Prescription for profits

In the years following the Second World War, as Europe lay in charred ruins, a new spirit of discovery and knowledge began to stir in the United States. Nurtured by an influx of emigre scientists, this spirit took root in our leading academic communities - from Cambridge and Chicago to Pasadena and Palo Alto and ushered in a golden age of American science. Eventually, however, many of these great minds were seduced by the benefits of capitalism, and the golden age seemed destined for collapse.

In Prescription for Profits, science writer Linda Marsa tracks the rise and fall of research science as told through the spectacular growth of the pharmaceutical industry. As Marsa shows, the achievements of American science during the postwar era were stellar: the cure for polio, the cracking of the genetic code, the pioneering drug therapies. In the early 1970s, though, such scientists as Herbert Boyer discerned the rewards of launching their own companies.

He led an exodus of his colleagues into the burgeoning biotechnology industry - first a trickle, then a flood. The major companies grew filthy rich and politically powerful, particularly because of deregulation during the Reagan administration. The lure of huge profits dramatically changed medical research, with ramifications that continue to affect our lives profoundly.

From Nixon's war on cancer to the current AIDS crisis to the future of human gene therapy, this marriage between medical research and corporate money has transformed our nation's health, and not always for the public's good.