Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom


Katherine Eban - 2019
    Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects.The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings? A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.

The Cost Disease: Why Computers Get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn't


William J. Baumol - 2012
    Similarly, the upward spiral of college tuition fees is cause for serious concern. In this concise and illuminating book, the well-known economist William J. Baumol explores the causes of these seemingly intractable problems and offers a surprisingly simple explanation. Baumol identifies the "cost disease" as a major source of rapidly rising costs in service sectors of the economy. Once we understand that disease, he explains, effective responses become apparent.Baumol presents his analysis with characteristic clarity, tracing the fast-rising prices of health care and education in the United States and other major industrial nations, then examining the underlying causes, which have to do with the nature of providing labor-intensive services. The news is good, Baumol reassures us, because the nature of the disease is such that society will be able to afford the rising costs.

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic


Sam Quinones - 2015
    Communities where heroin had never been seen before—from Charlotte, NC and Huntington, WVA, to Salt Lake City and Portland, OR—were overrun with it. Local police and residents were stunned. How could heroin, long considered a drug found only in the dense, urban environments along the East Coast, and trafficked into the United States by enormous Colombian drug cartels, be so incredibly ubiquitous in the American heartland? Who was bringing it here, and perhaps more importantly, why were so many townspeople suddenly eager for the comparatively cheap high it offered?With the same dramatic drive of El Narco and Methland, Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of American capitalism: The stories of young men in Mexico, independent of the drug cartels, in search of their own American Dream via the fast and enormous profits of trafficking cheap black-tar heroin to America’s rural and suburban addicts; and that of Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut, determined to corner the market on pain with its new and expensive miracle drug, Oxycontin; extremely addictive in its own right. Quinones illuminates just how these two stories fit together as cause and effect: hooked on costly Oxycontin, American addicts were lured to much cheaper black tar heroin and its powerful and dangerous long-lasting high. Embroiled alongside the suppliers and buyers are DEA agents, local, small-town sheriffs, and the US attorney from eastern Virginia whose case against Purdue Pharma and Oxycontin made him an enemy of the Bush-era Justice Department, ultimately stalling and destroying his career in public service.Dreamland is a scathing and incendiary account of drug culture and addiction spreading to every part of the American landscape.

The Dog Cancer Survival Guide: Full Spectrum Treatments to Optimize Your Dog's Life Quality and Longevity


Demian Dressler - 2011
    No matter what you’ve heard, there are always steps you can take to help your dog fight (and even beat) cancer. This scientifically researched guide is your complete reference for practical, evidence-based strategies that can optimize the life quality and longevity for your dog. No matter what diagnosis or stage of cancer your dog has, this book is packed with precious advice that can help now. Discover the Full Spectrum approach to dog cancer care: * Everything you need to know about conventional western veterinary treatments (surgery, chemotherapy and radiation) including how to reduce their side effects. * The most effective non-conventional options, including botanical nutraceuticals, supplements, nutrition, and mind-body medicine. * How to analyze the options and develop a specific plan for your own dog based on your dog’s type of cancer, your dog’s age, your financial and time budget, your personality, and many other personal factors. Imagine looking back at this time in your life, five years from now, and having not a single regret. You can help your dog fight cancer and you can honor your dog’s life by living each moment to the fullest, starting now. This book can help you as it has helped thousands of other dog lovers. THE AUTHORS Dr. Demian Dressler, DVM practices in Hawaii and is internationally recognized as "the dog cancer vet" Dr. Susan Ettinger, DVM is a veterinary oncologist and a diplomate of the American College of Internal Medicine who practices in New York. PRAISE FROM VETERINARIANS, AUTHORS & BOOK REVIEWERS"The future is upon us and this ground-breaking book is a vital cornerstone. In dealing with cancer, our worst illness, this Survival Guide is educational, logical, expansive, embracing, honest and so needed." -Dr. Marty Goldstein, DVMHolistic veterinarian and Host, Ask Martha Stewart’s Vet on Sirius Radio "The message of this book jumps off the written page and into the heart of every reader, and will become the at home bible for cancer care of dogs. The authors have given you a sensible and systematic approach that practicing veterinarians will cherish. I found the book inspiring and, clearly, it will become part of my daily approach to cancer therapy for my own patients." -Dr. Robert B. Cohen, VMD Bay Street Animal Hospital, New York "I wish that I had had The Dog Cancer Survival Guide when my dearly beloved Flat-coated Retriever, Odin, contracted cancer. It would have provided me alternative courses of action, as well as some well needed "reality checks" which were not available from conversations with my veterinarian. It should be on every dog owner’s book shelf--just in case..." -Dr. Stanley Coren, PhD, FRSC author of many books, including Born to Bark "A comprehensive guide that distills both alternative and allopathic cancer treatments in dogs...With the overwhelming amount of conflicting information about cancer prevention and treatment, this book provides a pet owner with an easy to follow approach to one of the most serious diseases in animals." -Dr. Barbara Royal, DVM The Royal Treatment Veterinary Center, Oprah Winfrey’s Chicago veterinarian "Picking up The Dog Cancer Survival Guide is anything but a downer: it's an 'empowerer.' It will make you feel like the best medical advocate for your dog. It covers canine cancer topics to an unprecedented depth and breadth from emotional coping strategies to prevention-in plain English.

Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America


Nortin M. Hadler - 2008
    Although necessary health care should be available to all who need it, he says, the current health-care debate assumes that everyone requires massive amounts of expensive care to stay healthy. Hadler urges that before we commit to paying for whatever pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment tell us we need, American consumers need to adopt an attitude of skepticism and arm themselves with enough information to make some of their own decisions about what care is truly necessary. Each chapter of Worried Sick is an object lesson regarding the uses and abuses of a particular type of treatment, such as mammography, colorectal screening, statin drugs, or coronary stents. For consumers and medical professionals interested in understanding the scientific basis for Hadler's arguments, each topical chapter has an accompanying source chapter in which Hadler discusses the medical literature and studies that inform his critique. According to Hadler, a major stumbling block to rational health-care policy in the United States is contention over the very concept of what constitutes good health. By learning to distinguish good medical advice from persuasive medical marketing, consumers can make better decisions about their personal health and use that wisdom to inform their perspectives on health-policy issues.

Transforming Health Care: Virginia Mason Medical Center's Pursuit of the Perfect Patient Experience


Charles Kenney - 2010
    In 2001, Virginia Mason Medical Center, an integrated healthcare delivery system in Seattle, Washington set out to achieve its compelling vision to become The Quality Leader and to fulfill that vision, adopted the Toyota Production System as its management method.Transforming Health Care: Virginia Mason Medical Center's Pursuit of the Perfect Patient Experience takes you on the journey of of Virginia Mason Medical Center's pursuit of the perfect patient experience through the application of lean principles, tools, and methodology. Over the last several years Virginia Mason has become internationally known for its journey towards perfection by applying the Toyota Production System to healthcare. The book takes readers step by step through Virginia Mason's journey as it seeks to provide perfection to its customer - the patient. This book shows you how you use this system to transform your own organization.

Before Ebola: Dispatches from a Deadly Outbreak (Kindle Single)


Peter Apps - 2014
    The year is 2005. A highly infectious, unidentified Ebola-like virus is sweeping through the slums and villages of northern Angola. Within months, more than 200 people have died, medical services have collapsed and aid workers are on the brink of exhaustion. At 23, Peter Apps was just starting out as a foreign correspondent when Reuters sent him into the heart of the outbreak to get the story. In “Before Ebola: Dispatches from a Deadly Outbreak” Apps recalls in vivid, unflinching detail the horrors of life in a hot zone, the compassion of those trying to contain it, and how a terrified young journalist came of age in a time of almost unbearable crisis. Peter Apps is a global defense correspondent for Reuters news, currently dividing his time between London and Washington, D.C. In September 2006, Apps broke his neck in a minibus crash while covering the Sri Lankan civil war, leaving him largely paralyzed from the shoulders down. Cover design by Kristen Radtke.

We Can All Do Better


Bill Bradley - 2012
    The eighteen-year New Jersey Senator, financial and investment adviser, Olympic and NBA athlete, national radio host, and bestselling author has lived in the United States as both political insider and outsider, national sports celebrity and behind-the-scenes confidante, leader and teammate. His varied experiences help to inform his unique and much-sought-after point of view on Washington and the country at large.   In We Can All Do Better, for the first time since the financial meltdown and since the worst of the intensifying political gridlock, Bradley offers his own concise, powerful, and highly personal review of the state of the nation. Bradley argues that government is not the problem. He criticizes the role of money and politics, explains how continuing on our existing foreign policy, electoral, and economic paths will mean a diminished future, and lays out exactly what needs to be done to reverse course.   Breaking from the intransigent long-held viewpoints of both political parties, and with careful attention to our nation’s history, Bradley passionately lays out his narrative. He offers a no-holds-barred prescription on subjects including job creation, deficit reduction, education, and immigration. While equally critical of the approaches of the Tea Party and Occupy Movements, he champions the power of individual Americans to organize, speak out, bridge divisions, and he calls on the media to assume a more responsible role in our national life. As this moving call to arms reminds us, we can all—elected officials, private citizens, presidents—do a better job of moving our country forward. Bradley is perhaps the best guide imaginable, with his firsthand knowledge of governments’ inner-workings, the country’s diversity, and the untapped potential of the American people.

