; comparing new drugs to something
known to be ineffective, or effective at a different dose or if used differently; conducting trials that are too short or too
small; and stopping trials early or late.[22] It also includes measuring uninformative outcomes; packaging the data so
that it is misleading; ignoring patients who drop out (i.e. using per-protocol analysis, where only patients who
complete the trial are counted in the final results, rather than intention-to-treat analysis, where everyone who starts
the trial is counted); changing the main outcome of the trial once it has finished; producing subgroup analyses that
show apparently positive outcomes for certain tightly defined groups (such as Chinese men between the ages of 56 and
71), thereby hiding an overall negative outcome; and conducting "seeding trials," where the objective is to persuade
physicians to use the drug.[23]

Another criticism is that outcomes are presented in terms of relative risk reduction to exaggerate the apparent benefits
of the treatment. For example, he writes, if four people out of 1,000 will have a heart attack within the year, but on
statins only two will, that is a 50 percent reduction if expressed as relative risk reduction. But if expressed as absolute
risk reduction, it is a reduction of just 0.2 percent.[24]

Chapter 5: "Bigger, Simpler Trials"

In chapter five Goldacre suggests using the General Practice Research Database in the UK, which contains the
anonymized records of several million patients, to conduct randomized trials to determine the most effective of
competing treatments. For example, to compare two statins, atorvastatin and simvastatin, doctors would randomly
assign patients to one or the other. The patients would be followed up by having data about their cholesterol levels,
heart attacks, strokes and deaths taken from their computerized medical records. The trials would not be blind –
patients would know which statin they had been prescribed – but Goldacre writes that they would be unlikely to hold
such firm beliefs about which one is preferable to the extent that it could affect their health.[25]

Chapter 6: "Marketing"
In the final chapter, Goldacre looks at how doctors are persuaded to prescribe "me-too drugs," brand-name drugs that
are no more effective than significantly cheaper off-patent ones. He cites as examples the statins atorvastatin (Lipitor,
made by Pfizer) and simvastatin (Zocor), which he writes seem to be equally effective, or at least there is no evidence
to suggest otherwise. Simvastatin came off patent several years ago, yet there are still three million prescriptions a year
in the UK for atorvastatin, costing the National Health Service (NHS) an annual £165 million extra.[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 4/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

He addresses the issue of medicalization of certain conditions (or, as he argues, of personhood), whereby
pharmaceutical companies "widen the boundaries of diagnosis" before offering solutions. Female sexual dysfunction
was highlighted in 1999 by a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which alleged that
43 percent of women were suffering from it. After the article appeared, the New York Times wrote that two of its three
authors had worked as consultants for Pfizer, which at the time was preparing to launch UK-414,495, known as female
Viagra. The journal's editor said that the failure to disclose the relationship with Pfizer was the journal's mistake.[27]

The chapter also examines celebrity endorsement of certain drugs, the extent to which claims in advertisements aimed
at doctors are appropriately sourced, and whether direct-to-consumer advertising (currently permitted in the US and
New Zealand) ought to be allowed.[28] It discusses how PR firms promote stories from patients who complain in the
media that certain drugs are not made available by the funder, which in the UK is the NHS and the National Institute
for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Two breast-cancer patients who campaigned in the UK in 2006 for
trastuzumab (Herceptin) to be available on the NHS were being handled by a law firm working for Roche, the drug's
manufacturer. The historian Lisa Jardine, who was suffering from breast cancer, told the Guardian that she had been
approached by a PR firm working for the company.[29]

The chapter also covers the influence of drug reps, how ghostwriters are employed by the drug companies to write
papers for academics to publish, how independent the academic journals really are, how the drug companies finance
doctors' continuing education, and how patients' groups are often funded by industry.[30]

Afterword: "Better Data"

In the afterword and throughout the book, Goldacre makes suggestions for action by doctors, medical students,
patients, patient groups and the industry. He advises doctors, nurses and managers to stop seeing drug reps, to ban
them from clinics, hospitals and medical schools, to declare online and in waiting rooms all gifts and hospitality
received from the industry, and to remove all drug company promotional material from offices and waiting rooms. (He
praises the website of the American Medical Student Association – www.amsascorecard.org – which ranks institutions
according to their conflict-of-interest policies, writing that it makes him "feel weepy.") He also suggests that
regulations be introduced to prevent pharmacists from sharing doctors' prescribing records with drug reps.[31]

