![]() ![]() The structures in clinical research reflect wider neoliberal economic policies. The EU’s bureaucratic bodies, created to regulate Pharma, are affiliated with industrial rather than health departments, and conflicts of interest surrounding regulator’s funding and individual’s lobbying potential are concealed and unchallenged. Goldacre explains how Pharma bypasses legislation to retain profitability and how regulatory bodies are more concerned with commercial protectionism than standards of healthcare. Bad Pharma, subtitled “How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients”, exposes bad regulation and bad science, but also offers insights into the mechanisms of Pharma’s grip on the practice of medicine. He is interested in “unpicking bad science” as “the best way to explain good science” and is committed to making such debates accessible to a wide audience. Ben Goldacre is a practising doctor and journalist, author of Bad Science (2009) and the same titled Guardian column, which has run since 2003. The threat to our NHS is something we all know about, but Bad Pharma exposes another crisis in medicine: the power of the pharmaceutical industry, “Pharma”, to protect its private interests. Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma ( Fourth Estate, 2012), £ 13. ![]()
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