Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines

by Alexander Zaitchik

An authoritative look at monopoly medicine from the dawn of patents through the race for COVID-19 vaccines and how the privatization of public science has prioritized profits over people.

Owning the Sun tells the story of one of the most contentious fights in human history: the legal right to control the production of lifesaving medicines. Medical science began as a discipline geared toward the betterment of all human life, but the merging of research with intellectual property and the rise of the pharmaceutical industry warped and eventually undermined its ethical foundations. Since the Second World War, federally funded research has facilitated most major medical breakthroughs, yet these drugs are often wholly controlled by price-gouging corporations with growing international ambitions. Why does the U.S. government fund the development of medical science in the name of the public, only to relinquish exclusive rights to drug companies, and how does such a system impoverish us, weaken our responses to global crises, and, as in the case of AIDS and COVID-19, put the world at risk?
 
Outlining how generations of public health and science advocates have attempted to hold the line against Big Pharma and their allies in government, Alexander Zaitchik’s first-in-kind history documents the rise of medical monopoly in the United States and its subsequent globalization. From the controversial arrival of patent-wielding German drug firms in the late nineteenth century, to present-day coordination between industry and philanthropic organizations—including the influential Gates Foundation—that stymie international efforts to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, Owning the Sun tells one of the most important and least understood histories of our time.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Politics, Medical, Medicine, Health

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Reviews

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not bad enough that meds cost a lot. Or that they mysteriously cost more in the USA than anywhere else, despite being Proudly Made in USA. Drugmakers have managed to turn laws, justice, healthcare, trade agreements and even foreign policy upside down for their own benefit. The constitution, free trade, IP law, patents, the FDA, the FTC, the WTO and even the COVID-19 pandemic are being co-opted and abused to raise Big Pharma above the law and make it invulnerable. In Owning The Sun, Alexander Zaitchik pulls together the absolutely astonishing history of how US drugmakers bullied and lied their way to overturning anything and anyone who stood in their way. By hammering at it ceaselessly, they have convinced every administration that they could not survive unless they operated absolute monopolies in their products. And so their monopolies are sanctified. And continually reinforced and improved with new laws. It is never enough.

The result is drug prices that bear no connection whatsoever to their cost, their sales volumes, or even their effectiveness. Pills that cost nineteen cents apiece can be priced at hundreds of dollars per pill, and there is no one anywhere who can say no. They can ignore entire countries because they would not be profitable enough, and no substitutes are allowed. They are in effect, killing people at will. And again, there is no one who can say no. Put this book down at your peril; it is critical to know how this came to be.

Here's how it used to be. The Founders were against patents. Period. The USA was renown for ignoring patents, trademarks and copyrights from other countries. The attitude in America was to be open, to share. For example, Benjamin Franklin patented none of his inventions, not even the ubiquitous Franklin stove. He fully expected someone to improve on it. Chemists couldn't wait to publish test results, so that others might be inspired to find the next step. For anyone to claim the ultimate product as their exclusive own simply because they added the latest touch was unheard of, unacceptable and immoral.

Zaitchik cites Joseph M. Gabriel, "the preeminent historian of nineteenth-century American medical ethics and mores:" “For most physicians, there was little difference between patenting and secrecy when it came to drugs. Both were considered unethical forms of selfish monopoly. Indeed, it was generally assumed that patented remedies and quack nostrums were the same thing.”

Patent medicines were a joke. Anyone who patented a pill or a syrup was up to no good. Zaitchik says they were products offered "by P. T. Barnum and other fraudsters of bright plumage and no scientific training." Some patent medicines could kill, most were worthless, and makers settled on the cheapest ingredients available.

American drugmakers were not only against patent medicines, they used to be solidly behind full disclosure. Zaitchik says Francis Stewart, CEO of Parke-Davis in 1909 "argued that patents blocked competition, suppressed innovation, and incentivized companies to delay publication and otherwise obstruct the free flow of information that is central to the scientific enterprise. Monopolies, Stewart concluded, 'make the existence of professional pharmacy impossible.'”

