RxISK is pleased to announce that Dr. David Healy’s latest book, Pharmageddon, was named by Maclean’s magazine as one of the best non-fiction books of 2012. “David Healy’s exposé of the pharmaceutical industry’s control of modern medicine is a chilling, essential read,” says Maclean’s on Pharmageddon.
Pharmageddon was the philosophical underpinning of the RxISK.org website, says Dr. Healy. “I wanted to do more than just identify the healthcare problems outlined in the book and the Stockholm syndromes that arise in clinical practice. So with the input and support of my colleagues, I decided to propose a solution — a free, independent drug safety website.” Dr. Healy says he is pleased with the reception Pharmageddon and RxISK.org have received in Canada, a country with which he’s had a bit of a tumultuous past. In 2000, job offers at the University of Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health were retracted after a lecture Dr. Healy gave at the university in which he said that Prozac and other SSRIs can lead to suicide. At the time, Prozac manufacturer Eli Lilly was a significant contributor to the university. Since publishing Pharmageddon, a dozen years later, Dr. Healy has returned to Canada, giving lectures at the University of Toronto and other Canadian venues, and has had a warm reception from the Canadian media and public. “Ironically, many of the key players behind RxISK are Canadian,” says Dr. Healy. RxISK’s co-founders include Canadian medical researchers Dr. Nancy Olivieri and Dr. Brenda Gallie, and the business and technology teams are headed up by Peter Wood, a retired partner with Ernst & Young Canada. “So we really are grateful to this country for its world-class resources and for the success we have enjoyed with not only the book but with the website and our mission to help make medicines safer for all of us.”
About Data Based Medicine Americas Ltd.
RxISK is owned and operated by Data Based Medicine Americas Ltd. (DBM), based in Toronto, Canada. DBM’s founders have international reputations in early drug-side-effect detection and risk mitigation, pharmacovigilance, and patient-centered care. Although drug side effects are known to be a leading cause of death and disability, less than 5% of serious drug side effects are reported. DBM’s mission is to capture this missing data directly from patients through RxISK.org, a free drug side effect reporting tool and use this data to help make medicines safer for all of us.
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