Bitter Pills
by Stephen Fried
$15.00 - Softcover - 433 pages
We take our medicines on faith. We assume our doctors are well-informed, our drug companies scrupulous, our FDA diligent—and our medications safe. All too often we're wrong. Just how wrong is documented in this critically acclaimed portrait of the international pharmaceutical industry by one of our most highly respected investigative journalists.
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), adverse drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in America. Reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medications kill far more people annually than all illegal drug use combined.
Stephen Fried's wife took a pill for a minor infection—and ended up in the emergency room. Some drug reactions go away in a few hours or days. Diane's did not. His emotionally wrenching experience launched Fried into a five-year examination of the entire pharmaceutical industry, the most profitable legal business in the world. Rigorously documented, Bitter Pills is a full-scale portrait of pill making and pill taking in America today, presented through the powerful human drama of doctors, patients, drug companies, the FDA, and government regulators as they war for control of our medicine cabine.
About the author:
Stephen Fried is an award-wiinning investigative journalist and essayist. His work has appeared frequently in Vanity Fair, The Washington Post Magazine, GQ, Glamour, and Philadelphia magazine. His articles on drug safety brought him his second consecutive National Magazine Award, the highest honor in magazine journalism, and his commentary on pharmaceutical issues has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The International Herald-Tribune.
His previous book was Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia, the widely praised biography of model Gia Carangi and post- mortem on her era.
Fried lives in Philadelphia with his wife, fiction writer Diane Ayres.