Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre

This book made me angry. So angry I'm ordering it for my doctor friends because they need to read it. It charts an outrage that puts any misdemeanours by bankers into the shade and presents evidence that modern pharmaceuticals are developed and marketed with nothing so grand as objective medical evidence or patient care in mind but big fat profits at the cost of all else.

Now many cynics will suggest that they've known this for years but I'm a real fan of peer reviewed research (despite it's obvious flaws it does seem to be the best of the systems tried for ensuring objectivity and progress, together with freedom to get it wrong), I'm also a fan of the NHS and medicine in general. Medicine is good for society and I'd rather live now, with what we have, than at any other period in history. However, the calamitous disregard for human suffering and cynical manipulation of patients, doctors and regulators by the industry simply left me boiling with anger.

That companies are allowed to patent molecular chirality (i.e. a kink in a chain) in a medicine so that when one version's patent expires they can 'launch' the other (identical apart from a molecular kink) at TEN times the price of the first and that purchasing decisions prefer new drugs to old regardless of the evidence is simply beyond belief.

This review is in danger of descending into an incoherent rant - but this book is also about what could be done to fix what are huge but simple flaws in the way we allow medicine to be controlled. Goldacre writes fluidly and with great knowledge - he also writes with unquenchable humanity and compassion, righteous anger and humility. This, more than anything else, keeps the book from becoming a tired piece of white noise.

I beg you to take this book seriously. I also beg you to then write to your MP and demand that we legislate for basic rights - such as the right that all research undertaken with public money is made public, that regulators are forced to be transparent about their financial interests, the research they do and the company they keep. That companies would be forced to register all trials - regardless of whether they find good outcomes and that when they say they're going to test X that they report on X and not Y. Simple stuff that would help everyone get the best out of the money that is spent on creating medicines around the world.