Much of this book is about ‘dependence’ - but that is a word
that acquires meaning entirely from context. Our ‘Acknowledgements’ underline
this: they are not only a record of heartfelt thanks, but also admissions of deep
indebtedness and dependence. So who is behind this book - in particular, who funded it and
on what terms?
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
(JRCT) has supported the principal author’s work for over 30 years – always on
terms that offered liberation. JRCT’s support implies no specific endorsement of this
book – it signals only the Trustees’ willingness to take risks in supporting
projects in line with the Trust’s general objectives. See: www.jrct.org.uk. The Trustees fund projects in many
different areas, focusing on those that are "about removing problems through radical
solutions, and not about making the problems easier to live with". In relation to
corporate responsibilities, JRCT "is concerned that the business practices of all
companies should respect human rights and not give rise to injustice or suffering".
Trust support in this area is intended, "to achieve transparency and mutual
responsibility between business, government and citizens as producers and consumers and to
hold those bodies to account in the wider public interest."
Two other UK based charitable trusts gave generous financial and moral support, at
critical stages of the work on this book - The Allen Lane Foundation and The 1970 Trust.
Their support also goes back for many years, again on terms that have guaranteed total
independence both for us and them. They offered support and then stood back, making us
entirely responsible and accountable for the work done.
Such is the difference between disabling and enabling dependencies, it seems there are
no conflicts of interest to declare.
This book is the product of numerous collaborations, going back many years. That makes
it so much the harder to thank everyone involved, especially family and close friends.
Having the freedom to write makes almost impossible demands, on the closest relationships
most of all.
Directly and indirectly, and in different ways, many people played an important part in
shaping this book. Many thanks, especially to Dr. Tom Allport, Margaret Ewen, Alex
Garland, Dr. David Griffith, John Guest, Brian Guthrie, Dr. Hilbrand Haak, Jaap Hardon,
Lisa Hayes, Catherine Hodgkin, Dr. Andrew Herxheimer, Linda Hurcombe, Caroline Medawar,
Nick Perks, David Rennie, Courtney Van de Weyer and Sir Roger Walters. Inevitably, those
who worked on the draft found ideas they liked, or didn’t, and there were points of
disagreement between them – but they gave indispensable help in deciding what this
book should and could not say.
Special thanks are due to the directors of Social Audit Ltd, where the principal
author has been employed for over 30 years. They have contributed far more than their
legal responsibilities might suggest, through commitment to the general principles
underlying this book. They are: Christopher Zealley (Chairman); Andrew, Lord Phillips;
Anthony Sampson (through 2004) Oliver Thorold, Elaine Rassaby
and Maurice Frankel.
The co-authors divided responsibilities as if between pilot and navigator. Charles
Medawar is layman, a specialist on medicines policy and drug safety issues with a
particular interest in corporate, governmental and professional accountability. He writes,
broadcasts and lectures regularly, and runs a website (www.socialaudit.org.uk) which now
attracts some 500,000 visitors a year. Anita Hardon is Professor in Anthropology of Care
and Health at the University of Amsterdam. She has published widely, specialising on
women’s health issues and studies of medicines’ use in Asia, Africa and Europe,
and teaches international courses on promoting rational drug use. She currently chairs the
Health Action International (Europe) foundation board.
What has emerged from all this is a story about the promotion, regulation, prescribing
and use of mood-regulating drugs, mainly antidepressants like Prozac, Seroxat and Paxil.
As it unfolds a drug crisis in the making, the story develops as a picture of unhealthy
dependence on corporate and professional power.
The story leads to analysis: an attempt to explain to an engaged and curious layperson
the basis for thinking that, for all the triumphs and gains, pharmaceutical medicine is
losing sight of health and dangerously lacking in public accountability. However, the
question mark in the book title is emphatic – an invitation to make up your own mind
how you find medicine and what you want it to be.
This book is in no way a guide to your medical treatment; at best it can help to
explain only how and why you may be treated as you are. On the basis of your experience
and what you read, you might conclude either that the control of medicines is in dire need
of overhaul and rethinking, or that it is an affront even to suggest that.
Either way - or perhaps something in between - this analysis is offered for peer-review
and consultation, and is meant to promote comment and debate. The authors and sponsors
would welcome feedback, to help prepare the next edition of this book. This first edition
is intended for only limited circulation, through 2004. A revised and popular edition of
this book is planned.
