Sunday, August 2, 2015

Vertex in Vortex: from Great to Ordinary

The first book I reviewed was Barry Werth's "The Antidote: Inside the World of New Pharma". I am re-publishing this review with slight modification. This book is about Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company founded in late 1980's with the noble idea to put the patients first, not Wall Street, when developing new medicine. 

Unfortunately, by the time it developed first in-house revolutionary drug against HepC (that was approved by FDA in 2011), it became a conventional big Pharma with the focus on quarterly earning and with little regard to patient's needs.

This transformation from good to ugly was especially apparent in how the corporate management discarded the people involved in initial stage of the company's development. This story reinforces well established concept that right ideas do not survive wrong people.   

Book's title is unusual. It has no relationship to the book's content. Book is easily readable but it is unnecessarily too long with many chapters jumping from one topic to another.

The author's written style is quite good and book is easy to read and  but it does not really tell any unique story worth making it into in your private library collection. 

So, if you have a chance to read it from you local library, go ahead and read it, but I would not recommend buying it. 

posted by David Usharauli



copyright © 2015 by David Usharauli


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