Human trials
Subtitle: scientists, investors, and patients in the quest for a cure
By: Susan Quinn
Publisher: Perseus Pub.
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9780738201825
Subjects: Multiple Sclerosis; Clinical trials; Clinical Trials as Topic; Popular Works; Human experimentation in medicine; Drug therapy; Research
Description: Over fifty million people suffer from some form of autoimmune disease--multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus, and other afflictions in which the body attacks itself--none of them with a lasting cure. Susan Quinn has investigated the worlds where new autoimmune drugs are being developed: the research labs, the drug-company boardrooms, and the clinics where patients become "subjects" in the search for new medicines and treatments. Her story is one of real people: fiercely competing scientists, ambitious venture capitalists, and, anxious, sick human beings. She takes the reader inside these otherwise closed worlds, into the lead investigator's diaries, the tense closed-door meetings with investors, and the hopeful or heart-rending encounters in doctor's offices. Hers is the archetypal story of all medical research: the roller-coaster trip from the lab bench to the medicine cabinet, in which only a very few new drugs and treatments survive. Susan Quinn catches the hopes, triumphs, and crushing failures, the greed and the idealism in these dramatic human trials.
Table of contents: title: The Clinic --; title: The Disease --; title: The Lab Director --; title: The Researchers --; title: The Big Idea --; title: The Capitalists --; title: Off and Running --; title: The Road Show --; title: The Investigators --; title: The Next Question --; title: Results --; title: Not the Last Supper --; title: The Rheumatologists --; title: Two Meetings --; title: Human Trials --; title: The End --; title: The Beginning.