Too much caffeine has been blamed for everything from irregular heartbeats to kidney stones. A new study claims that java junkies face an otherworldly risk: hearing voices, sensing the presence of dead people, and seeing things that aren’t there.

“Many drugs that are assumed to be effective are probably little more than placebos.” That’s the stunning assertion made by Marcia Angell, MD, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The drug approval system is so corrupt, she charges, that it is almost impossible to know whether some of the most commonly prescribed medications—from antidepressants to sleeping pills—actually work.

Money, as you might expect, is at the root of the evil. A blockbuster drug can earn billions for pharmaceutical companies. To get one approved and widely prescribed, the companies are willing to do almost anything.