He asks academics to lobby their universities and academic societies to forbid academics from being involved in
ghostwriting, and to lobby for "film credit" contributions at the end of every academic paper, listing everyone involved,
including who initiated the idea of publishing the paper.[32] He also asks for full disclosure of all past clinical trial
results, and a list of academic papers that were, as he puts it, "rigged" by industry, so that they can be retracted or
annotated.[33] He asks drug company employees to become whistleblowers, either by writing an anonymous blog, or by
contacting him.[34]

He advises patients to ask their doctors whether they accept drug-company hospitality or sponsorship, and if so to
post details in their waiting rooms, and to make clear whether it is acceptable to the patient for the doctor to discuss
his or her medical history with drug reps. Patients who are invited to take part in a trial are advised to ask, among
other things, for a written guarantee that the trial has been publicly registered, and that the main outcome of the trial
will be published within a year of its completion. He advises patient groups to write to drug companies with the
following: "We are living with this disease; is there anything at all that you're withholding? If so, tell us today."[35]

Reception
The book was generally well received. The Economist described it as "slightly technical, eminently readable,
consistently shocking, occasionally hectoring and unapologetically polemical".[36] Helen Lewis in the New Statesman
called it an important book,[37] while Luisa Dillner, writing in the Guardian, described it as a "thorough piece of
investigative medical journalism".[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 5/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

Andrew Jack wrote in the Financial Times that Goldacre is "at his best in methodically dissecting poor clinical trials. ...
He is less strong in explaining the complex background reality, such as the general constraints and individual slips of
regulators and pharma companies' employees." Jack also argued that the book failed to reflect how many lives have
been improved by the current system, for example with new treatments for HIV, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.[38]

Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that "this is a book to make you enraged ... because it's
about how big business puts profits over patient welfare, allows people to die because they don't want to disclose
damning research evidence, and the tricks they play to make sure doctors do not have all the evidence when it comes
to appraising whether a drug really works or not."[39]

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) replied in the New Statesman that Goldacre was "stuck
in a bygone era where pharmaceutical companies wine and dine doctors in exchange for signing on the dotted line".[40]
The ABPI issued a press release, writing that the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for the discovery of 90
percent of all medicines, and that it takes an average of 10–12 years and £1.1bn to introduce a medicine to the market,
with just one in 5,000 new compounds receiving regulatory approval. This makes research and development an
expensive and risky business. They wrote that the industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the world, and is
committed to ensuring full transparency in the research and development of new medicines. They also maintained
that the examples Goldacre offered were "long documented and historical, and the companies concerned have long
addressed these issues".[5] Goldacre argues in the book that "the most dangerous tactic of all is the industry's enduring
claim that these problems are all in the past".[41]

Humphrey Rang of the British Pharmacological Society wrote that Goldacre had chosen his target well and had
produced some shocking examples of secrecy and dishonesty, particularly the nondisclosure of data on the
antidepressant reboxetine (chapter one), in which only one trial out of seven was published (the published study
showed positive results, while the unpublished trials suggested otherwise). He argued that Goldacre had gone "over
the top" in devoting a whole chapter (chapter five) to recommending large clinical trials using electronic patient data
from general practitioners, without fully pointing out how problematic these can be; such trials raise issues, for
example, about informed consent and regulatory oversight. Rang also criticized Goldacre's style, describing the book
as too long, repetitive, hyperbolic, and in places too conversational. He particularly objected to the line, "medicine is
broken", calling it a "foolish remark".[42]

AllTrials
Following the book's publication, Goldacre co-founded AllTrials with David Tovey, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane
Library, together with the British Medical Journal, the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, and others in the UK, and
Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in
the US. Set up in January 2013, the group campaigns for all past and current clinical trials to be registered and
reported, for all treatments in use.[6]

