'Miracle Cure'
William Rosen, Viking, 358 pages, $28. In the 1930s, the advent of sulfa drugs represented a turning point for the health care industry, previously limited in its ability to fight infectious disease. Doctors now had a potential cure for strep, meningitis and gonorrhea, while patients were for the first time requesting a specific treatment by name. In "Miracle Cure" Rosen skillfully blends scientific, political and economic history to trace the development of antibiotics and how they underwrote the modern pharmaceutical trade. He dedicates much of his narrative to penicillin, which catalyzed the greatest change in both industry and clinical practice. For Rosen, part of what made penicillin's path so revolutionary was the government's reliance on private companies like Pfizer and Merck to produce large quantities of the compound as part of the war effort. The lucrative federal contracts these entities received muscled out competitors and established Big Pharma as we know it. "The only comparable events in American economic history were the deals that built the transcontinental railroad and allocated the radio broadcast spectrum." Other antibiotics followed, promising to cure diseases from typhus to tuberculosis. Enter the age of drug-resistant "superbugs," the consequence of corporate marketing, prescription-happy physicians and the use of growth-inducing antibiotics in livestock. Rosen's take on this crisis is understandably cursory; he died of cancer shortly after finishing the book. He does make clear, though, that the current pipeline is meager, and the future of antibiotics insecure.
NEW YORK TIMES