Drugs in particular needed this kind of scientific openness to generate their value. There could be no progress without sharing. Patents would cut off access and raise prices, the Founders said, before the fact. This could never be allowed in the new United States of America. The American government was only too pleased to help. It generously funded research and whole laboratories in the frenzied search for healthcare solutions. Without government largesse, meds would be precisely nowhere today.

And yet. Over the decades, the drugmakers nibbled at government, obtaining seemingly minor changes here and there, that appeared mostly harmless at the time. Brand names were permitted alongside chemical names. Patents were allowed. Patents were extended. Generics were driven out. Patents were granted even without novel molecules. Patents were allowed for a change in packaging or delivery. Patents were allowed for every process of every component within a product. Big Pharma forced its model on the rest of the world, still stuck in the silly sharing mode. And finally, everything became a trade secret.

When they grew big and arrogant enough, drugmakers expanded their pressure outwards. Switzerland did not allow drug patents until 1977. Italy and Sweden began allowing them only in 1978, and Spain in 1992. And that was before the real pressure was applied to give it total monopoly globally.

Back in the USA, the drugmakers scored victory after victory. The government itself was cut out of the profits from its own funding grants. One might think that the group providing the money, the facilities and even the scientists would retain an ownership stake in the final product. But in the USA, that would be incorrect. Idiotic fights broke out in Congress over government ownership of its own discoveries by government scientists. It was nailed down during the Reagan administration; government was the problem, not the solution. Government could spend, but not take part in the fruits, only the failures. Some in Congress could not believe anyone would think government was entitled to participate in the success of its investments. They spoke loudest, fueled by the industry. They turned the world upside down.

To understand just how perverse this is, imagine it wasn't pills but nuclear weapons, and (say) Raytheon claimed total ownership of the resulting atomic bomb, and the government had no say in where it was sold, to whom it was sold, or the price. That's America's Big Pharma model.

Zaitchik says after the FDR New Deal era of regulation, Harry Truman was forever vetoing bills to give the government less privilege than the employers it regulated. Because (as George Carlin said) Democrats were all about people, and Republicans were all about property. They kept coming back for more property rights. Pushed by drug cash, their absurd claims have led to ever longer intellectual property rights as trademarks, copyrights and patents, and unassailable monopoly status for the corporations owning them. Not even Donald Trump could get them to lower a price. They've locked it in and bow to no one.

Meanwhile, sane people on the outside pointed to how absurd it was, throughout this whole slide to oblivion. "If a self-respecting government patent policy were to result 'in hesitation on the part of large industrial concerns to participate in the work,' declared Phillip White, of the Rockefeller Institute, 'this will be all to the good, since such concerns do not need Government support, and small businesses and the general public stand only to gain from a rigorous patent policy.'”

But the whole game was precisely to cut out small business. Keep everything possible out of the hands of competitors, and enjoy the resulting monopoly, milking consumers for all they were worth. And if consumers could not pay, they might as well die, because they were of no possible use to drugmakers.

The one big reversal came in October of 1963, when President Kennedy issued an executive order saying: "the government shall normally acquire or reserve the right to acquire the principal or exclusive rights to any inventions made in the course of or under the contract." Sanity at last, but not for long.

In 1980, the Bayh-Dole bill would force the government to prove the drug produced from its investment would perform better in its hands. Then Reagan applied it to all products from all corporations. Things just got crazier and crazier, and the drugmakers lapped it up. By the time Reagan signed his executive order, “The stage has perhaps been reached at which almost every biological advance discovered in American universities is made by, or made known before publication to, someone who has a possible commercial interest in keeping it secret," Zaitchik says. The exact opposite of the Founders' intentions.

