Pharmageddon

by David Healy

This searing indictment, David Healy’s most comprehensive and forceful argument against the pharmaceuticalization of medicine, tackles problems in health care that are leading to a growing number of deaths and disabilities. Healy, who was the first to draw attention to the now well-publicized suicide-inducing side effects of many anti-depressants, attributes our current state of affairs to three key product rather than process patents on drugs, the classification of certain drugs as prescription-only, and industry-controlled drug trials. These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards. Healy further explains why these trends have basically ended the possibility of universal health care in the United States and elsewhere around the world. He concludes with suggestions for reform of our currently corrupted evidence-based medical system.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Psychiatry, Psychology, Medicine, Science, Mental Health

315 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 4, 2012

About the author

David Healy is a former secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology and author of over 120 articles and 12 books, including The Antidepressant Era and The Creation of Psychopharmacology.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Healy has written a powerful inditement of the current relationship between the pharmaceutical industry, regulatory bodies and medical practice. The book gives a historical overview of the relationships between pharmacological innovation, medicine and the impact on disease and wellbeing. Where pharmaceuticals (such as antibiotics and insulin) initially made great headway in curing disease and markedly improve wellbeing, there has been a change since about the 1960s. The introduction of patents, prescription only practices and regulatory requirements for randomized controlled studies, although well intentioned have provided conditions where remarkable profits can be made by the pharmaceutical industry with blockbuster drugs. Healy describes how the industry has placed itself in a powerful position where it controls the production of scientific evidence, while concealing its raw data and ghostwriting studies under the name of prestigious medical professionals. Trends such as treating statistical and checklist abnormalities, marketing illness and powerful manipulations and obscurement of data have allowed pharmaceutical companies to highlight very modest influences of their products while concealing adverse events. Blockbuster drugs are often no more effective than there predecessors and many result in arguable benefits. Healy shines light on shocking practices of frank malfeasance which have been uncovered by lawsuits in the United States while also demonstrating how little scrutiny the industry has actually received. Healy argues that the current partnership has proven itself to be remarkably ineffective at advancing real knowledge about and treatment of illness, and at protecting the health and safety of consumers while being incredibly effective at creating profits for industry. It's hard to read this book. It can be discouraging. That being said Healy makes courageous and powerful arguments and his writing is clear with impactfull use of metaphor. This book is an important wake up call for our times.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scathing indictment of the pharmaceutical industry. Diseases are created to sell drugs which have little positive effect on the condition and often have many harmful side effects. Doctors are forced to follow treatment guidelines which mandate the use of the newest blockbuster drugs even though pharmaceutical companies refuse to release the raw data from their studies and routinely manipulate what they do release to claim better results than the drug is actually producing and hiding serious side effects.

I would have rated this book higher, but while it was well-researched it was not written very smoothly and reading it was often quite a slog.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

This EXCELLENT book could be an object study in the law of unintended consequences, on a meta level. More closely, Dr. Healy ties together a number of threads relating to medicine, big pharma, statistics, and medical journals. To the threads, Dr. Healy adds mountains of evidence. WHile very well researched, this book is so wonderfully written that you don't even realize you are reading an academic calibre work. Essentially, everything you thought you knew was rotten in Western-style medicine is but the tip of the iceberg.

[NormaCenva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful to know.

[Carol Horne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely searing. The relationship between patients and doctors is revealed as almost totally broken- so that drugs are prescribed with little attention to whether they are the right drug, are actually helping- even should they have been prescribed at all! The aggressive marketing and selling practices, including the introduction of patents and prescription only drugs, reveals that current day medicine has a vested interest in keeping us in the grip of disease and illness, possibly for a whole lifetime. Additionally, the mark up on some patent drugs can be up to 1500 times!
He also explains the illusion of randomised clinical trials as markers for effectiveness and excellence. This was eye-opening for me.
Where Ivan Illich left off, David Healy has continued.
Aside from the revelatory information, Healy’s style is sharply cutting - he makes you laugh while you read in horror. An ouch while you grin.
Worth every penny and only reinforcing my personal analysis of the value of current medicine; as far as I can see pharmaceutical industry has conned us all into thinking what a wonderful age of medicine we live in, whereas at best they are patenting expensive drugs that serve to merely manage our discomforts whole repressing those that could cure once and for all. And all this aside from the issue of dangerous side effects.
I urge everyone to read!

[Chrisanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a few things and was particularly interested in his review on some of the drugs for schizophrenia. There were some nice literary analogies. I do recommend it...

as a skim.

There's a lot of repeated information. The tone makes it seem like he has an ax to grind, and he'll admit that at some points. It's also in need of an update and a better citation style.

