David Healy FRCPsych, a professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, is a psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, scientist and author.

His main areas of research are the contribution of antidepressants to suicide, conflict of interest between pharmaceutical companies and academic medicine, and the history of pharmacology.

He has alleged that pharmaceutical companies sell drugs by marketing diseases and co-opting academic opinion-leaders, sometimes ghostwriting their articles.

His most recent book, Pharmageddon, claims that pharmaceutical companies have dominated healthcare in America, often with life-threatening results for patients.

[6] Another reforming psychiatrist, Peter Breggin, has strongly criticised Healy for this aspect of his work on the grounds of ethics and the longer-term data.

[7] Healy has even speculated that Insulin coma therapy may have 'worked' in the sense of generating enthusiasm in staff and in an unclear way to challenge anxiety or 'psychosis', despite a lack of, or contrary, evidence from the time.

[11] Healy has written many papers and presented many lectures on his view that all SSRI antidepressants – Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft – should show warning labels, as they could "trigger suicidal and violent behavior in some patients".

Most of the authors published in the Journal of the American Medical Association have received research funding from, or acted as a consultant for, a drug company.

[13] Medical ghostwriting occurs when anonymous scribes with scientific backgrounds are paid to produce reports for publication as if written by better-known experts.

The United States Congress wanted to prevent a recurrence of such a tragedy, and sought to limit the marketing excesses of the pharmaceutical industry.

On the 50th anniversary of the 1962 FDA bill enacted by Congress, Pharmageddon argues that these arrangements have not been successful and have actually led to an escalating number of drug induced deaths and injuries.