Today, universities are as bad as as the drugmakers, racing to file patents, building up patent portfolios at all costs, and defending them from anyone seeking to improve on them or just use them. Again, thanks to massive government subsidies. Big Pharma disease has infected the most sharing sector of society, higher education.

At the same time, the drugmakers attacked the generics, usually manufactured by small independent outfits. The idea of the patent was to protect the inventor for a short period of time. It was always meant to expire. Once off patent, anyone could make the chemically identical drug, using the description in the patent. But that would interfere with the monopoly. So Big Pharma campaigned to poison generics in everyone's mind. They called them unethical (!) fraudulent and a threat to public health. Only recognized brands could be trusted. By 1970, they had convinced all 50 states to ban generic drugs.

Zaitchik says: "What kind of industry can weather the rise of competition that undercuts its prices by 65 percent, on products accounting for 40 percent of its market, and not only maintain its profit margins, but actually increase them? An industry with monopoly control of the remaining 60 percent."

When meds got so expensive that the states had to allow generics again, Big Pharma found ways to stop them anyway. They would make a small change in the drug or the package and obtain a new patent, starting the clock all over again. Or they would simply pay the generic maker to delay production for a few years. The generic maker would receive a large payment for doing nothing at all, and the payment hardly made a dent in the profits that continued to pour in for the branded version. This gave drugmaker time to make a patentable change in the formulation. In the drug biz, this is known as evergreening. They're not even the least bit ashamed of it.

The big drugmakers got it down to the point where 10% of branded drugs (with extended patents) accounted for 80% of drug sales. This means that even if generics were available on 90% of drugs, their share would be tiny. Some drugs show 100 attempts to extend patents. No other developed nations allows this price gouging.

But that wasn't enough. Big Pharma went after generics where they lived, like India, whose generic industry got a big boost from the UN itself. A (rare) genuine success story. It was a healthy industry, producing inexpensive generic drugs for a poor nation. American drugmaker Pfizer called it "an outrage that constituted an attack on 'the principle underlying the international economic system.'”

"In fact, no such principle underlay the international economic system," Zaitchik says, in his lovely, direct and hard-hitting way. "The deepest patent traditions were territorial. Drug patents, as the Pfizer executive well knew, had extremely shallow roots even in the richest countries of the north, where they cut against centuries of moral, ethical, legal, and scientific norms. It was not the 'pirate nations' of the global south and Far East who were waging war on norms and principles. It was Pfizer."

But it still wasn't enough. Bill Clinton sent the sainted Al Gore to third world countries to threaten them with loss of aid and massive economic sanctions unless they made their patent systems match America's. The immediate result was a multiplying of the cost of meds in those countries, and the poor, ie. most of the people, had to go without as no non-branded choices were permitted any longer.

Clinton's actions had just as big ramifications back home. The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 enshrined Trade Secrets. Any kind of “undisclosed information” was eligible to be a trade secret. "Unlike patents," Zaitchik says. "claims on 'undisclosed information' have no term limit. This voids the original patent bargain not once, but twice. It keeps knowledge central to the invention from entering the public domain, and in doing so unnaturally extends its control of the market. Instead of providing society with meaningful collateral in exchange for a temporary monopoly, companies hand off partial maps to technologies they have no intention of revealing in full— fragments intended to frustrate, obfuscate, and occlude, providing knowledge that’s necessary but not sufficient to actually make the thing." Everything, but absolutely everything became a trade secret. User directions, marketing materials, everything. Big pharma closed the loop, making itself completely untouchable, forever. It made once precious patents a meaningless waste of time. Now everything was protected.

The nonsense became clearly visible with COVID-19 vaccines, as Big Pharma flat out refused to share anything at all, then complained about China, which had been totally open and sharing. Working with Australia, China immediately published the initial genomic footprint of the virus, so that vaccines might be developed all over the world. But manufacturing facilities with spare capacity remained empty as Big Pharma kept everything a trade secret. Bottlenecks in supply and playing one country off against another in pricing ran rampant and kept third world nations vaccine-free. This is the benefit of monopoly. Millions die in the name of trade secrets.

