A trenchant study of the dangers of turning medical knowledge into private intellectual property.
A freelance journalist faults the “fundamentally corrupt and unjust system” that allows big pharma and others to hoard scientific knowledge instead of using it for the greatest public good.
Zaitchik offers a biting study of the “double protection racket” through which drug companies benefit from government-subsidized research and then use patents to reap unseemly profits from it. Beginning with the Renaissance princes whose “royal grants” amounted to proto-patents, the author gives a dense but clear history of how scientific patents have promoted “monopoly medicine.” Zaitchik argues that patents were envisioned by the framers of the Constitution as a two-way social contract for advancing science and “useful arts” but have become a vehicle for turning vital medical knowledge into private intellectual property. That process sped up with the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, which allowed businesses and universities to retain the rights to knowledge developed with federal funding, and it helped to make possible the “vaccine nationalism” of Operation Warp Speed. Drawing on deep research, Zaitchik knocks the halos off three prominent players in the pandemic: Pfizer (whose CEO fought generic drugs in the 1980s); Moderna (two of whose executives dumped $30 million in stock in a legal but suspiciously timed move after the company announced promising vaccine trial results); and Bill Gates, the focus of a chapter called “Pharma’s Best Friend: Bill Gates and Covid-19.” The author makes a strong case that Gates tried to undermine the efforts of experts who predicted a global vaccine supply crisis with his insistence that market forces could ensure a fair distribution of vaccines among rich and poor nations, a view that has proved “catastrophically incorrect” given that half the world’s population remains unvaccinated against Covid. While big pharma often gets the sole blame for soaring drug prices, this book is a brave and timely reminder that politicians and corporate titans have enabled its excesses.
A trenchant study of the dangers of turning medical knowledge into private intellectual property.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64009-506-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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