The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the crisis of credibility in clinical research

An expose of the corruption of medicine by the pharmaceutical industry at every level, from exploiting the vulnerable destitute for drug testing, through manipulation of research data, to disease mongering and promoting drugs that do more harm than good.

Authors, Professor Jon Jureidini and Dr Leemon McHenry, made critical contributions to exposing the scientific misconduct in two infamous trials of antidepressants. Ghostwritten publications of these trials were highly influential in prescriptions of paroxetine (Paxil) and citalopram (Celexa) in paediatric and adolescent depression, yet both trials (Glaxo Smith Kline’s paroxetine study 329 and Forest Laboratories’ citalopram study CIT-MD-18) seriously misrepresented the efficacy and safety data.

The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine provides a detailed account of these studies and argues that medicine desperately needs to re-evaluate its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. Without a basis for independent evaluation of the results of randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials, there can be no confidence in evidence-based medicine.

Science demands rigorous, critical examination and especially severe testing of hypotheses to function properly, but this is exactly what is lacking in academic medicine.

‘The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine is a brilliant expose of the negative influence of the global pharmaceutical industry on the integrity of medicine. Every medical student, doctor and patient should read this account of the ways in which medical evidence is distorted to meet the needs of Big Pharma for profits. Importantly the book points to ways in which medicine’s independence can be reclaimed through improved governance and public funding.’ - Professor Fran Baum