Published this past March to critical acclaim, Gerald Posner’s PHARMA: Greed, Lies and the Poisoning of America is the first investigative history of how a handful of chemical companies morphed from morphine production during the Civil War to today’s trillion dollar a year pharmaceutical industry. Along the way, Posner explores those responsible for the lethal opioid crisis and also writes about pandemics and how they will change our lives going forward. He is joined by Raymond Elman, founding editor-in-chief of Inspicio, as they discuss how the drug industry has itself become addicted to outsized profits, often at the expense of treating patients
In Conversation: Exploring the Secret History of the American Drug Industry
In Conversation: Exploring the Secret History of the American Drug Industry
Author:
Gerald Posner, Raymond Elman
Raymond Elman
Artist, writer and editor Raymond Elman co-founded Provincetown Arts magazine in 1985. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Inspicio arts publication platform, which is sponsored by the School of Journalism + Media in The College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts at Florida International University. Elman’s paintings have been widely exhibited and are included in numerous collections. His large-scale portraits of Pulitzer Prize recipients Stanley Kunitz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alan Dugan and U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Elman holds a BS and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Gerald Posner
Gerald Posner has written twelve books, including Case Closed, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. His 2015 book, God’s Bankers, a two-hundred-year history of the finances of the Vatican, was a New York Times bestseller. Posner has written for many national magazines and papers, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Newsweek, and Time, and he has been a regular contributor to NBC, the History Channel, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, and FOX News. Pharmaceutical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines rank among some of the greatest advancements in human history. Yet exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs, safety recalls affecting tens of millions of Americans, and soaring rates of addiction and overdose on prescription opioids have caused many to lose faith in drug companies. In Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster) Posner introduces to us brilliant scientists, in-corruptible government regulators, and brave whistleblowers facing off against company executives often blinded by greed. Pharma also uncovers the real story of the Sacklers, the family that became one of America’s wealthiest from the success of OxyContin, their blockbuster narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis. The Sackler family saga are told against the startling chronicle of a powerful industry that sits at the intersection of public health and profits. Pharma reveals how and why American drug companies have put earnings ahead of patients. New York Times Book Review called it “A withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients . . . Pharma reads like