The British House of Commons Public Accounts Committee produced a report in January 2014, after hearing evidence
from Goldacre, Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, and others, about the stockpiling of
Tamiflu and the withholding of data about the drug by its manufacturer, Roche. The committee said it was "surprised
and concerned" to learn that information from clinical trials is routinely withheld from doctors, and recommended
that the Department of Health take steps to ensure that all clinical-trial data be made available for currently
prescribed treatments.[43]

Publication details
Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients, Fourth Estate, 2012 (UK). ISBN 978-0-
00-735074-2
Faber and Faber, 2013 (US). ISBN 978-0-86547-800-8
Signal, 2013 (Canada). ISBN 978-0-7710-3629-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 6/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

As of December 2012 foreign rights had been sold for Brazil, the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Germany, Israel,
Italy, Korea, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey.[44]

See also

Books Miscellaneous
Big Pharma (2006) by Jacky Law Ethics in pharmaceutical sales
Side Effects (2008) by Alison Bass Pharmaceutical fraud
Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010) by Robert Whitaker Pharmaceutical industry in the UK
GlaxoSmithKline#2012 criminal and civil settlement
Lists Rosiglitazone
Study 329
Lists about the pharmaceutical industry TGN1412
List of books about the politics of science
List of pharmaceutical companies
List of largest pharmaceutical settlements

Notes
1. Goldacre, 2012: "Medicine is broken ... We like to imagine that medicine is based on evidence, and the results of
fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the
research literature, when in reality much of it is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that
doctors are well-educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry. We like to imagine that
regulators only let effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on
side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients.
"I'm going to tell you how medicine works ... We're going to see that the whole edifice of medicine is broken,
because the evidence we use to make decisions is hopelessly and systematically distorted ..."[2]

References
1. Luisa Dillner, "Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre – review" (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/17/bad-pha
rma-ben-goldacre-review), The Guardian, 17 October 2012.
2. Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma, Fourth Estate, 2012, ix.
3. Bad Pharma, x–xi, 287ff; "Pick your pill out of a hat" (http://www.economist.com/node/21563689), The
Economist, 29 September 2012.
4. Bad Pharma, xii, 357ff.
5. "ABPI statement on Ben Goldacre's book 'Bad Pharma'" (http://www.abpi.org.uk/media-centre/newsreleases/201
2/Pages/051012.aspx), Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, 5 October 2012.
Ben Adams, "Goldacre takes ABPI to task over book snub" (http://www.pharmatimes.com/Article/12-10-12/Golda
cre_takes_ABPI_to_task_over_book_snub.aspx), Pharma Times, 12 October 2012.

6. "About" (http://www.alltrials.net/about/), alltrials.net; Tracey Brown, "It's time for AllTrials registered and reported"
(http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/details/editorial/4627901/Its-time-for-AllTrials-registered-and-reported.html),
The Cochrane Library, 30 April 2013.
7. David Tovey, "Why the Public Accounts Committee Report on Tamiflu Is Important for Us All" (http://www.huffingt
onpost.co.uk/dr-david-tovey/tamiflu-report_b_4535688.html), Huffington Post, 3 January 2014.
Rajeev Syal, "Drug companies accused of holding back complete information on clinical trials" (https://www.theg
uardian.com/business/2014/jan/03/drug-firms-information-clinical-trials), The Guardian, 3 January 2014.

8. Ben Goldacre, "About" (http://www.badscience.net/about-dr-ben-goldacre/), badscience.net.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 7/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

9. Ben Goldacre, Bad Science, Harper Perennial, 2008.

10. "Nick Black and Ben Goldacre named among clinical leaders making greatest impact" (http://blogs.lshtm.ac.uk/n
ews/2013/06/12/nick-black-and-ben-goldacre-named-among-clinical-leaders-making-greatest-impact/), London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 12 June 2013.
"Clinical Leaders 2013" (http://www.hsj.co.uk/leadership/clinical-leaders-2013/5059869.article#.Us6mkvYingo),
Health Service Journal, 14 June 2013.