Charles Medawar, Social Audit Ltd, P.O. Box 111, London NW1 8XG, UK.
([email protected])
Anita Hardon, Health Action International (Europe), J. van Lennepkade 334-T, 1053 NJ
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ([email protected])
Medicines out of Control?
Table of Contents
1. Medicines out of Control?
The case history - Crisis unfolding
- Of science and common sense - Role of the Pharmas -
Medicalisation and ‘disease awareness’ - Government
regulation of medicines - Scientific standards - Iatrogenesis
- Towards resolution
2. Sedative hell
Alcohol - From opium to morphine - Freud, denial and cocaine
- Non-narcotic solutions - Ordeal by bromides - Enter
the barbiturates - Addiction false and true
3. Tranquillisers
Librium and Valium - Benzos versus barbiturates -
Measuring tranquilliser effectiveness - Methodology of denial -
The trouble with Ativan - Xanax and Halcion - Slouching towards
understanding
Chapter One
This book tells a story that reveals some of the workings of medicine and medicines and
their impact on personal, community and global health. The story is rooted in general
practice and psychiatry and revolves around the main drugs prescribed for anxiety,
insomnia, depression and related mental distress.
The action runs from the mid-19th century to the foreseeable future. Over
the years, the drugs in the story change and different ideas and actors hold sway. But the
same patterns of behaviour emerge and the outcome is much the same. Users consistently
emerge as losers - by no means universally, but always on a grand scale.
Both literally and metaphorically, all the drugs in this story cause
some degree of dependence. People get hooked not only on the drugs, but also on the idea
of drugs as solutions for mental distress. Subtle interplays of power and dependence
nurture this process of medicalisation, as if through a ‘Conspiracy of
Goodwill’.
At the heart of medicine is this delicate but mighty interdependency, based on
unfathomable mixtures of fear, inspiration, trust, hope and dreams. The basis of the
Conspiracy of Goodwill is the fervent wish of all parties (health professionals,
government, manufacturers and users) that drugs should be safe and effective, and never
anything less. The downside is the risk of insatiable demand, unmet need, disappointed
expectations and often far-fetched denial when things go wrong.
The case history
The story that unfolds in the first three chapters spans the last 150 years. Throughout
this time, doctors have prescribed an uninterrupted succession of drugs for mental
distress, each time believing they were not addictive and that patients had only
themselves to blame if addiction set in. A pattern emerged - it continues to this day - in
which one drug after another, officially proclaimed as not addictive, has later proved to
be just that.
Between the 1860s and 1960s, doctors treated mental distress by prescribing alcohol and
opium, then morphine, heroin and cocaine. Later came chloral, bromides, barbiturates and
many similar drugs. Chapter 2 explains how each of these drugs, bar alcohol, was also used
to treat addiction - and later found to cause it too.
The story in Chapter 3 begins around 1960, as the reality began to sink in - that
‘iatrogenic’ dependence (caused by medical intervention) had become widespread
and damaging. This realisation spurred a wholesale switch to a new class of drugs -
‘tranquillisers’, like Valium, Librium, Ativan, Xanax and Halcion. It took over
20 years to establish that they too were addictive and another decade to address the
problem. Until the 1980s, the risk of becoming addicted to a tranquilliser was officially
described as remote, but the opposite again proved true.
Present day remedies for anxiety, depression and mental distress date from the 1990s.
By this time, tranquillisers had been internationally ‘scheduled’ as drugs of
dependence and prescribing was restricted to the short-term; their use slowly declined.
Chapter 4 tells how doctors then began to prescribe a new class of
‘antidepressants’ instead - for longer and in larger doses than before. Prozac
started this trend; it spawned other ‘blockbusters’ - Paxil/Seroxat,
Zoloft/Lustral, Celexa/ Cipramil and Efexor/Effexor - all still with us today.
This time round, the risk of addiction was denied, in effect by burying the goalposts.
The drugs themselves were promoted as if they were essential supplements, badly needed to
help to restore levels of a key, mood-regulating, brain chemical: serotonin. At the same
time, the authorities formally redefined the concept of dependence to ensure that drug
prescribing couldn’t possibly cause it. This meant that most doctors recognised
‘dependence’ only in the context of uncontrolled drug use, something close to
abuse. That explains why, today, dependence on antidepressants seems painfully obvious to
many users, though the problem doesn’t officially exist.
