Big Shot: Passion, Politics, and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine [Hardcover]

Patricia Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 2001

A veteran journalist dramatizes the controversial search for an AIDS vaccine-the players, the politics, the money-in a vivid, suspenseful story that reveals how science is done, and not done, in America today. . When the human immunodeficiency virus was identified in 1984, the competition to create an AIDS vaccine was fierce. Now Patricia Thomas brings the contenders to life in a fast-paced, dramatic narrative: Two biologists rescue precious virus cultures from destruction by a military biohazard team. Other researchers drive hundreds of miles during a heat wave to work in a safe containment lab. And a heroic figure from Randy Shilts's And The Band Played On just might win the vaccine marathon. Thomas shows how the scientists' youthful optimism is honed into gritty determination as they struggle with difficult research challenges, public condemnation of AIDS patients, cautious bureaucrats, conservative executives, hostile activists, and a perennial shortage of money. The lives and complex motivations of the characters illustrate the triumphs and frustrations of the quest for a vaccine. Interwoven with these gripping human stories are lucid explanations of how vaccines aim to block the potentially deadly tango of the AIDS virus and the human immune system. Above all, Big Shot shows how the health of future generations rests on the shoulders of individuals who are as strong, and as weak, as the rest of us. Just as A Civil Action ultimately told us more about human nature than environmental law, Big Shot is about a great deal more than AIDS vaccines.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Once upon a time--way back in 1984--Margaret Heckler of the Department of Health and Human Services announced that an AIDS vaccine would be ready to test in two years. While Patricia Thomas's account of the race for the AIDS vaccine begins about the same time, it took 16 years (and over 400 pages) for a vaccine to begin an efficacy trial, and then only because a group of desperate scientists took it into their own hands to raise the funds and go it alone without government support. While the disease itself has greatly resisted scientific study--it breaks all the rules, is not easily fooled, and continues to develop new strains--that's only one impediment in what has turned into a crawl towards the only real solution to the AIDS crisis. "HIV vaccine research has been a kind of low-prestige backwater that never, until recently, claimed more than 10 percent of federal spending on AIDS," Thomas writes. The development of a vaccine has been hampered by social attitudes and bureaucratic misapprehension, corporate lethargy (vaccine development entails higher costs and liability than therapeutic drugs), and the politics and big egos at such places as the National Institute for Health. Thomas closely follows some of the more passionate and heroic players who have forged ahead even while their companies waffle on vaccine research--young and idealistic biotech scientists like Kathy Steimer of Chiron Corporation, who worked at the cutting edge of immunology until her own untimely death, and Phil Berman and Don Francis (portrayed in And the Band Played On), who left the highly competitive company Genentech to launch the lone large-scale test. There are also the pioneers of naked DNA, such as Margaret Liu at Merck, who bet her rising career on the radical technology despite the fact that her vaccine took a back seat to the company's efforts to develop a treatment that would help far fewer people.

Thomas does an admirable job with a huge and complicated subject, using vivid metaphors to explain such topics as recombinant DNA, antigens, and virology, but unfortunately she seems compelled to tell every last detail, which makes for a sometimes tedious read. While it takes a lot of wading to get through this story, and there's certainly no happy ending, it is an eye-opening account of a vital yet obscured subject and, perhaps more importantly, a much-needed shot in the arm. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly

The heroes of this dramatic journalistic examination are the scientists who have been struggling to find an AIDS vaccine since the virus was first identified in 1984. From her first chapter, when she vividly depicts how two scientists snuck HIV samples from a California naval laboratory, Thomas (a medical journalist and one of the first healthy people injected with an experimental AIDS vaccine) gets behind the scenes into the laboratory, corporate boardroom, press conference and Thai vaccine room, uncovering the international, incremental, competitive and sometimes haphazard way science operates. There's no smoking gun here a vaccine hasn't been found but Thomas knows how to build a dramatic tale. She shows how the scientists rely on, and jockey with, the other "players" in the health field: corporations, activists, the government and the National Institutes of Health. For example, some corporations and AIDS activists unknowingly shared a common interest in focusing on treatment rather than a vaccine, which she thinks has not served the world well. The number of scientific personnel is dizzying, and the science isn't simple. But Thomas's focus on the scientists humanizes the story. She writes with the general reader in mind "The human body, like a big city, can be a dangerous and rowdy place" and the resulting story highlights the complexities of finding a cure to one of the most invasive public health scourges of our time.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1 edition (September 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620886
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620881
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #926,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inside the science machine, September 18, 2001

By 

Judith Horstman (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Big Shot: Passion, Politics, and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine (Hardcover)

It's been said that politics, like sausage, is best not seen in the making. But those who wonder why we don't yet have a vaccine or a cure for AIDS need to know why. Pat Thomas takes us behind the scenes and lives of the cast of characters deeply involved in the science, politics and business of one of the most hotly sought-after pharmaceutical products of all time.
"Big Shot" gives us reason to despair that science can ever succeed, given the private and public agendas of so many involved in the AIDS epidemic.
But it also gives us hope, as we see the many dedicated to finding a way to stop the spread of an epidemic that has already claimed 22 million lives. This is a masterful job by one of the best science writers working today -- wonderfully written and compelling.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Shot: Finally, science writing you can dance to!, October 17, 2001

By 

Gita Smith (Valley, AL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Big Shot: Passion, Politics, and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine (Hardcover)

I think "Big Shot" is the first important nonfiction work of the 21st century. With a clarity and an exuberance not often found in books about hard science, Patricia Thomas explains how politics, human frailty and corporate greed have prevented us from finding a vaccine for AIDS. Comparisons with previous books about AIDS and public policy don't exactly do justice to "Big Shot." If books must be categorized, Thomas' scrupulous research sometimes places this book with top ranking medical journals; but the wonderful writing -- you can almost dance to Thomas' prose -- places it among the better mysteries. In the hands of a lesser writer, the workings of DNA, retroviruses, surface antigens and hard-working proteins would cause one's eyes to glaze over. Instead, I found myself turning pages with Evelynwoodesque speed to get to the next development and the next, wondering which young researcher would win the race to the vaccine goal. Thomas has raised the bar for future books about medical research.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Call for Unity, September 25, 2001

By 

D. Gregg (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Big Shot: Passion, Politics, and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine (Hardcover)

Sept. 11 has had a galvanizing effect in reminding Americans that planet earth is really a small place where whatever affects one person ultimately affects us all. The emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s might also have united Americans to fight a common enemy. Might have. But the truth, so compellingly told by Ms. Thomas, is that personalities and politics (both personal and national), prejudice and posturing got in the way of mounting a cohesive campaign. As a result, we are still far from stopping AIDS. Sure, treatments are better, but most of the world cannot afford treatment.
What makes "Big Shot" especially timely is that, as America prepares to fight the "new war," more military personnel will likely be exposed to the AIDS virus. When the GIs line up for vaccinations and grimace comically for the camera, as our fathers and grandfathers did for previous wars, protection against the AIDS virus won't be part of the cocktail. Because there is no vaccine against AIDS.

It's a pretty depressing scenario, but Ms. Thomas retains a wonderfully upbeat message with the subtext "that was then, this is now, so let's move forward."
Besides, she tells a helluva entertaining story.