Pharmageddon

David Healy's comprehensive argument against the pharmaceuticalization of medicine is an indictment of problems in health care that are leading to a growing number of deaths and disabilities. Healy, who was the first to draw attention to the now well-publicized suicide-inducing side effects of many antidepressants, attributes the current state of affairs to three key factors: product rather than process patents on drugs, the classification of certain drugs as prescription-only, and industrycontrolled drug trials. These developments have tied the survival of pharmaceutical companies to the development of blockbuster drugs, so that they must overhype benefits and deny real hazards.