One person who bought into the lies big time was Bill Gates. He spouted the drugmakers' monopoly credo unreservedly. The COVID-19 pandemic could only be handled with branded vaccines in private hands. Price, availability and distribution would utterly fail if public entities were allowed in on the deployment. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has been accumulating power for decades, dictated how vaccinations were to work outside the global North. The result has been an acknowledged total disaster, with vaccines essentially unavailable throughout the South, thanks to Bill Gates. The new, kinder, gentler and more generous Bill Gates is the same old greedy, vicious Bill Gates, posing as an elder statesman.

I will never forget in the early years of the web, when Microsoft engineers produced a graphics-capable browser to be used in Windows for accessing the internet. At the internal presentation, Gates wanted to know what its price would be. When told it was meant to be free with Windows, Gates screamed at them "That's Communism!" So with medicine. Gates gets his own whole chapter in Owning The Sun, the only individual so honored.

The examples are endless. Big Pharma is damned by its own words and actions. Continuously. There is an entire chapter on AIDS, where Big Pharma decided that AZT would cost ten thousand dollars a year, for life. A nice annuity from each Northern customer. But South Africans couldn't afford it, so the country quickly became the black hole of AIDS deaths. Big Pharma never even blinked.

Zaitchik doesn't even mention it, but this immediately reminded me of the more recent campaign to block drug imports - of their own drugs - from other countries. In Canada, a major, close and safe source for these imports, prices are typically nothing like American prices. I clearly remember one annoyance - antihistamines. Claritin and Zyrtec were actually prescription drugs in the USA, and cost $120 a bottle. In Canada, they were off the shelf antihistamines, costing $20 a bottle, and if you pulled the $2 manufacturer's coupon out of the dispenser, even less.

The nerve of some Americans to buy Canadian infuriated the drugmakers. They developed a paranoic campaign lambasting the Canadian import as counterfeit, fraudulent, ineffective and potentially dangerous for Americans to take - even though they were the same drugs made by the same company. They hammered at it until it became illegal - a crime involving sending foreign-sourced drugs through the mails. Anything for a buck.

There were some brave people in government who tried their best to push back. People like Thurman Arnold and Estes Kefauver are thoroughly profiled, and their efforts thoroughly recounted. But money talked louder than they could as Big Pharma simply rode out the storms while working behind the scenes to grab even more power. It is all documented here in direct and incriminating detail, told dramatically by Alexander Zaitchik.

The unstinting selfishness of Big Pharma still knows no bounds: "'We did not develop this product for the Indian market, let’s be honest,' said Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers when asked by a Bloomberg reporter why his company didn’t license production of its cancer drug Nexavar in India. 'We developed this product for Western patients who can afford this product.'"

If the powerful and fast-paced Owning The Sun doesn't cause headlines and create a major scandal, nothing will.

The Founders would be aghast.

David Wineberg

If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Owning the Sun is probably more of a 4-star book in most respects but the importance and timeliness of it bumps it up to a 5 for me. This is not a book of ranting and raving, or even just a book about the moral bankruptcy of monopoly medicine and big pharma. This is a detailed history with the dots being connected.

This is a far more nuanced problem than most of us realize. I can come up with a couple of valid and pithy comments to sum up my feelings against monopoly medicine, just as those supporting it can likely do so as well. The problem is that those simplified talking points will emphasize one r two aspects of the issue that suits our respective positions. This book, while more in line with my thinking than those supporting capitalism over human lives, lays out the subtle changes that developed over the years so that intellectual property has become the sledgehammer with which the rich and powerful can pound most of the world into poverty and poor health, all in one monstrous blow.

