Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre

[colorado4]

Highly recommended. A book that details the current drug approval process.  If Goldacre is even half-right, it's a very troubling process.

I was surprised to learn that a new drug could fail several trials, then pass one and be approved by the FDA (while the poor results of that very trial get buried) .  These same trials are almost always sponsored by the drug companies.  Poor results are almost always hidden, hindering future trials.

Another eye opener for me are the "me-too" drugs.  Example;  Astrazeneca's Nexium is essentially Prilosec, its predecessor.  Prilosec came off patent in 2001 so the company tweaked a molecule and aggressively rebranded it as a new drug ("purple pill" ad campaign).  It's virtually no different, costlier and most believe it's not a better medicine. 

Even our MDs have trouble getting solid, unbiased data on these meds.  They should be up in arms.

Don't get me wrong.  I wouldn't want to live in a world without modern medicine.  We should all feel lucky to have penicillin, antibiotics (for acute cases) and highly skilled docs.  Especially in the trauma and cardiac fields,  where they have saved family members and two good friends. 

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Pharma-Compan ... 0865478007

[notsheigetz]

Something I've always wondered about the pharmaceutical industry is how do they come up with names like "Nexium" and "Prilosec". I just assumed they came from the marketing departments with people just sitting around and dreaming up cool sounding names but I googled it and found the real answer....

http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/c ... ce6b7ac43f