I was also disappointed that he didn't mention antibacterial resistance and the fact that drugs are not studied with each other. I used to work for a specialist and we regularly saw patients on the same two meds coming in with the same possibly unrelated problem. I can't help but wonder if there is a connection. I once asked one of my MD bosses and he said. essentially, maybe or maybe not but since they're prescribed for issues that had nothing to do with our specialty that we'd never find out.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very thought-provoking, despite the author's biases in favor of doctors and deregulation. He also seems to be less familiar with European medicine than he would have the reader believe, painting it all with one brush despite the fact that healthcare systems (and drug usage) in Europe vary quite a bit. An update would surely address the opioid crisis and present a different take on antibiotic usage, which is treated here as though it has no downside. I would have liked to see a little less about Demeter's daughters and more statistics on intake of pharmaceuticals around the world.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrifying. Create a disease to sell drugs to treat it, then sell more drugs to treat it's horrible side effects! It would never occur to me that companies could get away with the stuff they get away with. Especially when it comes to our health. I stay way from doctors as much as possible. I get tired of being told I need to take Vitamin D, statins, high blood pressure pills, etc... I sometimes ask if my good doctors have stocks in pharmaceuticals as they are constantly pushing drugs on us! Yet, we are never given drugs we need for what ails us...
Sad society. We've been sold out.

[Robert S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pharmageddon is a up-close look at the pharmaceutical industry and hows its shaping of our medical institutions has changed the way doctors treat us, the way we treat ourselves, and how medicine is perceived in this country.

Really informative read although the format and structure made it a bit tough to get through at times.

[chats · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the growth of the pharmaceutical industry, undercut by Healy’s repeated implications (and occasional explicit proclamations) that mild anxiety and depression - along with osteoporosis, fibromyalgia and other chronic conditions - were invented by drugmakers to sell more drugs. Ok dude

[Ereel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It makes some very good points about the relationship of big pharma, profits and medicalisation. Excellent books for those wanting to understand how companies influence the governments and health systems without going into conspiracy theories.

[Marco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book written by a critical psychiatrist. Must read if you want to better understand the mess we're in right now regarding the mental health field and big pharma.

[Manya Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok. This was disorienting

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book to read if you are an American, and you have any prescription drugs to pick up at Walgreens today. If the Prozac doesn't make you kill yourself, this book will. Do you suspect our government is owned outright by corporations: Defense/weapons, Financial/banking, Big Pharmaceutical? It is. That we will never get universal health care in this country? That your doctor is a paid salesman for Pharmaceuticals? That all clinical trials are run by the drug manufacturer themselves, who conveniently leave out any data that doesn't help sell blockbuster (over 1 billion dollars annual sales) drugs? That is correct. That first the blockbuster drug is invented, then a disease or lifestyle has to be invented so the drugs will sell? That's right. There is enough evidence here, the history of changing manic-depression to bipolar disorder, the selling of Zoloft, Paxil, and Prozac. Quotes from trials where the drug companies were sued after dozens of people committed suicide on their drug where they say "no they didn't". How "Erectile Dysfunction" had to be invented in order to sell billions of dollars worth of Viagra worldwide. Etc. Etc.
Have some rope handy to braid a noose while reading. After you are finished, cancel all of your upcoming doctor appointments and flush the prescriptions, because it turns out Death really is preferable to the utter shame of the American Healthcare system and the complete impossibility of you doing anything about it, unless you can get each of your doctors to submit a book report for Pharmageddon to you at your next appointment

[Ariadna73 · Rating 3 out of 5]

To read my review in Spanish; click here: http://lunairereadings.blogspot.com/2... reckless drug dealers are everywhere. They have penetrated the most sacred places; including the doctor's office; corrupting the majority of those we rely upon to keep ourselves out of trouble. There are big news: those same doctors are trying to turn us into profitable adicts; that will be hooked to the pharmaceutical's products for life. God forbid if we get addicted to one of those so much legal painkillers; antidepresants; ansiolytics; benzodiasepines; etc... Legal drugs kill people; but that is not the goal. The goal is to create productive adicts that will work their asses all their lives to pay for all that medications. God forbid us to be part of the herds.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent account of the perfidy of the pharmaceutical industry, by a true insider. The author, David Healy, is an MD and perhaps surprisingly is harder on MDs than other authors who see them as mere puppets of the pharmaceutical industry. He even postulates the end of laws regarding prescribing drugs, because doctors are not performing their responsibility to protect consumers from the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs, rather they are encouraging them to keep taking drugs despite the side effects.

My only quibble with this book is that David Healy steps outside his main area of knowledge to praise the first AIDS drug AZT, which is actually a deadly "nucleoside analog" that directly interferes with DNA synthesis.

[Jenniferstellablue · Rating 5 out of 5]

You will never view your annual checkup in quite the same way once Dr. Healy has taken you through the business of medicine as built by pharmaceutical companies. From cholesterol testing to concealing data from clinical trials to ghostwriting and the shocking work that is done to cover the true hazards of prescription drugs, Dr. Healy will take you on his journey of discovery and rude awakenings. Learn how Elliot Spitzer took on big pharma (before he fell from grace) to come to what we now know as the Sunshine Act - a baby step in the right direction in pulling back the curtain on the practices of the world's most powerful corporations.

[Rivka Levy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Factually brilliant, but written a little 'clunkily', and repetitive in places. But still WELL WORTH reading, as it explains what's going on with the drug industry in a lucid, clear way, that you probably won't get in many other places.

[Nannie Bittinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone should read this...not so that you can avoid prescription drugs but so that you can be an informed consumer and perhaps even be more informed and cautious than your doctor.

[Jay Schamberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fresh perspective of the influence of big pharma on the practice of medicine. Strangely, little publicized or talked about.

[Antonio Gallo]

La medicina oggi è solo marketing. E ci peggiora la vita. Sarà poi vero? Leggiamo questo libro.