Bad Pharma
by Ben Goldacre

Read: Jan 11-18, 2022
Genre: Pop Sci

I really, thoroughly, enjoyed this book from start to finish. As someone with a doctor for a partner - and also knows many doctors through her, this was really eye opening. I had some inklings from Bad Science, another book by Ben, but this really took it another step.

It opens your eyes to almost 50% of all research not being published; incomplete publish data; drug development biases (towards clones); the issues in regulation like not enough data; regulators being paid by pharma companies; unwillingness to remove drugs from the market; incomplete trial registers; bad trials; stopping trials early; unrepresentative samples; unspecified primary oncomes; changing your primary outcome; choosing 20 primary outcomes (one of them has got to be right!); comparing surrogate outcomes (blood tests) instead of reduced deaths, for example; marketing and all the evils that go along with that.

For all the issues that Ben presents, he is oddy optimistic about the situation. He presents a series of things that could be done by individual people, companies, universities, regulators etc. to help improve each situation as he moves through the book. He even now works to help improve testing and trials within the UK medical practice.

I could not recommend this book enough - both to laypeople and to medical professionals alike.