NYT Book Review –
April 19, 2020 – Posner envisions “Pharma” as a definitive history of the pharmaceutical industry “in its entirety” in a single volume. After all, he argues, people cannot really understand how firms like Bayer, Merck and Pfizer evolved into “sprawling pharma conglomerates that sell a trillion dollars of drugs annually” without understanding their early histories as pioneer peddlers of then-legal heroin and cocaine … The result is a withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients. Over 550 densely packed pages, Posner tells a tireless and occasionally tiring tale that reads like a pharmaceutical version of cops and robbers. There are chapters on the discovery and popularization of drugs for anxiety, for menopause, for pain management — each following a similar narrative arc…
