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Pharmageddon
David Healy
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
© 2012 by David Healy
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Healy, David, MRC Psych.
Pharmageddon / David Healy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0-520–27098–5 (cloth : alk. paper)
[DNLM: 1. Drug Industry. 2. Drug Utilization. QV 736]. I. Title.
LC-classification not assigned
338.4'76153—dc23
2011026063
Manufactured in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support
environmentally responsible and sustainable printing
practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland
Enviro100, a 100% post-consumer fiber paper that
is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free,
and manufactured with renewable biogas energy.
It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.
For over fifteen years I have been involved incases linked to injuries on drug treatment. Thisbook is for those who have survived to passtheir stories on, for the families who have beenleft behind, and especially for those who havestruggled to put things right.
When she was a child I read Exodus
To my daughter ‘The children of Israel…’
Pillar of fire
Pillar of cloud
We stared at the end
Into each other's eyes Where
She said hushed
Were the adults
—George Oppen, “Exodus”
The new wood as old as carpentry
Rounding the far buoy, wild
Steel fighting in the sea, carpenter,
Carpenter
Carpenter and other things, the monstrous welded seams
Plunge and drip in the seas, carpenter,
Carpenter, how wild the planet is.
—George Oppen, “Carpenter's Boat”
Contents
1. They Used to Call It Medicine
6. The Mismeasurement of Medicine
Acknowledgments
I have accumulated so many debts it would take an ocean-going liner to accommodate everyone who should be acknowledged. Some of those to whom I am most indebted have been critics, a number of whom over the last decade have held open a forum for debate in which I’ve been able to test and discard ideas. Ocean-going liners have luxuries like showers and bidets. Over the past year I’ve given lectures on the subject matter of this book in several North American settings under the informal title of “The Shower and Bidet Approach to Medical Care,” as well as in Oslo, Uppsala, Bruxelles, Gent, and Milan, and I have Andy Scull, Joel Braslow, Ned Shorter, Cindy Hall, David Antonuccio, Masumi Minaguchi, Tom Ban, and others to thank for this, and much else. Joanna Le Noury, Margaret Harris, Stef Linden, Tony Roberts, and other colleagues in North Wales have helped supply the data for many of these talks.
It takes a lot to divert an ocean-going liner off course. Not so for a carpenter’s boat like George Oppen’s, where staying within the harbor walls seems advisable. There is a much smaller number of people to whom I owe particular debts who might fit on such a boat. These include Charles Medawar, Andrew Herxheimer, Vera Sharav, Annemarie Mol, Steve
