“The $800 Million Pill: The Truth behind the Cost of New Drugs”

Powerful exposé of the pharmaceutical industry available online through Butler Community College L.W. Nixon Library


The L.W. Nixon Library, Butler Community College, El Dorado, KS, in partnership with netLibrary and The University of California Press, is pleased to offer online access to the full text of “The $800 Million Pill: The Truth behind the Cost of New Drugs.” In this gripping exposé of the drug industry, the author argues that American taxpayers are in fact footing the bill twice: once by supporting government-funded research and again by paying astronomically high prices for prescription drugs.
Written by Merrill Goozner, the former Chief Economics Correspondent at the Chicago Tribune, “The $800 Million Pill” offers a chilling glimpse into the Byzantine world of drug discovery and demonstrates that almost all the important new drugs of the past quarter-century actually originated from research at taxpayer-funded universities and at the National Institutes of Health. Goozner reports that once the innovative work is over, the pharmaceutical industry often steps in to reap the profit.
Goozner goes on to show how drug innovation is driven by dedicated scientists intent on finding cures for diseases, not by pharmaceutical firms whose bottom line often takes precedence over the advance of medicine. A university biochemist who spent twenty years searching for a single blood protein that later became the best-selling biotech drug in the world, a government employee who discovered the causes for dozens of crippling genetic disorders, and the Department of Energy-funded research that made the Human Genome Project possible--these engrossing accounts illustrate how medical breakthroughs actually take place.
“The $800 Million Pill” suggests ways that the government's role in testing new medicines could be expanded to eliminate the private sector waste driving up the cost of existing drugs. Pharmaceutical firms should be compelled to refocus their human and financial resources on true medical innovation, Goozner insists. This book is essential reading for everyone concerned about the politically charged topics of drug pricing, Medicare coverage, national health care, and the role of pharmaceutical companies in developing countries.
“The $800 Million Pill” will be available to L.W. Nixon Library patrons November 1-30. If you have already established a netLibrary account through L.W. Nixon Library, visit www.netLibrary.com and log in. If you do not have a netLibrary account, you can access “The $800 Million Pill” and create a netLibrary account from any L.W. Nixon library computer or through your Pipeline account. For more information about netLibrary or other services available through L.W. Nixon Library, please contact your librarian, Micaela Ayers, through this blog, at our website, or in our library facility.