![]() Medicine in the Thrall of the Culture of Drugs The patient-centered medicine that Healy used to practice is hardly possible now. Good researchers and clinicians end up doing bad things to patients. He shows how the FDA’s decision to make many more drugs “by prescription only” has distorted the physician’s role and turned most physicians into marketing agents. ![]() He gives specific examples of how companies have hid harmful side effects from view. His account of how Abbott transformed the rare condition of manic depression (MD) into “bipolar disorder” that is alleged to affect 5,000 times more people per million is worth the price of admission. Light considers Healy’s book as “the most powerful and deeply thought of a new crop of books on pharmaceuticals and medicine.” For example, Healy describes how pharmaceutical companies co-opted randomized clinical trials that promised to make drug development more scientific. ![]() (See for example The Antidepressant Era. Harvard University Press, 1997) ![]() In the December issue of Health Affairs, the leading US policy journal, Don Light reviews the new book by David Healy, Pharmageddon.Īs a practicing psychiatrist and leading authority on pharmaceutical policy, Healy has published several books on how the dependency of researchers, regulators, and physicians on pharmaceutical funding has distorted diagnosis, drug development and treatment. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |