Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime

Professor Peter C Gøtzsche graduated as a Master of Science in biology and chemistry in 1974 and as a physician in 1984. He is a specialist in internal medicine; he worked with clinical trials and regulatory affairs in the drug industry 1975–83, and at hospitals in Copenhagen 1984–95. He co-founded The Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 and established The Nordic Cochrane Centre the same year. He became professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis in 2010 at the University of Copenhagen., Peter Gøtzsche has published more than 50 papers in ‘the big five’ (BMJ, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine and New England Journal of Medicine) and his scientific works have been cited over 10000 times., Peter Gøtzsche has an interest in statistics and research methodology. He is a member of several groups publishing guidelines for good reporting of research and has co-authored CONSORT for randomised trials (www.consort-statement.org), STROBE for observational studies (www.strobe-statement.org), PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (www.prisma-statement.org), and SPIRIT for trial protocols (www.spirit-statement.org). Peter Gøtzsche is an editor in the Cochrane Methodology Review Group.

• 1. Introduction 2. Confessions from an insider 3. Organised crime, the business model of big pharma 4. Very few patients benefit from the drugs they take 5. Clinical trials, a broken social contract with patients 6. Conflicts of interest at medical journals 7. The corruptive influence of easy money 8. What do thousands of doctors on industry payroll do? 9. Hard sell 10. Impotent drug regulation 11. Public access to data at drug agencies 12. Neurontin, an epilepsy drug for everything 13. Merck, where the patients die first 14. Fraudulent celecoxib trial and other lies 15. Switching cheap drugs to expensive ones in the same patients 16. Blood glucose was fine but the patients died 17. Psychiatry, the drug industry’s paradise 18. Pushing children into suicide with happy pills 19. Intimidation, threats and violence to protect sales 20. Busting the industry myths 21. General system failure calls for a revolution 22. Having the last laugh at big pharma