The $800 Million Pill
The Truth behind the Cost of New Drugs
Chapter One
Me Too
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had every reason for optimism in the
winter of 1936. He had just won reelection in a landslide, and the
prospects for the more far-reaching of his New Deal reforms never looked
brighter. But just before Christmas, close aides brought word that his
only son, Franklin Delano Jr., had a bad case of tonsillitis. With her
son's fever soaring, Eleanor Roosevelt called in White House physician
George Tobey Jr. He feared the worst. The infection had seeped into the
blood, which in those days was a potentially fatal condition.
More out of desperation than any sense that it might help the young man,
Tobey gave the president's son a new German drug called Prontosil. When
news of the drug first appeared in the medical literature a year earlier,
most American doctors scoffed. How could a derivative of a chemical dye
cure a bacterial infection? But to Tobey's surprise, young Roosevelt's
fever quickly subsided. A few days later the press heralded bot ... read full excerpt from: The $800 Million Pill: The Truth behind the Cost of New Drugs ebook
