Against the Odds: The Story of AIDS Drug Development, Politics, and Profits

Freelance writer Feiden and health analyst Arno illuminate the profound effect that the AIDS patient community has had on the process of pharmaceutical testing, treatment and approval. Ten years into the epidemic, patient-activists have become increasingly involved, aware and influential in their interactions with pharmaceutical manufacturers, federal regulatory agencies and international underground trafficking. The book details how the travails of AIDS therapies have caused the emergence of parallel-track testing and community-based clinical trials, redefined placebo standards and private-use pharmaceutical importation, and recast the Orphan Drug Act and medical journal publication embargos. Extortionate pharmaceutical pricing and the absence of quality care for the disenfranchised are only a few of the book's sad revelations. This is an incisive view of how health activism has become an invaluable tool in dislodging the bureaucratic U.S. health-care system. Most alarming is the assessment that the tragedy of the stalled AIDS response could be easily replicated by a federal health-care system as yet ill-equipped to respond to a national emergency. (May)