The Billion-Dollar Molecule

Author: Barry Werth
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143912681X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
Join journalist Barry Werth as he pulls back the curtain on Vertex, a start-up pharmaceutical company, and witness firsthand the intense drama being played out in the pioneering and hugely profitable field of drug research. Founded by Joshua Boger, a dynamic Harvard- and Merck-trained scientific whiz kid, Vertex is dedicated to designing—atom by atom—both a new life-saving immunosuppressant drug, and a drug to combat the virus that causes AIDS. You will be hooked from start to finish, as you go from the labs, where obsessive, fiercely competitive scientists struggle for a breakthrough, to Wall Street, where the wheeling and dealing takes on a life of its own, as Boger courts investors and finally decides to take Vertex public. Here is a fascinating no-holds-barred account of the business of science, which includes an updated epilogue about the most recent developments in the quest for a drug to cure AIDS.

The Antidote

Author: Barry Werth
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451655665
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
In 1989, the charismatic Joshua Boger left Merck, then America's most admired business, to found a drug company that would challenge industry giants and transform health care. Journalist Barry Werth described the company's tumultuous early days during the AIDS crisis in The Billion-Dollar Molecule, a celebrated classic of science and business journalism. Now he returns to tell the story of Vertex's bold endurance and eventual success. The pharmaceutical business is America's toughest and one of its most profitable. It's riskier and more rigorous at just about every stage than any other business, from the towering biological uncertainties inherent in its mission to treat disease; to the 30-to-1 failure rate in bringing out a successful medicine; to the multibillion-dollar cost of ramping up a successful product; to operating in the world's most regulated industry, matched only by nuclear power. Werth captures the full scope of Vertex's 25-year drive to deliver breakthrough medicines.--From publisher description.

The $800 Million Pill

Author: Merrill Goozner
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520246706
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
"Goozner shows how drug innovation is driven by dedicated scientists intent on finding cures for diseases, not by pharmaceutical firms, whose bottom line often takes precedence over the advance of medicine. Stories of a university biochemist who spent twenty years searching for single blood protein that later became the best-selling biotech drug in the world, a government employee who discovered the causes for dozens of crippling genetic disorders, and the Department of Energy-funded research that made the Human Genome Project possible - these accounts illustrate how medical breakthroughs actually take place.".

Braving The Elements

Author: Harry B. Gray
Publisher: University Science Books
ISBN: 9780935702347
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
This text provides a non-mathematical descriptive approach to key concepts and contemporary topics in the sciences. Chapters on chemical bonding, biochemistry, cancer and the atmosphere are interspersed with such chapters as The Alchemist's Dream, Newsworthy Molecules and Wall Street Chemistry. The book employs a historical story-line through the text. For example, the Hindenberg serves to amplify the subtle, yet catastrophic, differences between helium and hydrogen.

DNA

Author: James D. Watson
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307521486
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Book Description
Fifty years ago, James D. Watson, then just twentyfour, helped launch the greatest ongoing scientific quest of our time. Now, with unique authority and sweeping vision, he gives us the first full account of the genetic revolution—from Mendel’s garden to the double helix to the sequencing of the human genome and beyond. Watson’s lively, panoramic narrative begins with the fanciful speculations of the ancients as to why “like begets like” before skipping ahead to 1866, when an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel first deduced the basic laws of inheritance. But genetics as we recognize it today—with its capacity, both thrilling and sobering, to manipulate the very essence of living things—came into being only with the rise of molecular investigations culminating in the breakthrough discovery of the structure of DNA, for which Watson shared a Nobel prize in 1962. In the DNA molecule’s graceful curves was the key to a whole new science. Having shown that the secret of life is chemical, modern genetics has set mankind off on a journey unimaginable just a few decades ago. Watson provides the general reader with clear explanations of molecular processes and emerging technologies. He shows us how DNA continues to alter our understanding of human origins, and of our identities as groups and as individuals. And with the insight of one who has remained close to every advance in research since the double helix, he reveals how genetics has unleashed a wealth of possibilities to alter the human condition—from genetically modified foods to genetically modified babies—and transformed itself from a domain of pure research into one of big business as well. It is a sometimes topsy-turvy world full of great minds and great egos, driven by ambitions to improve the human condition as well as to improve investment portfolios, a world vividly captured in these pages. Facing a future of choices and social and ethical implications of which we dare not remain uninformed, we could have no better guide than James Watson, who leads us with the same bravura storytelling that made The Double Helix one of the most successful books on science ever published. Infused with a scientist’s awe at nature’s marvels and a humanist’s profound sympathies, DNA is destined to become the classic telling of the defining scientific saga of our age.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society