Crisis unfolding
Officially there is still no antidepressant ‘dependence’ problem, but a crisis
is now clearly looming. The turning point can be quite precisely dated - it came with a
heavy flurry of revelations between October 2002 and the summer of 2003. If there was a
pivotal moment, it was probably 25 June - when GlaxoSmithKline quietly published a
small-print amendment to the prescribing instructions for Seroxat. The company had
upwardly revised its 2002 estimate of the risk of withdrawal reactions - from 0.2% to 25%.
The official risk of Seroxat/Paxil withdrawal problems had increased overnight from 1 in
500 to one in four.
This 125-fold increase signalled that ‘science’ was catching up with common
sense - and that sets the scene for the later chapters in this book. The case history
gives way to a critical analysis of how and why the crisis arose, and its wider
implications. Two related questions become central:
What does it reveal about the quality and direction
of medical science, and the reliability of the medicines control system that - in spite of
all the fuss and the precedents - it took over a decade to identify a prominent and
potentially hazardous adverse drug reaction that affects one user in every four?
When the Internet was groaning with evidence of the
problem in store, why were users’ comments and complaints ignored? This is a good
moment in history to be asking that question: the more this antidepressant crisis unfolds,
the more it seems that narrative evidence from users can never credibly be ignored again.
The story that started to unfold as a crisis in late 2002 began in earnest in the
mid-1990s: the growth of the Internet had begun to change history, as antidepressant users
began to compare notes and exchange ideas. Vivid and revealing accounts of serious
withdrawal and other problems began to surface, then dedicated websites began to appear,
all discussing the same thing. Users were hooked once again.
Of science and common sense
During the five-year window, 1998 to 2002, the powers-that-be did all they could to deny
the miserable realities that antidepressant users increasingly described. During this
period, the authorities entrenched their position; they went on digging and made the hole
deeper still.
Secrecy played a key part in maintaining the official denial: Chapter 5 outlines the
extent and effect of it. Towards the end of this five-year window, the element of cover-up
became more obvious as the weight of scientific evidence got stronger and as public
protest grew. Legal actions increased the pressure, and then the media weighed in.
Finally, two BBC-TV Panorama programmes (2002, 2003) tipped the balance, and the
endgame began.
The events that unfolded thereafter - and led to consideration of a third Panorama
programme scheduled for early 2004 - underline the value and power of user drug
intelligence. These developments also challenge the relationship between ‘narrative
evidence’ and science - the orthodox view that ‘science’ might be debased
and compromised by patients’ views.
The present day model of medicines control, regards ‘science’ as the gold
standard, and narrative as a base metal. But what should be driving medicine - the quest
for alloyed knowledge, or something closer to shared understanding of sense and meaning?
Make up your own mind on the basis of the user intelligence that emerged from 1,370 emails
sent in response to the Panorama programme, ‘Secrets of Seroxat’ (BBC-TV,
October 2002).
Our point is that science in medicine is a means to an end - the attainment of health
and well-being. Science at its best is glorious, the cleanest known method of producing
knowledge. But it is far from being the only way of distinguishing between appearance and
reality, and does not in itself produce solutions or outputs that are necessarily either
desirable or ‘right’. Science plays a crucial part in medicine, but democratic
impulse must lead the way:
"
... science and technology
can contribute to the improvement of health standards only if the people themselves become
full partners of the health-care providers in safeguarding and promoting health ... people
have not only the right to participate individually and collectively in the planning and
implementation of health care programmes, but also a duty to do so." (WHO, 1983)
The analysis that proceeds from Chapter 5 develops this theme, in trying to explain the
dynamics of the antidepressant story as it unfolds into a present-day drug crisis. With
medicine now on the brink of designing life itself, the same question seems more urgent
than before: why is this dependence problem happening over and over again?
The answers turn out to have much less to do with molecular performance than with human
motivation and organisational behaviour. What decides drug safety and effectiveness, above
all, is the performance of pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and professional
institutions - and the relationships between them and with users. So how did this powerful
triumvirate of conspirators contribute to the health dependencies of today?
Role of the Pharmas
Central in the analysis is the role of the Pharmas, the handful of giant, mostly US-based
companies that dominate international drug trade. The Pharmas’ behaviour has been
widely attributed to simple greed, but the underlying problem is that they have become
theoretically unsustainable - no longer able to compete and grow by inventing new drugs
that improve on the old. Strange as it may seem, the Pharmas are in crisis, staring down
gun barrels, driven by uncertainty about their ability to survive.
