From Publishers Weekly
Business Week writer Nussbaum blames the failure to find a drug effective against AIDS on an unholy alliance forged among the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, elite biomedical centers and the big drug companies. AZT, the toxic, immunosuppressive anti-AIDS drug developed by Burroughs Wellcome, probably offers only short-term, transitory benefits to some patients, he charges. A hard-hitting, shocking look at profit-oriented AIDS research, this brisk journalistic account also tours a medical underground in which grass-roots organizations offer various unapproved drugs to people with AIDS. In this informal network, claims Nussbaum ( The World After Oil ), a model for quick testing of drugs is emerging that, if widely implemented, could revolutionize the treatment of other diseases. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Journalist Nussbaum's readable, gossipy book raises some important and hotly debated issues, but it also reduces thorny problems in medical research and ethics to a simplistic theory of conspiracy among medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies to keep promising AIDS drugs off the market and away from desperate patients. His narrative barely acknowledges the enormous difficulty of developing effective antivirals, the self-criticisms by government agencies and researchers charged with handling AIDS, or the ethical dilemmas encountered in distributing unapproved drugs. He also seems unaware or dismissive of the role that human frailty plays in the politics of science and business. Not on a par with such titles as Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On ( LJ 11/15/87), this is an optional purchase.
- Mary Chitty, Massachusetts Coll. of Pharmacy & Allied Health Svces. Lib., Boston
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Mary Chitty, Massachusetts Coll. of Pharmacy & Allied Health Svces. Lib., Boston
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
