Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to Covid-19 Vaccines

Journalist Zaitchik (The Gilded Rage) takes readers through the labyrinthine history of medical patents in this expansive study. Zaitchik begins in Renaissance Italy, in which the first attempts at privatizing knowledge were introduced in the form of “royal grants” from princes, and moves through the establishment of the “progress clause” in the U.S. Constitution that gave “authors and inventors” exclusive rights to their discoveries. Zaitchik recaps the Bayh-Dole legislation in 1980, which broadened the scope of patents to include inventions developed using federal funding, and the war fought by the CEO of Pfizer in 1986 against the generic drug market, which ensured U.S. patents could be enforced globally. Zaitchik considers patent “dissenters,” including farmers who fought back against the patenting of common agricultural techniques in the late 19th century, and rounds things out with an outline of the race to find a Covid-19 vaccine (Bill Gates, despite his public image as a virtuous philanthropist, according to the author, worked “to ensure the pandemic response remained in line with the deep ideological commitment to knowledge monopolies”). It’s undoubtedly a dense study, but Zaitchik covers a remarkable amount of ground and never gets lost in the weeds. The result is comprehensive and illuminating. Agent: Kate Garrick, the Karpfinger Agency. (Mar.)