Chapter 6 explains how the Pharmas became so huge that they could hope to survive only
by rapidly creating mass markets for ‘blockbuster’ and ‘lifestyle’
drugs. The advent of Prozac and related antidepressants heralded an era in which drug
innovation gave way to intensive drug marketing: this was the only way the Pharmas could
secure the return on investment they needed to be able to operate on their scale. Part of
the problem is to do with the Pharmas’ sheer size - ‘institutional obesity’
one might say - and by repeatedly merging, the Pharmas are getting bigger all the time.
This new and imperative emphasis on marketing involves relentless demonstrations of the
triumph of benefit over risk, and the promotion of drugs for much more than they are
worth. In this case, it also meant that the Pharmas tackled problems by challenging
perceptions of risk and by ignoring or denying evidence of harm. In so doing, they
systematically exploited the dependencies of governments and the medical establishment.
There was little resistance, partly because the Pharmas were also dependent on them.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, commerce took over the reins of
medicine and began to steer health towards trade. The Pharmas carefully arranged the tests
and trials of their drugs; they came to dominate medical education and communication, and
they sponsored more and more. From behind the scenes, the Pharmas orchestrated the
widespread promotion of their products and views, through the placement and advancement of
the experts and leaders they chose. In time, the imperatives of trade and the impact of
commercial messages became overwhelming. "Just how tainted has medicine become?"
asked a Lancet editorial (2002). The answer was, "heavily and damagingly
so".
Commercial sponsorship both sustained and undermined the reputation and independence of
political, professional and academic institutions, drug regulatory systems, even patient
organisations and the World Health Organization. Through relentless lobbying, marketing,
promises and threats, the Pharmas came to excel in letting others get their own way. Along
the way, they began to change the face of medicine, promoting drugs directly to patients,
and going to ever-greater lengths to inform people about the extent of their need.
Medicalisation and ‘disease awareness’
The Pharmas’ determination to expand markets led to intense pressure on national
governments to relax the laws that prevented them from promoting their products directly
to consumers. In 1997, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) finally gave way,
introducing new rules for ‘Direct-To-Consumer Advertising’ (DTCA); they allowed
Prozac and other medicines to be widely advertised, even on TV.
This hugely increased the demand for antidepressant and other drugs, helping to satisfy
the considerable US appetite for health and pharmacological solutions. Even in the face of
global health calamity, the US leads the world in ‘disease awareness’ and
concern about unmet medical need. America officially reveres 170 official ‘Health
Observances’, including 74 ‘awareness months’ and 64 ‘awareness
weeks’, each year.
Direct-To-Consumer Advertising or promotion (DTCA) helped the Pharmas both to extend
and segment markets, allowing them to repeatedly relaunch their antidepressants for an
expanding range of states of mind. In this way, the new antidepressants came to dominate
the market for stress and anxiety: Valium out, Prozac in. By the early 21st
century, prescribing levels for antidepressants in England had reached those of the
tranquillisers at their peak.
Chapter 7 describes how the Pharmas applied pressure on other countries to get them to
allow DTCA. The narrative explains in some detail how the UK and European governments
responded to this pressure, in the face of conflict between trade and health needs. DTCA
led to an explosive growth in the market, producing handsome returns on investment - but
that translated as hyperinflationary growth in the drugs bill.
The battle for DTCA in Europe became most intense between 2000 and 2003. The way in
which it unfolded revealed the workings of democracy at its worst and best. Much more
attention was paid to patients’ views - but their views were increasingly
orchestrated by marketing departments, public relations agencies and Pharma-sponsored
patient organisations.
Government regulation of medicines
By the 21st century, global standards for drug regulation prevailed; they
mainly reflected the values of the major drug-producing nations, and notably the US. Trade
and health imperatives increasingly came into conflict, as market forces, national
interests and political pressures led the way.
From the early 1990s, nations began to compete among themselves in earnest, to develop
partnerships with the Pharmas, to attract investment and help to share the wealth. This
naturally affected the style of drug control, as did the trend to get the Pharmas to pay
for it. By 2000, all major industrial nations paid for drug regulation from the fees the
Pharmas paid governments for the licensing of their drugs.
