Side Effects

***A Waterstones Best Books of 2022 pick*** 'David Haslam is uniquely placed to reflect on how healthcare has lost its way, what needs to be done to fix it and why all of us are responsible for doing so... The importance and timeliness of his messages shines through.' Dr Phil Hammond 'A fascinating and important book.' Dr Amanda Brown With a single drug in the UK currently costing £340,000 per patient per year, or a gene therapy in the USA being costed at $1.2million, who should get such treatments, and how can we begin to afford them? Should we all be entitled to timely mental health therapy? How should we care for our old? As we grapple with the world's worst pandemic for a century, our minds are on our health more than ever. But what should we rightfully expect of doctors? In this original and thought-provoking book, Sir David Haslam explores what good healthcare should achieve and asks how we pay for it. Informed by patient stories and data from across the world - from US big pharma to Britain's NHS - this is an urgent and often moving examination of our most important asset: our health.

Sir David Haslam is former chair of NICE, a former president of the Royal College of GPs and a former president of the British Medical Association. He practised as a General Practitioner in Cambridgeshire for over 35 years, has written over 2000 articles and papers for the medical and lay press and has been invited to speak at conferences in 33 different countries. In 2014 he was named by Debretts and the Sunday Times as one of the 500 most influential and inspirational people in the United Kingdom.