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 a pharmaceutical version of cops and robbers.”