11. Bad Pharma, xi (paragraph break added for ease of reading).

12. Bad Pharma, 2; for the study, Bero, L.; et al. (2007). "Factors Associated with Findings of Published Trials of
Drug-Drug Comparisons: Why Some Statins Appear More Efficacious than Others" (http://www.plosmedicine.or
g/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040184). PLOS Medicine. 4: e184. PMC 1885451 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1885451)  . PMID 17550302 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17550302).
doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040184 (https://doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0040184).
13. Bad Pharma, 4–7, 12.
14. Bad Pharma, 81ff; Tom Jefferson, et al., "A review of unpublished regulatory information from trials of
neuraminidase inhibitors (Tamiflu - oseltamivir and Relenza - zanamivir) for influenza" (http://summaries.cochran
e.org/CD008965/a-review-of-unpublished-regulatory-information-from-trials-of-neuraminidase-inhibitors-tamiflu-o
seltamivir-and-relenza-zanamivir-for-influenza), Cochrane Summaries, 17 October 2012.
15. Bad Pharma, 104–110.
16. Bad Pharma, 113–114.
17. Bad Pharma, 115.
18. Bad Pharma, 117.
19. Bad Pharma, 123ff.
20. Bad Pharma, 143ff.
21. Bad Pharma, 171.
22. Bad Pharma, 176, 180–187, 191–193.
23. Bad Pharma, 194–198, 200–212.
24. Bad Pharma, 216–217.
25. Bad Pharma, 225–227, 233.
Tjeerd-Pieter van Staa, Ben Goldacre, et al, "Pragmatic randomised trials using routine electronic health records:
putting them to the test" (http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e55), British Medical Journal, 7 February 2012.
PMID 22315246 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22315246)

26. Bad Pharma, 243.

27. Bad Pharma, 261–262.
For the 1999 study, E. O. Laumann, et al, "Sexual dysfunction in the United States: prevalence and predictors" (h
ttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10022110), Journal of the American Medical Association, 281(6), 10
February 1999, 537–544. PMID 10022110 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10022110)

Denise Grady, "Sure, We've Got a Pill for That" (https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/14/weekinreview/the-nation-b

etter-loving-through-chemistry-sure-we-ve-got-a-pill-for-that.html), The New York Times, 14 February 1999.

28. Bad Pharma, 247, 251, 271.

29. Bad Pharma, 254; Sarah Boseley, "The selling of a wonder drug" (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/m
ar/29/medicineandhealth.health), The Guardian, 29 March 2006.
30. Bad Pharma, 274, 287, 303, 311.
31. Bad Pharma, 284–286, 339–340; AMSA Scorecard (http://www.amsascorecard.org/), American Medical
Students Association.
32. Bad Pharma, 302.
33. Bad Pharma, 350–351.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 8/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

34. Bad Pharma, 363–364.

35. Bad Pharma, 357–358.
36. "Pick your pill out of a hat" (http://www.economist.com/node/21563689), The Economist, 29 September 2012.
37. Helen Lewis, "Lies, damn lies and drug trials" (http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2012/10/lies-damn-li
es-and-drug-trials), New Statesman, 4 October 2012.
38. Andrew Jack, "Extremes of drug development dissected" (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ca5bb27c-07ba-11e2-9df2-0
0144feabdc0.html#axzz29vEV06HZ), Financial Times, 26 September 2012.
39. Max Pemberton, "Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre: review" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/
9617550/Bad-Pharma-by-Ben-Goldacre-review.html), The Daily Telegraph, 22 October 2012.
40. "Dr Ben Goldacre vs the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry" (http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-t
ech/sci-tech/2012/10/dr-ben-goldacre-vs-association-british-pharmaceutical-industry), New Statesman, 19
October 2012.
41. Bad Pharma, 343.
42. Humphrey Rang, "Book review: Bad Pharma" (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bcp.12047/abstract),
British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 75(5), 17 October 2012, 1377–1379.
43. "Access to clinical trial information and the stockpiling of Tamiflu" (https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm20131
4/cmselect/cmpubacc/295/29502.htm), Public Accounts Committee, 3 January 2014.
Charlie Cooper, "Drugs companies 'routinely withhold results of medical trials' from doctors, researchers and
patients" (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/drugs-firms-routinely-withhold
-results-of-medical-trials-from-doctors-researchers-and-patients-9035740.html), The Independent, 3 January
2014.

