Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs - Hardcover

Fried, Stephen

4.26

61 ratings by Goodreads

9780553103830: Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553103830 ISBN 13: 9780553103830

Publisher: Bantam, 1998

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The genesis of this book is a personal experience: five years ago Fried's wife was given a pill--a new, heavily promoted antibiotic--for a minor infection, and six hours later wound up in the emergency room delirious, suffering a seizure, and with long-term neurological effects that have not yet fully worn off. As an investigative journalist, fried began to look into whether she was a victim of a pharmacological foul-up or was simply a statistical casualty in the war against disease. His series of articles on what he learned won the 1994 National Magazine Award for public interest journalism, and was the beginning of his full-scale probe of what he thinks of as "the other drug problem"--legal drugs and the largely unexplored problem of adverse drug reactions. The book investigates the legal drug culture--the international pharmaceutical industry, the FDA and its foreign counterparts, physicians, pharmacologists, researchers, and unwitting patients--and the flawed system, in which money and politics play a significant part, by which drugs are approved, marketed, and dispensed. In the course of his research he became a participant in the FDA's own investigation of the drug that so damaged his wife, has testified before its panels, and believes passionately that Congress' and the drug companies' lobbying to close down the FDA is a danger to every American who is prescribed a drug. An impeccably documented work of responsible muckraking, it is a book of major importance.

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Review:

Bitter Pills started as a magazine story, inspired by Stephen Fried's wife's frightening reaction to an antibiotic. After he won a National Magazine Award for that article, he expanded his investigation into this book. What he has uncovered is astounding, starting with the fact that, in the U.S. alone, between 45,000 and 200,000 people die annually of reactions to legal drugs (2 to 9 percent of the 2.3 million Americans who die each year) versus the 5,000 to 10,000 who die of illegal drug use. As Fried compulsively investigates what happened to his wife and how reactions like hers were considered statistically insignificant by drug companies and the FDA, he learns things most of us don't want to know about the mechanisms that cause pills to land on pharmacy shelves. Chances are, after reading Bitter Pills, you'll be much more careful about accepting prescriptions for new medications.

About the Author:

Stephen Fried is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (the inspiration for the Emmy-winning film Gia), Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time (a New York Times bestseller featured in the PBS documentary The Harvey Girls: Opportunity Bound), Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs, The New Rabbi, and the essay collection Husbandry. He is also co-author, with Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, of A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written frequently for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, and Philadelphia magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.
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