A revealing survey of the processes of drug approval and the future of cancer treatments.
How new cancer medications are invented and marketed.
Ahmed, executive director of AstraZeneca’s research and development in blood cancers, explores “the promise and the perils of drugs and their development adventures.” He offers a general overview of the pharmaceutical industry and its recent history, along with a behind-the-scenes perspective on the scientific, economic, and political dynamics of cancer drug development. The author educates readers about how scientists transform molecules into lifesaving or life-extending medicines, the complicated process of FDA approval for new cancer medicines, the intense competition among pharmaceutical companies in the pursuit of technical breakthroughs and the possible massive profits involved, and the prospects for next-generation cancer treatments such as cell therapy and modified antibodies. Several case studies illustrate Ahmed’s claims about how the drug industry operates, and detailed summations of his own experiences in drug development provide a keen sense of the industry’s complexities. Particularly well developed are sections covering the requirements of drug trials and the controversies they sometimes generate. Ahmed’s commentary on the pharmaceutical industry’s ethical character seems balanced overall, and he rightly dismisses conspiracy theories suggesting that companies have cynically suppressed treatments that might cure cancer in favor of marketing lucrative long-term therapies. The author could have written more about the merits of particular national health care policies, as well as where reforms are needed. In a long section discussing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on drug development, for instance, Ahmed is curiously silent about the reasons behind the nation’s failure to respond effectively. A somewhat meandering style and loose organization of topics sometimes compromise the force of the narrative, but the author presents an intriguing insider’s account of his primary subject that should appeal to a fairly wide audience.
A revealing survey of the processes of drug approval and the future of cancer treatments.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781633889521
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Prometheus/Globe Pequot
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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