The Antidote: Inside the World of New Pharma

Barry Werth

Feb 2014 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Sean Pratt

About this audiobook

In 1989, the charismatic Joshua Boger left Merck, then America's most admired business, to found a drug company that would challenge industry giants and transform health care. Barry Werth described the company's tumultuous early days during the AIDS crisis in The Billion-Dollar Molecule, a celebrated classic of science and business journalism. Now he returns to tell a riveting story of Vertex's bold endurance and eventual success. The $325-billion-a-year pharmaceutical business is America's toughest and one of its most profitable. It is riskier and more rigorous at just about every stage than any other business, from the towering biological uncertainties inherent in its mission to treat disease; to the 30-to-1 failure rate in bringing out a successful medicine even after a molecule clears all the hurdles to get to human testing; to the multibillion-dollar cost of ramping up a successful product; to operating in the world's most regulated industry, matched only by nuclear power. Werth captures the full scope of Vertex's twenty-five-year drive to deliver breakthrough medicines. At a time when America struggles to maintain its innovative edge, The Antidote is a powerful inside look at one of the most intriguing and important business stories of recent decades.

About the author

Barry Werth is an award-winning journalist and the acclaimed author of six books. His landmark first book, The Billion-Dollar Molecule, recounts the founding and early struggles of Vertex. Werth's articles have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and GQ, among others.

Sean Pratt, a working actor for over twenty-five years, has performed at numerous regional theaters around the country. He is the author of To Be or Wanna Be, and he has recorded over seven hundred books in just about every genre, earning eight AudioFile Earphones Awards and four Audie Award nominations.