I would recommend this book to everyone concerned about the ways in which the claim of intellectual property, even when funded in large part by government, serve only to line the pockets of those who actually had little or nothing to do with the initial discovery (think Shkreli for example). There are ways to combat this and make medicine about, oh, I don't know, maybe helping people live healthy lives rather than bankrupt them to pay for C-level yachts. This book arms us with the knowledge of how we got here so we can change course.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Yuliya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting factually, but a bit dry on delivery. Would give it a solid 4.5 :)

[Dr. Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating. Makes me hate big pharms (especially in the US) even more :/

[Casey (ish-i-ness) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great explanation of the history of patents and monopolies in the United States. Obviously the focus is on pharmaceuticals but a lot of the information applies to anything. I don’t how how you could read this book and think our current system should continue. All of this needs to be dismantled. But no one pays enough attention to actually know what’s going on. Read this book and find out.

[Raphael Vitalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished Owning the Sun by Alex Zaitchik. It is an amazing accomplishment of research, organization, and writing skills.

The book covers a staggering span of U.S. history, some 244 years. It documents the evolution of U.S. and Western world policy with regard to two separate but interrelated issues: (1) the question of ownership of knowledge and (2) the progressive exploitation of such ownership by the pharmaceutical industry to create its monopolistic control of not just medications but healthcare. Zaitchik accomplishes this while sustaining the reader’s interest with an engaging narrative style.

The book reveals the dichotomies of perspectives on the question of ownership of knowledge as related to issuing patents and copyrights dating back to the writing of the U.S. Constitution.
On the one hand, there were people such as (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin) who understood that knowledge drives the discovery of new methods that advance and benefit humankind; that all new ideas build on what is already known, therefore no one can claim any idea as wholly theirs; that the sharing of knowledge stimulates others to think in new ways that further propel the advancement of humankind; and that the restriction of people’s access to new knowledge can only hinder new discovery and slow the progress of humankind. Beneath their position is a view of people as being natively inclined to inquire and discover. They viewed science as a cooperative endeavor to which we all contribute and from which we all should benefit.

On the other hand, there were people (James Madison, George Washington) who argued for the necessity of ownership of knowledge through patents so that monetary gains could be made by the originator of the new knowledge—an essentially capitalist position. They saw humankind as driven by self-interest and the desire to accumulate wealth. If there were no wealth advantage to gain from producing new ideas, presumably, no one would bother thinking or generating new knowledge. Thus, people need to be incentivized to produce new knowledge and only the monetary gain acquired from ownership of new ideas would suffice as their incentive.
The book documents the recurring battles between these two groups across two centuries. The initial outcomes of these contests favored the capitalist position that only selfish monetary gain would drive people to think and develop new knowledge. Their early victories, however, were forced to incorporate the caveat that private gain had to result in public benefit. But, the book records, beginning with President Jackson, the whole notion of knowledge as property to be managed and controlled by its owners was adopted. With that adoption, property rights trumped all other concerns, especially the notion that private gain had to result in public benefit.

From that point forward, the gates containing monopolistic interests swung open with more lenient patent requirements (e.g., substances found in nature could be patented whereas previously they could not be), reduced enforcement of laws against monopolistic practices, and reticence by the government to use its power to ensure that the public interest was served.

The books central focus is on the pharmaceutical industry’s opportunistic and egoistic drive to maximize its profits through the leveraging of patents and proprietary knowledge, political influence, public propaganda campaigns, the seduction of university-sponsored research to embrace closed rather than open research policies, and the American Medical Associations from its advocacy for free access to knowledge to its support of knowledge ownership for profit.

The book documents how Big Pharma’s has left the people of this world captives of their industry. The effects of their efforts have extended well beyond their monopolistic control of access to medications and the impoverishment produced by their systematic looting of public wealth. As this industry climbed to its current position of power, it corrupted other professions and institutions in ways that may no longer be reversible. The decision makers who controlled university sponsored science, the medical professions, and the healthcare industry all succumbed to the power of money as it synergistically connected with their own egoistic aims.

