Tamiflu is the author’s case study in “disease mongering”: 2009 swine-flu fear (sold as 1918 redux) drove billion-dollar stockpiles after Roche claimed fewer complications, hospital stays, and less spread. Cochrane’s Tom Jefferson spent years forcing out the hidden trial reports.

2014 data, as told here: no stop to spread or complications, about half a day less illness, plus psychiatric and stomach harms. The leftover claim—that it still saves the sickest—is what a late-July 2026 RCT is said to break: trial stopped for harm; day-90 deaths 13.7% with no antiviral vs ~19.5–20% on Tamiflu.

Lesson: ask “what happens if I do nothing?” before a prevention drug. The author ranks the stockpile with thalidomide and Vioxx. That is his reading of the trial, not medical advice.

I like to add a mildly amusing quote from Mark Twain at the end of my conference lectures, when I post a slide showing a few photos of my book covers: “Be careful of reading health books,” Twain once famously warned, “you may die of a misprint.” 

If Mr. Twain were around today, he might agree with an update of his warning for our modern pharmaceutical era: “Be careful of taking federally recommended, multi-billion-dollar stockpiled antivirals. You may die of the treatment.”

After 30 years of wading through the cherry blossoms of Victoria and the murky swamps of pharmaceutical policy, raging on about the medicalization of ordinary life, it’s rare for me to have an “I told you so” moment. 

A repeated refrain in my writings is that “disease mongering”—the fine art of widening disease definitions to turn healthy people into patients—is alive and well. This activity turns many of us “worried well” into lifelong paying customers of the pharmaceutical industry, all on the basis of drugs we are often told are to “prevent” a bad........

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