As 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.
(See for example The Antidepressant Era. Harvard University Press, 1997)
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. 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. He gives specific examples of how companies have hidden
harmful side effects from view. 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. Good researchers and
clinicians end up doing bad things to patients. READ MORE