Author: Graham A. Colditz
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1506301266
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 3611

Book Description
The first edition of the Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society was published in 2007 and received a 2008 Editors’ Choice Award from Booklist. It served as a general, non-technical resource focusing on cancer from the perspective of the social and behavioral sciences, exploring social and economic impacts, the "business" of cancer, advertising of drugs and treatment centers, how behavior change could offer great potential for cancer prevention, environmental risks, food additives and regulation, the relation between race and ethnicity and cancer risk, socioeconomic status, controversies—both scientific and political—in cancer treatment and research, country-by-country entries on cancer around the world, and more. Given various developments in the field including new drug treatments, political controversies over use of the vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix with young girls to prevent cervical cancer, and unexpected upticks in the prevalence of adult smoking within the U.S. following decades of decline, the SAGE Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society, Second Edition serves as an updated and more current encyclopedia that addresses concerns pertaining to this topic. Key Features: · Approximately half of the 700 first-edition articles revised and updated · 30+ new entries covering new developments since 2006 · Signed entries with cross-references · Further Readings accompanied by pedagogical elements · New Reader’s Guide · Updated Chronology, Resource Guide, Glossary, and through new Index The SAGE Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society, Second Edition serves as a reliable and precise source for students and researchers with an interest in social and behavioral sciences and seeks to better understand the continuously evolving subject matter of cancer and society.

The Emperor of All Maladies

Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439170916
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 624

Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Curing Cancer

Author: Michael Waldholz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684848023
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
Reports on current research on the causes of cancer, including dramatic recent genetic breakthroughs that offer new hope for a cure.

That High Design Of Purest Gold: A Critical History Of The Pharmaceutical Industry, 1880-2020

Author: Graham Dutfield
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811222495
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Book Description
This book is a history of medicines and the commercial actors that make and sell them, covering the 140 years since the modern pharmaceutical industry came into being. It is written in a lively and accessible way, aiming at a general audience that combines historical narrative with fascinating case studies on drug discovery and commercialization, from the rat poison that became warfarin, to a cardiovascular treatment that was turned into Viagra. In a non-partisan way it also examines some of the less noble manifestations of corporate behavior, concluding with an agenda for reform.It is hard to think of anything nobler than to bring to the world a medicine that saves lives. And over 140 years of history, the pharmaceutical industry has produced a range of remarkable products, albeit typically with external scientific and financial support. Making medicines is a very big and profit-driven business, and the industry does not always make the right products for the right people, or at the right prices.The industry wields immense power over lives and economies. How has it risen to this position of dominance? Are the interests of the industry and the public in balance? What should we admire about the industry? What should we criticise and seek to change? The importance of this book lies in the fact that we are all stakeholders in this industry whether or not we own shares, so we all need answers to these questions.Related Link(s)

Molecular Modeling and Simulation

Author: Tamar Schlick
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387224645
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 669

Book Description
Very broad overview of the field intended for an interdisciplinary audience; Lively discussion of current challenges written in a colloquial style; Author is a rising star in this discipline; Suitably accessible for beginners and suitably rigorous for experts; Features extensive four-color illustrations; Appendices featuring homework assignments and reading lists complement the material in the main text