Bad Pharma = Lovely Special Interest

Darwood & Smitty looks hotly at the topic of special interests, and one of my favorites -- i.e., one of the most terrifying -- is the pharmaceutical industry. (I believe the biggest in D.C.) They pay money directly to the FDA to approve their drugs by calling it a "fast track" process, and people move easily between the pharma companies and the FDA. Yes ... positions within each. It is a totally cozy and totally corrupt arrangement. This new book, Bad Pharma, doesn't have an issue with drugs or doctors so much as the way the industry has been tainted by the drug companies.

This book reminds me of one of my other favorite books by a former editor of "The New England Journal of Medicine" -- a book called The Truth about the Drug Companies. Great expose, and a good caution to people about this industry. It's not that medicine is bad. It's that bad medicine is bad. And unfortunately we have an awful lot of that while these financial interests also make it difficult for safe and effective competition to survive by wielding the FDA like their own sword.