This case history touches on the role of conflicts of interest, endemic secrecy and
political, economic and bureaucratic pressures as factors that helped to build the
dependence problem. However, the regulatory failure to see and contain the problem can be
also traced to the design of the regulatory process itself - in particular to the emphasis
on pre-marketing rather than post-marketing drug evaluation.
Drug regulation has traditionally focused on scrutiny of company-sponsored clinical
trials that are performed before drugs come to market. There is much less emphasis on
monitoring what happens when drugs are used in practice. But pre-marketing trials often
have major limitations and may leave quite basic questions unanswered. Many of the drugs
in this case history, for example, were first marketed at a dosage that later proved too
high - a problem compounded by the tendency to define the recommended dose on the basis
that ‘one-size-fits-all’. None of the drugs in this story could have been safely
prescribed in that way; indeed about half of all Prozac users may still get up to four
times the dose they seem to need.
Chapter 8 contrasts the pattern of antidepressant safety regulation in the US and UK.
The US FDA had the theoretical advantage of huge resources; it also had in place a system
for user reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs). However, the FDA relies rigorously on
the evidence from pre-marketing clinical trials, treating it rather like legal precedent.
Because the US regulators require new and strictly ‘scientific’ data to supplant
pre-marketing evidence, ADR reports made little difference. They were regarded as
‘anecdotal’.
By contrast, the UK regulators operate what is widely regarded as one of the best ADR
reporting systems in the world, relying on it as "the cornerstone of drug safety
monitoring". In this case, however, the system operated mainly to dignify the notion
that no evidence of risk signals evidence of no risk. The UK drug regulators still eschew
reports from patients, in the absence of ‘medical interpretation’. Ironically,
but predictably, it was the wealth of evidence from antidepressant users that finally
caused the regulators to confront the reality: a substantial risk of dependence, among
other damaging drug effects. In particular, the risk of drug-induced violence and
self-harm had been a worry for years.
Scientific standards
Science does not and cannot operate independently of economic, political and professional
imperatives. The close links between academic and clinical experts with both the Pharmas
and regulators underline this, and has much to do with the quality of medical science.
The antidepressant story suggests that precious little of what passes for science
amounts to honest seeking after truth - indeed the editors of the leading US and UK
medical journals believe that the scientific quality is generally rather bad. In this
case, as in others, the science seemed mainly directed at pointing to marginal and
notional drug advantages and to papering over the cracks. The emphasis on ‘new and
improved’ and on discovery and innovation largely obscured the contribution that
science might have made by revealing quite basic misunderstanding.
Chapter 9 reviews some of the techniques used in designing and interpreting clinical
trials, to produce the desired results. This chapter also looks at clinical trial
standards from the standpoint of patient safety. Almost all the evidence on this is
secret, but one shining piece of data suggests that standards are nowhere near as high as
people have been led to believe.
Good science in medicine is in short supply, but policing is mainly directed at the
prosecution of isolated cases of outright fraud, rather than mainstream slipshod research.
The quest for scientific integrity stops far short of encouraging individual conscience,
commitment and initiative, let alone whistleblowers. Their fate gives evidence of the grip
of orthodoxy in the Conspiracy of Goodwill.
The antidepressant story also reveals how a combination of scientific fundamentalism
and triumphalism has obscured the importance of a range of vital human factors. The
scientific community has lost sight of their importance, not only in the treatment of
depression, but also in relation to its own behaviour. The influence of reward and
punishment systems and pressures to conform and comply, evidently have a profound effect
on the conduct of medical science and on perceptions of benefit and risk.
Iatrogenesis
Among other examples of medicalisation, this case history asks how far the damage done by
medicines goes, beyond the direct harm of intervention. What does the antidepressant story
reflect of what Ivan Illich called ‘social’ and ‘cultural’
iatrogenesis - implying loss of personal autonomy, reduced confidence in health and
diminished opportunity for making sense of illness and disease?
Adverse drug reactions exemplify direct ‘iatrogenesis’ - harm from medical
intervention. However, the first, faltering, credible estimates of the overall impact of
ADRs on health only began to appear at the turn of the 21st century. Meanwhile,
the indirect effects - the impact of medicalisation on the health of people and community
- have barely been explored. Irrational belief in the goodness of medicines is contained
through the Conspiracy of Goodwill.