44. "Best Books of 2012" (http://uaforeignrights.tumblr.com/post/38305141435/best-books-of-2012), United Agents

Foreign Rights, 19 December 2012.

Further reading

External links
Bad Pharma (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Titles/52872/bad-pharma-ben-goldacre-9780007350742),
publisher's website.
badscience.net (http://www.badscience.net/), Ben Goldacre's website.
"Bad Science" (https://www.theguardian.com/science/series/badscience?INTCMP=SRCH), Goldacre's column
for The Guardian.
"Why doctors don't know what they're prescribing" (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4323556.html), extract from
Bad Pharma.

Articles and radio

BBC Radio 4. "Pharmaceutical regulators have
been 'unethical'" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/tod
ay/newsid_9754000/9754505.stm), Today
programme, 25 September 2012 (radio interview
with Ben Goldacre and Stephen Whitehead of the
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry).
Brice, Makini. "Pharmaceutical Companies Cherry
Pick Data for Drug Approval, Sweep Bad Results
Under the Rug" (http://www.medicaldaily.com/article
s/12403/20120928/pharmaceutical-companies-cher
ry-pick-data-drug-approval.htm), Medical Daily, 28
September 2012.
Burke, Maria. "GSK pledge on trials transparency"
(http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2012/10/gsk-clin
ical-trials-data-published-transparency), Chemistry
World, 17 October 2012.
Carlat, Daniel. "Dr. Drug Rep" (https://www.nytimes.
com/2007/11/25/magazine/25memoir-t.html?_r=1),
New York Times magazine, 25 November 2007.
Goldacre, Ben. "Is the conflict of interest
unacceptable when drug companies conduct trials
on their own drugs? Yes" (http://www.bmj.com/cont
ent/339/bmj.b4949?ij), British Medical Journal, 29
November 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 9/10
11/2/2017 Bad Pharma - Wikipedia

Goldacre, Ben. "Drug companies must publish all
trial results" (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/c
olumnists/article3576313.ece), The Times, 23
October 2012; "Calls to end ‘national scandal’ of
stifled clinical trial results" (http://www.thetimes.co.u
k/tto/science/medicine/article3576357.ece), The
Times health editor, 23 October 2012.
Haynes, Laura; Service, Owain; Goldacre, Ben;
Torgerson, David. "Test, Learn, Adapt: Developing
Public Policy with Randomised Controlled Trials" (ht
tp://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/reso
urces/TLA-1906126.pdf), Cabinet Office
Behavioural Insights Team (UK), June 2012.
Hennessy, Mark. "Putting the drug companies'
research to the test" (http://www.irishtimes.com/new
spaper/weekend/2012/0929/1224324589266.html),
The Irish Times, 29 September 2012.
McClenaghan, Maeve. "Why Big Pharma is bad for
your health" (http://www.thebureauinvestigates.co
m/2012/09/28/why-big-pharma-is-bad-for-your-healt
h/), Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 28
September 2012.
Rehman, Jalees. "Can the Source of Funding for
Medical Research Affect the Results?" (http://blogs.
scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/09/23/can-t
he-source-of-funding-for-medical-research-affect-th
e-results/), Scientific American, 23 September
2012.
Rutherford, Adam. "Podcast Extra: Ben Goldacre"
(http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index-golda
cre-2012-09-28.html), Nature, 28 September 2012.
Szalavitz, Maia. "A Doctor’s Dilemma: When
Crucial New-Drug Data Is Hidden" (http://healthlan
d.time.com/2012/09/24/a-doctors-dilemma-when-cr
ucial-new-drug-data-is-hidden/), Time magazine, 24
September 2012.
Tucker, Ian. "Ben Goldacre: 'It's appalling ... like
phone hacking or MPs' expenses'" (https://www.the
guardian.com/business/2012/oct/07/ben-goldacre-b
ad-pharma-interview), The Observer, 7 October
2012.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bad_Pharma&oldid=799160883"

This page was last edited on 6 September 2017, at 00:58.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using
this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma 10/10