---
title: "Bad Pharma"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:30:59.709251+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Reception ==
The book was generally well received. The Economist described it as "slightly technical, eminently readable, consistently shocking, occasionally hectoring and unapologetically polemical". Helen Lewis in the New Statesman called it an important book, while Luisa Dillner, writing in the Guardian, described it as a "thorough piece of investigative medical journalism".
Andrew Jack wrote in the Financial Times that Goldacre is "at his best in methodically dissecting poor clinical trials. ... He is less strong in explaining the complex background reality, such as the general constraints and individual slips of regulators and pharma companies' employees." Jack also argued that the book failed to reflect how many lives have been improved by the current system, for example with new treatments for HIV, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.
Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that "this is a book to make you enraged ... because it's about how big business puts profits over patient welfare, allows people to die because they don't want to disclose damning research evidence, and the tricks they play to make sure doctors do not have all the evidence when it comes to appraising whether a drug really works or not."
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) replied in the New Statesman that Goldacre was "stuck in a bygone era where pharmaceutical companies wine and dine doctors in exchange for signing on the dotted line". The ABPI issued a press release, writing that the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for the discovery of 90 percent of all medicines, and that it takes an average of 10–12 years and £1.1bn to introduce a medicine to the market, with just one in 5,000 new compounds receiving regulatory approval. This makes research and development an expensive and risky business. They wrote that the industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the world, and is committed to ensuring full transparency in the research and development of new medicines. They also maintained that the examples Goldacre offered were "long documented and historical, and the companies concerned have long addressed these issues". Goldacre argues in the book that "the most dangerous tactic of all is the industry's enduring claim that these problems are all in the past".
Humphrey Rang of the British Pharmacological Society wrote that Goldacre had chosen his target well and had produced some shocking examples of secrecy and dishonesty, particularly the nondisclosure of data on the antidepressant reboxetine (chapter one), in which only one trial out of seven was published (the published study showed positive results, while the unpublished trials suggested otherwise). He argued that Goldacre had gone "over the top" in devoting a whole chapter (chapter five) to recommending large clinical trials using electronic patient data from general practitioners, without fully pointing out how problematic these can be; such trials raise issues, for example, about informed consent and regulatory oversight. Rang also criticized Goldacre's style, describing the book as too long, repetitive, hyperbolic, and in places too conversational. He particularly objected to the line, "medicine is broken", calling it a "foolish remark".

== AllTrials ==
Following the book's publication, Goldacre co-founded AllTrials with David Tovey, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library, together with the British Medical Journal, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, and others in the UK, and Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in the US. Set up in January 2013, the group campaigns for all past and current clinical trials to be registered and reported, for all treatments in use.
The British House of Commons Public Accounts Committee produced a report in January 2014, after hearing evidence from Goldacre, Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, and others, about the stockpiling of Tamiflu and the withholding of data about the drug by its manufacturer, Roche. The committee said it was "surprised and concerned" to learn that information from clinical trials is routinely withheld from doctors, and recommended that the Department of Health take steps to ensure that all clinical-trial data be made available for currently prescribed treatments.

== Publication details ==
Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients, Fourth Estate, 2012 (UK). ISBN 978-0-00-735074-2
Faber and Faber, 2013 (US). ISBN 978-0-86547-800-8
Signal, 2013 (Canada). ISBN 978-0-7710-3629-3
As of December 2012 foreign rights had been sold for Brazil, the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Italy, Korea, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey.

== See also ==

== Notes ==

== References ==

== External links ==
Bad Pharma, publisher's website.
badscience.net, Ben Goldacre's website.
"Bad Science", Goldacre's column for The Guardian.
"Why doctors don't know what they're prescribing", extract from Bad Pharma.

=== Articles and radio ===