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Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines
Bottom of the pile
22
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
26/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Alexander Zaitchik
Publisher:
Counterpoint
Date:
March 1, 2022
The story of one of the most contentious fights in human history: the legal right to produce lifesaving medicines. Medical science began as a discipline geared toward the betterment of all human life, but the merging of research with intellectual property and the rise of the pharmaceutical industry warped and eventually undermined its ethical foundations. Since World War II, federally funded research has facilitated most major medical breakthroughs, yet these drugs are often wholly controlled by price-gouging corporations with growing international ambitions. Why does the U.S. government fund the development of medical science in the name of the public only to relinquish exclusive rights to drug companies, and how does such a system impoverish us, weaken our responses to crises, and, as in the cases of AIDS and COVID-19, put the world at risk?
What The Reviewers Say
The wide-ranging history of the patent and intellectual property system included in the book illustrates that Salk’s view was and is very much in the minority.
Expansive.
A biting study.
