In 1992 Stephen Fried's wife, Diane, took a pill her doctor gave her for a minor infection and ended up in the emergency room. She was a victim of "the other drug problem," adverse reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medications that kill more people every year than all illegal drug use combined. Some drug reactions go away after a few days. Diane's did not.

Fried set out to investigate the pharmaceutical safety net his wife had fallen through. His quest became a five-year inquiry into the entire legal drug culture, setting off two FDA investigations and winning numerous awards.

He examined the international pharmaceutical industry (the most profitable legal business in the world) as well as the patients who unwillingly swallow its products and problems, the government "drug police," the high-pressure sales reps, the physicians, the nurses, the pharmacists, the researchers, and the consumer advocates. Bitter Pills is the result - a probing, rigorously documented investigative memoir of pill making, pill taking, and pill selling.