Good Intentions: How Big Business and the Medical Establishment Are Corrupting the Fight Against AIDS

Business Week writer Nussbaum blames the failure to find a drug effective against AIDS on an unholy alliance forged among the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, elite biomedical centers and the big drug companies. AZT, the toxic, immunosuppressive anti-AIDS drug developed by Burroughs Wellcome, probably offers only short-term, transitory benefits to some patients, he charges. A hard-hitting, shocking look at profit-oriented AIDS research, this brisk journalistic account also tours a medical underground in which grass-roots organizations offer various unapproved drugs to people with AIDS. In this informal network, claims Nussbaum ( The World After Oil ), a model for quick testing of drugs is emerging that, if widely implemented, could revolutionize the treatment of other diseases. Photos. (Oct.)