Drug Hunters (eBook)

The Improbable Quest to Discover New Medicines

Donald R. Kirsch, Ogi Ogas (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
328 Seiten
Arcade (Verlag)
978-1-62872-719-7 (ISBN)

Infos

The surprising, behind-the-scenes story of how our medicines are discovered, told by a veteran drug hunter.The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity by chewing, brewing, and snortingsome Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. tzi the Iceman, the five-thousand-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze-age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings. Nowadays, Big Pharma conglomerates spend billions of dollars on state-of the art laboratories staffed by PhDs to discover blockbuster drugs. Yet, despite our best efforts to engineer cures, luck, trial-and-error, risk, and ingenuity are still fundamental to medical discovery.The Drug Hunters is a colorful, fact-filled narrative history of the search for new medicines from our Neolithic forebears to the professionals of today, and from quinine and aspirin to Viagra, Prozac, and Lipitor. The chapters offer a lively tour of how new drugs are actually found, the discovery strategies, the mistakes, and the rare successes. Dr. Donald R. Kirsch infuses the book with his own expertise and experiences from thirty-five years of drug hunting, whether searching for life-saving molecules in mudflats by Chesapeake Bay or as a chief science officer and research group leader at major pharmaceutical companies.

Autor

Dr. Donald R. Kirsch has been a drug hunter for thirty five years, holds twenty-four drug-related patents, has written more than fifty papers, has been a reviewer for prestigious journals, a director, research group leader, and chief science officer at Wyeth, Cyanamid, Squibb, and Cambria Pharmaceuticals, and currently teaches drug discovery at Harvard Extension School. He lives in Bedford, MA.Ogi Ogas, PhD, is a professional science writer. He is the coauthor of A Billion Wicked Thoughts and Shrinks and has published articles in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Wired, Glamour, Seed, and Psychology Today. He lives in Boston, MA.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.12.2016
• Zusatzinfo: 15 B&W photos, 15 B&W illustrations
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Pharmakologie / Pharmakotherapie
• Themenwelt: Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: 3400 years • advanced medical technology • Alcohol • ancient Chinese medicine • Ancient medicine • anesthesia • Antibiotics • asprin • Bacteria • Big Pharma • books on aspirin • books on bronze-ages • books on cures • books on discoveries • books on ether • books on landmarks • books on medicines • books on molecules • books on opioids • books on penicillins • books on pharma • books on pills • books on quinines • books on researchers • books on specialists • books on surveys • books on syphilis • books on trial-and-errors • Bronze-age medicine • cures • dentistry • Discovery • drug development • Drugs • engineered medicines • Ether • expensive drugs • Frankincense • Genetics • Heroin • History • history of medicine • homeopathic Remedies • Human Development • Illness • Jesuit Bark • Juniper • Lipitor • Malaria • medical development • medical discoveries • medical memoir • Medical Research • Medications • Medicine • Memoir • modern medicine • narrative history • natural cures • neolithic medicine • Opium • Penicillin • Pharmaceutical • Pharmaceutical companies • pharmacology • pills • Placebo Effect • price • Prozac • Research • Science • scientific breakthroughs • scientific descoveries • Scientific research • snake oil • snakeroot • Specialist • Surgery • Sweep • synthetic drugs • synthetic medication • the Pill • Traditional medicines • Trial-and-Error • vaccines • Viagra
• ISBN-10: 1-62872-719-5 / 1628727195
• ISBN-13: 978-1-62872-719-7 / 9781628727197