New Drugs

New Drugs
Author: Lawrence Tim Friedhoff
Publisher: Booksurge Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Drug development
ISBN: 9781419699610

Drug development, the processes by which a chemical compound becomes a "drug" and is approved for sale by the FDA and European and Asian regulators, is not for the faint-of-heart or the shortsighted. Designing and monitoring studies, obtaining and analyzing scientific data, and reconciling clinical results against the ethical constraints and regulatory guidelines of government agencies, requires a complex interaction of in-house specialists and academic and commercial consultants worldwide. Scientific, technical, and tactical considerations play out in an environment where a balance must be struck between the often-competing interests of the corporation, its investors, government regulators, and the safety and well being of intended patients. All the while, dwindling patent protections impose an ever-contracting timeframe for success. Written to be accessible to a wide audience, NEW DRUGS provides a thorough, succinct, and practical understanding of these drug-development processes. If you're involved in the pharmaceutical industry, NEW DRUGS will provide scientific and management tools to increase the likelihood of regulatory approval at each phase of your compound's development. If you're a patient or consumer, NEW DRUGS will enable you to intelligently discuss medications with your health-care provider and empower you to make informed decisions at the pharmacy. If your portfolio, rather than your health, makes you an interested observer of the fortunes of this critical sector of the US economy, NEW DRUGS will help you to decode press releases and annual reports, so that you can recognize and invest in well-run companies with promising products.

The Emperor's New Drugs

The Emperor's New Drugs
Author: Irving Kirsch
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-01-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0465021042

Do antidepressants work? Of course -- everyone knows it. Like his colleagues, Irving Kirsch, a researcher and clinical psychologist, for years referred patients to psychiatrists to have their depression treated with drugs before deciding to investigate for himself just how effective the drugs actually were. Over the course of the past fifteen years, however, Kirsch's research -- a thorough analysis of decades of Food and Drug Administration data -- has demonstrated that what everyone knew about antidepressants was wrong. Instead of treating depression with drugs, we've been treating it with suggestion. The Emperor's New Drugs makes an overwhelming case that what had seemed a cornerstone of psychiatric treatment is little more than a faulty consensus. But Kirsch does more than just criticize: he offers a path society can follow so that we stop popping pills and start proper treatment for depression.

Rare Diseases and Orphan Products

Rare Diseases and Orphan Products
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2011-04-03
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309158060

Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.

The $800 Million Pill

The $800 Million Pill
Author: Merrill Goozner
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2005-10-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780520246706

"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.".

The Risks of Prescription Drugs

The Risks of Prescription Drugs
Author: Donald Light
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231146922

Few people realize that prescription drugs have become a leading cause of death, disease, and disability. Adverse reactions to widely used drugs, such as psychotropics and birth control pills, as well as biologicals, result in FDA warnings against adverse reactions. The Risks of Prescription Drugs describes how most drugs approved by the FDA are under-tested for adverse drug reactions, yet offer few new benefits. Drugs cause more than 2.2 million hospitalizations and 110,000 hospital-based deaths a year. Serious drug reactions at home or in nursing homes would significantly raise the total. Women, older people, and people with disabilities are least used in clinical trials and most affected. Health policy experts Donald Light, Howard Brody, Peter Conrad, Allan Horwitz, and Cheryl Stults describe how current regulations reward drug companies to expand clinical risks and create new diseases so millions of patients are exposed to unnecessary risks, especially women and the elderly. They reward developing marginally better drugs rather than discovering breakthrough, life-saving drugs. The Risks of Prescription Drugs tackles critical questions about the pharmaceutical industry and the privatization of risk. To what extent does the FDA protect the public from serious side effects and disasters? What is the effect of giving the private sector and markets a greater role and reducing public oversight? This volume considers whether current rules and incentives put patients' health at greater risk, the effect of the expansion of disease categories, the industry's justification of high U.S. prices, and the underlying shifts in the burden of risk borne by individuals in the world of pharmaceuticals. Chapters cover risks of statins for high cholesterol, SSRI drugs for depression and anxiety, and hormone replacement therapy for menopause. A final chapter outlines six changes to make drugs safer and more effective. Suitable for courses on health and aging, gender, disability, and minority studies, this book identifies the Risk Proliferation Syndrome that maximizes the number of people exposed to these risks. Additional Columbia / SSRC books on the privatization of risk and its implications for Americans: Bailouts: Public Money, Private ProfitEdited by Robert E. Wright Disaster and the Politics of InterventionEdited by Andrew Lakoff Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System-and How to Heal ItEdited by Jacob S. Hacker Laid Off, Laid Low: Political and Economic Consequences of Employment InsecurityEdited by Katherine S. Newman Pensions, Social Security, and the Privatization of RiskEdited by Mitchell A. Orenstein

Bottle of Lies

Bottle of Lies
Author: Katherine Eban
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 523
Release: 2020-06-23
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0063054108

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * New York Times Notable Book * Best Book of the Year: New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Science Friday With a new postscript by the author From an award-winning journalist, an explosive narrative investigation of the generic drug boom that reveals fraud and life-threatening dangers on a global scale—The Jungle for pharmaceuticals Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true? Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing—and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects. The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.

Drugs for Life

Drugs for Life
Author: Joseph Dumit
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2012-09-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0822348713

Challenges our understanding of health, risks, facts, and clinical trials [Payot]

Ten Drugs

Ten Drugs
Author: Thomas Hager
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1683355318

“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

FDA in the Twenty-First Century

FDA in the Twenty-First Century
Author: Holly Fernandez Lynch
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 499
Release: 2015-09-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231540078

In its decades-long effort to assure the safety, efficacy, and security of medicines and other products, the Food and Drug Administration has struggled with issues of funding, proper associations with industry, and the balance between consumer choice and consumer protection. Today, these challenges are compounded by the pressures of globalization, the introduction of novel technologies, and fast-evolving threats to public health. With essays by leading scholars and government and private-industry experts, FDA in the Twenty-First Century addresses perennial and new problems and the improvements the agency can make to better serve the public good. The collection features essays on effective regulation in an era of globalization, consumer empowerment, and comparative effectiveness, as well as questions of data transparency, conflicts of interest, industry responsibility, and innovation policy, all with an emphasis on pharmaceuticals. The book also intervenes in the debate over off-label drug marketing and the proper role of the FDA before and after a drug goes on the market. Dealing honestly and thoroughly with the FDA's successes and failures, these essays rethink the structure, function, and future of the agency and the effect policy innovations may have on regulatory institutions abroad.