Ten Drugs

Author: Thomas Hager
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1683355318
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
“The stories are skillfully told and entirely entertaining . . . An expert, mostly feel-good book about modern medicine” from the award-winning author (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Behind every landmark drug is a story. It could be an oddball researcher’s genius insight, a catalyzing moment in geopolitical history, a new breakthrough technology, or an unexpected but welcome side effect discovered during clinical trials. Piece together these stories, as Thomas Hager does in this remarkable, century-spanning history, and you can trace the evolution of our culture and the practice of medicine. Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, the first antibiotic, which saved countless lives, the first antipsychotic, which helped empty public mental hospitals, Viagra, statins, and the new frontier of monoclonal antibodies. This is a deep, wide-ranging, and wildly entertaining book. “[An] absorbing new book.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A] well-written and engaging chronicle.” —The Wall Street Journal “Lucidly informative and compulsively readable.” —Publishers Weekly “Entertaining [and] insightful.” —Booklist “Well-written, well-researched and fascinating to read Ten Drugs provides an insightful look at how drugs have shaped modern medical practices. Towards the end of the book Hager writes that he ‘came away surprised by some of the things he had learned.’ I had the very same reaction.” —Penny Le Couteur, coauthor of Napoleon’s Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History

Drug Safety

Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drugs
Languages : en
Pages : 12

Book Description

Drugs and Drug Policy

Author: Mark A.R. Kleiman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199831386
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies--regulations, taxes, and prohibitions--designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Those policies sometimes have terrible side-effects: most prominently the development of criminal enterprises dealing in forbidden (or untaxed) drugs and the use of the profits of drug-dealing to finance insurgency and terrorism. Neither a drug-free world nor a world of free drugs seems to be on offer, leaving citizens and officials to face the age-old problem: What are we going to do about drugs? In Drugs and Drug Policy, three noted authorities survey the subject with exceptional clarity, in this addition to the acclaimed series, What Everyone Needs to Know®. They begin, by defining "drugs," examining how they work in the brain, discussing the nature of addiction, and exploring the damage they do to users. The book moves on to policy, answering questions about legalization, the role of criminal prohibitions, and the relative legal tolerance for alcohol and tobacco. The authors then dissect the illicit trade, from street dealers to the flow of money to the effect of catching kingpins, and show the precise nature of the relationship between drugs and crime. They examine treatment, both its effectiveness and the role of public policy, and discuss the beneficial effects of some abusable substances. Finally they move outward to look at the role of drugs in our foreign policy, their relationship to terrorism, and the ugly politics that surround the issue. Crisp, clear, and comprehensive, this is a handy and up-to-date overview of one of the most pressing topics in today's world. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

Drugged

Author: Richard J. Miller
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199957975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Book Description
Miller takes readers on an eye-opening tour of psychotropic drugs, describing the various kinds, how they were discovered and developed, and how they have played multiple roles in virtually every culture.

Top Drugs

Author: Jie Jack Li
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199362602
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
Drugs like Lipitor, Plavix, Taxol, and Zoloft are integral in today's medicinal world. These widely used products save lives and improve the quality of lives, playing a crucial role in everything from cholesterol management to cancer treatment. These advances in medicine were brought into existence after nuanced process of creation, featuring a wide range of chemical and pharmacological experimentation and discovery. Top Drugs: Their History, Pharmacology, and Synthesis provides an in-depth study on ten prominent drugs, outlining the chemistry behind each one's creation. Jie Jack Li, a medicinal chemist and an expert on drug discovery, offers a thorough analysis of the landscape of current drug development. The comprehensive text is divided by health issues, including cardiovascular, cancer, metabolic diseases, and infectious diseases. Each section features individual chapters on significant drugs, outlining the chemistry and history of the drug's discovery. Li begins each chapter with the product's history, providing necessary context. Li then proceeds to describe the mechanism of action, structure-activity relationship (SAR), bioavailability, metabolism, toxicology, the discovery route, and the process route. Top Drugs: Their History, Pharmacology, and Synthesis will acclimate students, scientists, and interested laypersons to the world of chemistry and drug discovery.

The Demon Under the Microscope

Author: Thomas Hager
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307352285
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of sulfa, the first antibiotic and the drug that shaped modern medicine. The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness. A strange and colorful story, The Demon Under the Microscope illuminates the vivid characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism, heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa to the world. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue of a great suspense novel.

Making Medicines Affordable

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309468086
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Book Description
Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.

Cholesterol Down

Author: Janet Bond Brill, PhD, RD, LDN
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0307494462
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
Take control of your cholesterol with this 10-point plan from nutrition and fitness expert Dr. Janet Brill—without using drugs. If you are one of the nearly 100 million Americans struggling with high cholesterol, then Dr. Janet Brill offers you a revolutionary new plan for taking control of your health—without the risks of statin drugs. With Dr. Brill’s breakthrough Cholesterol Down Plan, you simply add nine “miracle foods” to your regular diet and thirty minutes of walking to your daily routine. That’s all. This straightforward and easy-to-follow program can lower your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol by as much as 47 percent in just four weeks. Cholesterol Down explains Dr. Brill’s ten-point plan as well as the science behind it. You’ll learn how each miracle food affects LDL cholesterol and how the foods work together for maximum effect, as well as: • How eating whole grains helps reduce LDL cholesterol in your bloodstream • Why antioxidants keep plaque from building up in your arteries • How certain steps change the structure of LDL cholesterol particles (and why it’s best for them to be large and fluffy) • Why walking just thirty minutes a day lowers “bad” cholesterol and cuts dangerous belly fat With everything you need to stay focused on the plan, including a daily checklist, a six-month chart for racking LDL cholesterol changes, tools for assessing your risk level for cardiovascular disease, sample weekly menus, and even heart-healthy recipes, Cholesterol Down is the safe and effective alternative or complement to statin drugs.

Random Family

Author: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439124892
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Set amid the havoc of the War on Drugs, this New York Times bestseller is an "astonishingly intimate" (New York magazine) chronicle of one family’s triumphs and trials in the South Bronx of the 1990s. “Unmatched in depth and power and grace. A profound, achingly beautiful work of narrative nonfiction…The standard-bearer of embedded reportage.” —Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted In her classic bestseller, journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the world of one family with roots in the Bronx, New York. In 1989, LeBlanc approached Jessica, a young mother whose encounter with the carceral state is about to forever change the direction of her life. This meeting redirected LeBlanc’s reporting, taking her past the perennial stories of crime and violence into the community of women and children who bear the brunt of the insidious violence of poverty. Her book bears witness to the teetering highs and devastating lows in the daily lives of Jessica, her family, and her expanding circle of friends. Set at the height of the War on Drugs, Random Family is a love story—an ode to the families that form us and the families we create for ourselves. Charting the tumultuous struggle of hope against deprivation over three generations, LeBlanc slips behind the statistics and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and distinctly American true story.

The American Drug Culture

Author: Thomas S. Weinberg
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1506304680
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 460

Book Description
The American Drug Culture uses sociological and other perspectives to examine drug and alcohol use in U.S. society. The text is arranged topically rather than by drug categories and explores diverse aspects of drug use, including popular culture, sexuality, legal and criminal justice systems, other social institutions, and mental and physical health. It covers alcohol, the most widely used drug in the United States, more extensively than other texts on this subject. The authors include case studies from their own field research that give students empathetic insights into the situations of those suffering from substance and alcohol abuse.