Who Gets What: Fair Compensation after Tragedy and Financial Upheaval


Kenneth R. Feinberg - 2012
    What they had in common was their aftermath -- each required compensation for lives lost, bodies maimed, livelihoods wrecked, economies and ecosystems upended. In each instance, an objective third party had to step up and dole out allocated funds: in each instance, Presidents, Attorneys General, and other public officials have asked Kenneth R. Feinberg to get the job done. In Who Gets What?, Feinberg reveals the deep thought that must go into each decision, not to mention the most important question that arises after a tragedy: why compensate at all? The result is a remarkably accessible discussion of the practical and philosophical problems of using money as a way to address wrongs and reflect individual worth.

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care


T.R. Reid - 2009
    R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can’t seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own—including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada—where he finds inspiration in example. Reid sees problems too: He finds poorly paid doctors in Japan, endless lines in Canada, mistreated patients in Britain, spartan facilities in France. In addition to long-established systems, Reid also studies countries that have carried out major health care reform. The first question facing these countries—and the United States, for that matter—is an ethical issue: Is health care a human right?The Healing of America lays bare the moral question at the heart of our troubled system, dissecting the misleading rhetoric surrounding the health care debate: Is health care a human right?

Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary


Timothy Snyder - 2020
    Unable to stand, barely able to think, he waited for hours in an emergency room before being correctly diagnosed and rushed into surgery. Over the next few days, as he clung to life and the first light of a new year came through his window, he found himself reflecting on the fragility of health, not recognized in America as a human right but without which all rights and freedoms have no meaning.And that was before the pandemic. We have since watched American hospitals, long understaffed and undersupplied, buckling under waves of coronavirus patients. The federal government made matters worse through willful ignorance, misinformation, and profiteering. Our system of commercial medicine failed the ultimate test, and thousands of Americans died.In this eye-opening cri de coeur, Snyder traces the societal forces that led us here and outlines the lessons we must learn to survive. In examining some of the darkest moments of recent history and of his own life, Snyder finds glimmers of hope and principles that could lead us out of our current malaise. Only by enshrining healthcare as a human right, elevating the authority of doctors and medical knowledge, and planning for our children's future can we create an America where everyone is truly free.

The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care


Eric J. Topol - 2011
    But the digital world has hardly pierced the medical cocoon. Until now. Beyond reading email and surfing the Web, we will soon be checking our vital signs on our phone. We can already continuously monitor our heart rhythm, blood glucose levels, and brain waves while we sleep. Miniature ultrasound imaging devices are replacing the icon of medicine—the stethoscope. DNA sequencing, Facebook, and the Watson supercomputer have already saved lives. For the first time we can capture all the relevant data from each individual to enable precision therapy, prevent major side effects of medications, and ultimately to prevent many diseases from ever occurring. And yet many of these digital medical innovations lie unused because of the medical community’s profound resistance to change. In The Creative Destruction of Medicine, Eric Topol—one of the nation’s top physicians and a leading voice on the digital revolution in medicine—argues that radical innovation and a true democratization of medical care are within reach, but only if we consumers demand it. We can force medicine to undergo its biggest shakeup in history. This book shows us the stakes—and how to win them.

The Economics of Discontent: From Failing Elites to The Rise of Populism


Jean-Michel Paul - 2019
    Houses, health care and higher education have become unaffordable to a majority of people, while the burden of unregulated monopolies, globalization and uncontrolled immigration has fallen disproportionately on the lower and middle classes. Wrapped in political correctness, an increasingly out of touch Western elite continues catering to special interests and fails to grasp the urgency for change. Populist movements harnessing public anger appear unable to propose and implement effective solutions. The last financial crisis was bad enough. But the next crisis will spread deeper and wider. And yet we stand economically, politically and most of all intellectually unprepared. This book is the story of how we have arrived at the brink of disaster and how we can move away from the win-lose policies of recent decades to restore much-needed balance.

Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans


Wendell Potter - 2010
    This former senior VP of CIGNA explained how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they skew political debate with multibillion-dollar PR campaigns designed to spread disinformation.Potter had walked away from a six-figure salary and two decades as an insurance executive because he could no longer abide the routine practices of an industry where the needs of sick and suffering Americans take a backseat to the bottom line. The last straw: when he visited a rural health clinic and saw hundreds of people standing in line in the rain to receive treatment in stalls built for livestock.In Deadly Spin, Potter takes readers behind the scenes to show how a huge chunk of our absurd healthcare spending actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits. Whatever the fate of the current health care legislation, it makes no attempt to change that fundamental problem. Potter shows how relentless PR assaults play an insidious role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake-from climate change to defense policy. Deadly Spin tells us why-and how-we must fight back.

I Do Not Consent: My Fight Against Medical Cancel Culture


Simone Gold - 2020