page_title: Bad Pharma
section_title: Author
hierarchical_section_title: Bad Pharma / Author
caption_attribution_description: English: Ben Goldacre speaking at TAM London October 2009
context_page_description: Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is a book by the British physician and academic Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products. It was published in the UK in September 2012 by the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins, and in the United States in February 2013 by Faber and Faber.
  Goldacre argues in the book that "the whole edifice of medicine is broken", because the evidence on which it is based is systematically distorted by the pharmaceutical industry. He writes that the industry finances most of the clinical trials into its own products and much of doctors' continuing education, that clinical trials are often conducted on small groups of unrepresentative subjects and negative data is routinely withheld, and that apparently independent academic papers may be planned and even ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies or their contractors, without disclosure. Describing the situation as a "murderous disaster", he makes suggestions for action by patients' groups, physicians, academics and the industry itself.
context_section_description: After graduating in 1995 with a first-class honours degree in medicine from Magdalen College, Oxford, Goldacre obtained an MA in philosophy from King's College London, then undertook clinical training at UCL Medical School, qualifying as a medical doctor in 2000 and as a psychiatrist in 2005. As of 2014 he was Wellcome Research Fellow in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
  Goldacre is known for his "Bad Science" column in the Guardian, which he has written since 2003, and for his first book, Bad Science (2008). This unpicked the claims of several forms of alternative medicine, and criticized certain physicians and the media for a lack of critical thinking. It also looked at the MMR vaccine controversy, AIDS denialism, the placebo effect and the misuse of statistics. Goldacre was recognized in June 2013 by Health Service Journal as having done "more than any other single individual to shine a light on how science and research gets distorted by the media, politicians, quacks, PR and the pharmaceutical industry."
caption: Ben Goldacre
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