This book is a must read for understanding the significance of patents and trade secrets in amassing wealth through monopoly power, the use of that wealth to establish political power and corrupt institutions and professions to support their ends, and the leveraging of these outcomes to further amass private wealth and impoverish society as a whole.

[Dale Dewitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense, well researched assault on the patent system as it currently stand. Mr Zaitchik clearly lays out the path that the current drug industry evolved to be both creator and owner of knowledge, even if that knowledge is built on the research of the past.. I felt that some of the information needed to be a bit condensed but overall it was a book that highlights how ownership of patents can lead to monopolies and huge prices for us as consumers.

[YHC · Rating 3 out of 5]

from Grok
### 書籍重點精華

《Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines》（2022年由Counterpoint出版社出版，作者為調查記者Alexander Zaitchik）是一本揭露製藥壟斷歷史的批判性著作，聚焦美國公共資金資助的醫療科學如何被私人企業壟斷，導致藥價高漲、危機應對遲緩與全球不公。作者從19世紀德國藥廠引入專利開始，追溯到COVID-19疫苗的全球分配爭議，強調這是「人民歷史」——從公眾倡導者的視角，記錄Big Pharma如何透過專利、遊說與政策操縱，扭曲醫療倫理，將公共財產轉為私人利潤。書中批評「雙重保護機制」：政府資助研究，企業卻獨占專利，導致如AIDS與COVID危機中數百萬人無法負擔治療。

全書結構以時間線為主軸，從開頭的專利起源，到中段新政與戰後轉變，再到後半部的全球化壟斷與COVID案例。核心論點是：醫療科學本應為公共福祉，但資本主義邏輯（尤其是芝加哥學派新自由主義）將其商品化，造成「知識壟斷」，損害全球健康。作者樂觀呼籲改革：強化專利異議、推動公共製造與國際合作，讓醫療回歸「公共產品」本質。

以下是書籍精華要點，濃縮核心洞見：

1. **公共科學的私有化轉型**：美國政府資助大部分醫療研究（稅金與NIH預算），但專利法（如Bayh-Dole法案）允許企業獨占成果，創造「免費午餐」——公帑養出藥物，企業收割壟斷利潤。這導致藥價暴漲（美國藥物成本全球最高），並阻礙危機應對，如AIDS時期AZT專利延長造成數十萬人死亡。

2. **歷史轉折點與權力鬥爭**：從19世紀德國藥廠（如Bayer）引入化學專利，挑戰美國「共和科學」傳統（知識共享），到1930年代新政反壟斷（如Thurman的「陽光法案」），再到二戰後青黴素公共生產轉為私人壟斷。作者強調，公眾倡導者（如農民與醫師）屢次抗爭，但總被企業遊說與政府盟友壓制。

3. **全球化與新自由主義加速**：1980年代芝加哥學派與里根時代推崇「知識產權」為自由市場神聖，WTO的TRIPS協議將美國壟斷模式輸出全球，阻礙發展中國家仿製藥生產。慈善組織（如比爾·蓋茲基金會）表面公益，實則強化專利壁壘，延緩COVID疫苗全球供應。

4. **後果與改革願景**：壟斷導致「反公共健康」——高價阻礙創新、加劇不平等（如COVID中富國囤積疫苗，窮國僅5%覆蓋率），並弱化危機準備。作者主張「專利異議」與公共製造模式（如 Jonas Salk 的脊髓灰質炎疫苗），呼籲政策改革以優先人類福祉而非利潤。

這些要點突顯作者的批判視野：製藥壟斷不是「自然進化」，而是權力鬥爭的產物；認識歷史，就能推動變革。

### 舉例（書中或相關應用實例）

書中充滿歷史案例與人物故事，揭示壟斷如何犧牲生命。以下是典型例子（直接來自書中描述，部分延伸應用）：

1. **阿斯匹靈的專利爭議（19世紀德國藥廠入侵）**：Bayer公司將公共知識的柳樹皮萃取（阿斯匹靈原型）專利化，透過遊說美國專利局，強迫全球藥廠支付版稅。這標誌「化學專利」時代開端，農民與醫師抗議「專利農奴制」，但失敗。書中以此開頭，說明早期美國如何從知識共享轉向私有，導致藥價上漲10倍。

