Note: I received a free unpublished proof of this book, for a limited time, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.

This book was not what I expected going in. I expected it to be a narrative nonfiction written by a doctor about the pharmaceutical industry, roughly in the style of Influence by Robert Cialdini or maybe something a bit less formal in tone like Buyology by Martin Lindstrom and Paco Underhill. The format is actually a number of blog posts copy-and-pasted into an Epub file. There are some hyperlinks to the author’s blog and to other sites, which are easy to access in Epub format, but I think it would be impractical to type them into search engines while reading a physical book.

One of my main concerns with this book is that there is nothing in it, except the brief introduction, that I could not read on the author’s blog. There are many creators who write books containing some of their existing content, but add commentary, background information, and additional content in order to make the book its own unique product. I was disappointed that the author did not take this opportunity to delve more deeply into any of the topics covered on the blog.

Furthermore, the blog posts themselves are extremely short, and even if they link to longer posts they do not provide a great deal of information. The typical format of a post is a few facts and the author stating his opinion that they are true. While he cites a few sources here and there, he also cites his own blog posts a lot, and while those sometimes have a couple of more sources there are not nearly enough to support his statements. Even if Dr. Bremner is completely correct that vitamin supplements are bad for you and the flu vaccine is unnecessary, he needs a whole lot more evidence to back those statements up than what he provides here. Additionally, if these statements are true (giving him the benefit of the doubt here), the audience would likely want to read more about them and read more about Bremner’s take on these topics as a doctor than what can be summed up in brief blog posts.

I am not touching the accuracy of the information that Bremner claims is true, because I do not have access to all the necessary sources, nor the time to search for all that information, nor the expertise to determine the quality of these studies or the data within. I do not think it particularly matters whether Bremner is correct or not in the context of this book review, because even if he is completely right about everything, the book does not communicate this information in an easily-readable, compelling, engaging, or convincing way. Bremner does not have enough unique analyses or arguments in his posts to make them particularly meaningful or informative, even as one-sided op-eds. While Bremner has a unique literary voice in his work, he never develops it into the long-form content someone would expect from a full book.

There is also the elephant in the room: the title. I do not have a problem with people using provocative titles on books, but I do not think that a title with so much “shock value” will really endear people to Bremner’s book. He comes across as someone who wants to prove people wrong rather than explore the topic in a nuanced manner. While there is a time and place for everything, I don’t think this approach is terribly conducive to discussions around health science and the pharmaceutical industry. I also find Bremner’s reasoning around the title to be pretty misogynistic and offensive. It’s not really accurate to compare experts who allow pharmaceutical companies to use them as drug marketers to sex workers, because most people who are having sex in exchange for money are not deceiving millions of doctors and patients into putting their health at risk for money. In fact, when you are paying someone for sex, OnlyFans, or whatever, they are usually extremely honest about the service you are receiving. If Bremner really wanted to stick with the provocative approach, he probably should have compared them to Nazis, because unethical medical practices are at least something the Nazis actually did. Even then, I don’t think that should have been in the title, because the book ultimately isn’t really about Nazis, nor the similarities between these people and Nazis.

Overall, I think this book would have benefitted from a lot more work to turn it into a more well-researched, well-cited book which dove more deeply into the topics covered. As it stands, the final product feels more like a rough draft, and I do not recommend it.

This should have been listed in the Horror category. I mean, like anyone with half a brain, I understood that the pharmaceutical industry had infiltrated the government at the highest levels. (See 50,000 + dead and counting due to the Opioid debacle, with people making money hand over fist, up and down the chain, for years before anything was even halfheartedly done about it). But to have it confirmed in so many other ways, then the mainstream media softballing Big Pharma stories because of all the DTC marketing said Big Pharma spends on advertising drugs...plus learn the Food and Drug Administration itself is now nothing more than a rubber stamp for private industry, and it's supposed primary function of protecting consumers from bad food and drugs is nothing but an afterthought, if that....yeah, Horror novel. I think I've actually lost sleep because of it.
The conclusion I've come to is "Caveat Emptor", buyer beware. Do your research, people, and be careful.
Thankfully, we have folks like Dr. Bremner, who is neither a Pimp nor a Whore (or a Chigger, for that matter) speaking truth and fighting the good fight. Thank you, sir. Keep up the good work.

I had a career in pharmacy so read this with interest. Doug Bremner has put together all of his blog posts into one book (his blog posts strangely vanished from the internet) I enjoyed reading this. Very short chapters which you can dip in and out of. I found it interesting and written with humour. Each page is fairly brief with basic information but a great starting point for further research.

I DNF'd this book at about 25%. I found the style of writing (a compilation of blog posts, from the mid-2000s) to be difficult to read even though they were short, I also struggled with the content as some of it was 15 years old or so and no longer accurate (inclusion of policies enacted during the W. Bush years, even though some of that was changed during the Obama administrations), and there also appeared to be some personal bias on the part of the author. The author did add some extra pieces to some of the topics I read that included more recent information, but it felt like he just compiled his blogs into a book, without too much extra work and I could get the same information by looking for his blog and reading it there. I agree that the drug companies have much to answer to in regard to their processes and pushing drugs onto the market that don't do what they say, or are unsafe, but I didn't really see the contents of this book matching what I expected from it in regards to the topic.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. Opinions expressed are my own.