A Cure Worse than the Disease?

You want not to believe this book. The story David Healy tells is nasty and frightening to contemplate. John Le Carré, whose novel, The Perfect Gardener, centres on wrongdoing in the pharmaceutical industry, is quoted on the back cover of Let Them Eat Prozac: “This very important book will demonstrate beyond your worst dreams that the commercial needs of BigPharma are the natural-born enemy of independent scientific research.”

Healy is a psychiatrist with appointments at both the University of Wales and, on a visiting basis, the University of Toronto. He has published more than a dozen books and 120 peer-reviewed articles. His past credentials include consulting to major pharmaceutical companies and prescribing Prozac and related antidepressants to his patients. A somewhat recent addition to his curriculum vitae is whistle-blower in relation to his deep concerns about these same drugs. It is those concerns that he documents in Let Them...