October 2017 December 2013 | Page 7

Te Puawai

“Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime:
How big pharma has corrupted healthcare”
Reprinted with the kind permission of the Auckland Womens Health Group Newsletter
This latest book by Peter Gotzsche was
published in August 2013. Professor Gotzsche
is a specialist in internal medicine, who cofounded the Cochrane Collaboration in 1993
and established the Nordic Cochrane Centre
the same year. In 2010 he became Professor
of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at
the University of Copenhagen.
This refreshingly blunt book exposes the
pharmaceutical industries and their charade of
fraudulent behaviour, both in research and
marketing where the morally repugnant
disregard for human lives is the norm.
Professor Gotzsche convincingly draws close
comparisons with both the tobacco industry
and the mob, revealing the extraordinary truth
behind efforts to confuse and distract the
public and their politicians.
This book addresses, in evidence-based
detail, an extraordinary system failure caused
by widespread crime, corruption, bribery and
impotent drug regulations that are in
desperate need of radical reforms.
This book is as relevant to New Zealand as to
any other country; in fact it begins with a New
Zealand story – the story of how fenoterol
formerly used in asthma inhalers caused the
asthma death rates to go up in the same way
as the sales did. For the full story of how the
New Zealand Department of Health conspired
with the drug company and misinformed
doctors against the resear chers who tried to
blow the whistle, read the book by Neil Pearce
“Adverse Reactions: the fenoterol story” which
was published in 2007.

© Te Puawai

The book also ends with a good news New
Zealand story – a description of the rock star
of our health system, PHARMAC.
In the introduction to his book Peter Gotzsche
states:
“The main reason we take so many drugs is
that drug companies don’t sell drugs, they sell
lies about drugs. This is what makes drugs so
different from anything else in life … Virtually
everything we know about drugs is what the
companies have chosen to tell us and our
doctors … the reason patients trust their
medicine is that they extrapolate the trust they
have in their doctors into the medicines they
prescribe. The patients don’t realise that,
although their doctors may know a lot about
diseases and human physiology and
psychology, they know very, very little about
drugs that hasn’t been carefully concocted
and dressed up by the drug industry … If you
don’t think the system is out of control, please
email me and explain why drugs are the third
leading cause of death.”
If you only read one book over the next six
months, then for the sake of your health and
your sanity this is the book you must read. It is
immensely readable, terrifyingly funny in parts
and just plain terrifying in others.
It is also worth noting that as soon as you start
reading the forewords in this book by Richard
Smith, former editor-in-chief of the British
Medical Journal, and Drummond Rennie,
deputy editor of the Journal of the American
Medical Association, you won’t be able to put
it down.

College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc
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