num_pages: 0
description: A campaigning handbook a thrilling work of popular science and a call to arms for doctors researchers and patients from Britains finest writer on the science behind medicine.Statins are the single most commonly prescribed class of drugs in the whole of the developed world. Theyre taken by over 100 million people with millions more patients being offered them every year.We know that statins do some good. But we dont know how big the benefits are. We dont know which is the best. We dont how common the side effects are. We dont give clear information to patients so they are deprived of their right to make informed decisions about the trade-off between benefits inconvenience and risk. All this can be fixed with a few simple changes that weld big data onto the heart and art of medicine.Drawing on his own research Ben Goldacre gives patients the tools they need to make their own decisions. Along the way he explores industry misdeeds; the nocebo effect the evil twin of the placebo effect where side effects are caused by the power of fear alone; and the differences in patients desire for treatment and doctors failures to empathise with these. With his characteristic wit and energy Goldacre exposes the flaws in modern medicine and the future it deserves.
language: English
title: Do Statins Work?: The Battle for Perfect Evidence-Based Medicine
publisher: Fourth Estate