Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines

Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines

by Alexander Zaitchik
Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines

Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines

by Alexander Zaitchik

Hardcover

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Overview

For readers of Bad Blood and Empire of Pain, an authoritative look at monopoly medicine from the dawn of patents through the race for COVID-19 vaccines and how the privatization of public science has prioritized profits over people

Owning the Sun tells 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?

Outlining how generations of public health and science advocates have attempted to hold the line against Big Pharma and their allies in government, Alexander Zaitchik’s first-of-its-kind history documents the rise of privatized medicine in the United States and its subsequent globalization. From the controversial arrival of patent-wielding German drug firms in the late nineteenth century to present-day coordination between industry and philanthropic organizations—including the influential Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—that stymie international efforts to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, Owning the Sun tells one of the most important and least understood histories of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781640095069
Publisher: Catapult
Publication date: 03/01/2022
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 525,120
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Intercept, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy, VICE, and The Baffler, among many other publications. This is his third book. He lives in New Orleans.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

1 Origins: Rise of the Great American Patent 3

2 Ethical Medicine in the Republic of Science 22

3 Death of the Taboo: Sunshine in a Bottle 46

4 Thurman's Army: The New Deal Against Monopoly 57

5 Homesteading the Endless Frontier: Patents, Penicillin, and Superpower Science 69

6 The Birth of Big Pharma and the Ghost of Reform 91

7 The Making of a Monster 118

8 Black Pill: Neoliberalism and the Chicago Turn 135

9 Bayh-Dole and the Reagan Acceleration 153

10 The Most Expensive Drug Ever Sold: Generics, AIDS, and AZT 170

11 The World Trade Organization: Drug Monopolies at the End of History 191

12 COVID-19 and the Battle over Business as Usual 216

13 Pharma's Best Friend: Bill Gates and COVTD-19 230

14 Crown Jewels in a Black Box: Trade Secrets and Lies 243

Notes on Selected Sources 261

Acknowledgments 275

Index 277

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