Sick Money

The pharmaceutical industry is broken. From the American hedge fund manager who put the price of an AIDS pill up from $13.50 to $750 overnight to the children's cancer drugs left intentionally to expire in a Spanish warehouse, the signs are all around. A system that was designed to drive innovation and patient care has been co-opted to drive profit.

What drugs are being researched, how medicines are priced, who has access to which medicines is now being dictated by share-holder value, not the good of the public - who enjoy ever-diminishing benefits for ever-higher prices. Drugs companies are being fined for bribing doctors in Eastern Europe while patients desperate for life-saving medicines are being driven to the black market in search of drugs the NHS can't afford.

Sick Money argues that the way we research medicines and pay for them is no longer working. Unless we take action we risk a dramatic decline in the pace of drug development and a future in which medicines are only available to the highest bidder. In this book Billy Kenber reports from the frontline of the Big Pharma battles, investigates how Covid-19 has changed the industry (for better or worse), and offers a diagnosis of an industry in crisis and a prescription for how we can fight back.