Chapter 10 brings the story back to the unfolding of the antidepressant crisis. Much of
this chapter details the findings of a unique analysis of the operation of the UK adverse
drug reaction reporting system - based on a survey of over 1,500 (anonymised) ADR reports
sent to the regulators by health professionals. These reports matched the Panorama
sample of reports from users: both focused on the two main worries with the new
antidepressants, and Seroxat (paroxetine) in particular. Along with the risk of withdrawal
symptoms, there had for years been strong, nagging concerns about drug-induced violence
and suicidal behaviour.
This analysis revealed this ADR reporting system to be "chaotic and
misconceived", ensnared by process and jargon, and starved of the resources and
imagination needed to make it work. The combination of low levels and standards of
reporting, flawed data processing, uncritical interpretation and lack of follow-up had a
devastating effect on perceptions and understandings of benefit and risk. In spite of
conducting several formal reviews, the regulators had systematically failed to follow-up
even reports of suspected drug-induced suicide.
Beyond lack of scrutiny, closer inspection of the data revealed systematic burial of
evidence of risk, notably by crunching numbers and mincing words. One striking feature of
the antidepressant story - but it applies widely - was the difference between the words of
patients who speak their minds, and the approved terminologies that left meanings far
behind.
The 1990s saw ‘depression’ formally redefined as a serotonin-deficiency
disease and the scourge of millions - a convenient and seductive, but deeply simplistic
view. The term, drug ‘dependence’ was redefined, to propose that loss of
personal autonomy could never arise in a therapeutic setting, but only within a few blocks
of ‘Skid Row’. The ubiquitous term, ‘discontinuation symptoms’ - newspeak
for withdrawal symptoms - implied that antidepressants carried no risk of dependence.
Wishful thinking proposed ‘discontinuation symptoms’ as evidence of the
effectiveness of vital remedies, important for reducing overwhelming risks. Then suicides
became routinely described as ‘non-accidental overdose’; and the broad-spectrum
term, ‘emotional lability’, was employed – as if to fail to distinguish
between a drug-induced attempted suicide and an outburst of tears.
User reports of adverse reactions attempted to describe some human reality.
Collectively, they were often more informative than the reports the regulators relied on.
Towards resolution
Chapter 11 anticipates the outcome and the limitations of a major UK government review of
the risks of antidepressants. This was originally intended to last only a couple of
months, but then the review committee found they had opened a can of worms. The review
that was finally set up in the summer of 2003 is due to report in early 2004.
At the time of writing, there is even talk of the unthinkable - perhaps major
prosecutions to come - but the terms of reference of the review seem to guarantee that its
major output will be in the form of more prudent small-print warnings to promote safer
drug use. It is already clear that the review will miss the wider point - the need for new
management in medicines’ control, for a coherent policy on drug safety and for
standards of public accountability that will sweep this dismal past away.
The antidepressant story is specifically about drugs that work on the mind, but it
illustrates what seems to be happening with medicines of many kinds. All drugs go through
the same mill. The same companies make them, and teach the same doctors what and how to
prescribe. All medicines are tested, recommended, marketed and regulated in much the same
way - and the same standards of science prevail.
To that extent, this story underlines some linkage between the two major crises in
health: under- and over-consumption of drugs. Health inequalities and lack of access to
essential drugs dominate the world order. At the same time, the US market exemplifies what
is fast becoming a global trend: increasingly people are persuaded that health is the
product of assiduous risk aversion, acute disease awareness and routine drug consumption.
What happens when everyone is constantly alerted to this threat or that affliction, and
urged to screen body and mind for every sign of disease? Does it really promote personal
responsibility, health awareness, empowerment and choice? Or does it help to make people
feel ill and create burdens that no national health service can withstand?
Market-driven medicine seems now to have surpassed the point of diminishing health
returns. If health is the desired outcome, can it really make sense to invest in drug
innovation and consumption on the Pharmas’ terms? This story suggests no end of
better alternatives - none more radical than the notion that medicine produces most health
when conducted within a framework of honest science and decent human and democratic
values.
The reality seems to be that community is the bedrock of individual health. Drug
response, personal health and the ability to negotiate the trials of life all reflect your
uniqueness as an individual. On the other hand, what you experience of the quality of
medicine and medicines is overwhelmingly decided by factors beyond your control. In the
end, personal health is largely predicted by the health and well-being of others, above
all by their example, attitudes and behaviour. No one escapes if other people feel ill or
are impoverished, desperate, miserable or insecure.
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