2. **青黴素的公共 vs. 私人轉變（二戰後）**：戰時美國政府資助公共生產青黴素，拯救數百萬士兵，無專利限制。但戰後，企業遊說轉為私人壟斷，Pfizer等公司獨占市場，藥價飆升。作者用此對比 Jonas Salk 的脊髓灰質炎疫苗（Salk 拒絕專利，稱「專利屬於大眾」），強調公共模式如何加速全球拯救。

3. **AZT與AIDS危機（1980年代）**：Burroughs Wellcome公司將公共研究的AZT專利延長，定價每月1000美元（1987年），導致數十萬AIDS患者無法負擔而死亡。書中描述患者遊行與異議運動，批評這是「最昂貴藥物」案例，凸顯專利如何在危機中優先利潤而非生命。

4. **COVID-19疫苗與蓋茲基金會（2020年代）**：Moderna高管在疫苗試驗成功後拋售3000萬美元股票，Pfizer拒絕技術轉移給窮國。比爾·蓋茲遊說反對TRIPS豁免，堅持「市場力量」分配，導致全球疫苗不均（富國囤積，窮國覆蓋率低於10%）。書中以此結尾，警告壟斷如何延長疫情，呼籲公共生產改革。

這些例子不僅批判企業貪婪，還讚揚異議者（如19世紀農民與AIDS活動家）的抵抗，提供實踐啟發：從支持仿製藥到推動政策異議。如果你想深入，從「陽光法案」章讀起，它捕捉早期反壟斷精神。

[Adam Rosenbaum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shortly after WWII, our federal government funded the development of medicines, including vaccines, for the general public and then...wait for it....relinquished exclusive rights to the pharmaceutical industry. Ridiculous, obscene profits ensued, not a surprise. What followed is a still contentious debate about patents, intellectual property and the forces that drove this ungodly arrangement. Zaitchik tells the tale of German researchers, patent attorneys, and the unbridled growth and control of our monopolistic pharmaceutical industry. It's enlightening, emotionally wrenching and proves once again the profit before people paradigm that reflects capitalistic societies. Zaitchik uses plenty of examples, from aspirin to AIDS to Covid that illustrate corporate greed and their fallacious claims. I've left prescriptions at the pharmacy because they were too expensive and generics weren't available. I shutter to think of the thousands of folks whose lives are at stake and have to deal with this on a regular basis. Check it out.

[Thomas Shevis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely a must read. I cannot recommend this enough. It's a thorough history of the evolution of patents and monopoly control of medicine, mostly in the US, but also globally. Big pharma in particular, but other fields as well like technology have gutted the idea of an open scientific process and privatized human knowledge in a way that was unthinkable before the twentieth century.

Drug makers have consistently profited off of publicly funded research without giving any benefits back to the public. When the government has pushed back on this, they throw a tantrum and boost their lobbying to get their way. As globalization kicked off, they took this same act and expanded it to the world stage, using US unopposed hegemony to enforce their patents outside of the US, leading to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of preventable deaths.

Everything possible should be done to nationalize, destroy, punish, discard the pharmaceutical industry and any other industry that withholds human knowledge for the sake of increased profits.

[Delaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up when I received my job offer from the US patent and trademark office earlier this year (RIP) for a concise history lesson. I expected to learn more about how patents protect progress, small businesses, etc. What I actually learned was the ways in which large corporations and increasingly radical republicans, for essentially all of industrial US history, have twisted the patent system into a greedy, mutated limb of capitalism used to thwart global progress, stifle science, and exploit the public—especially re: pharmaceuticals. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: F*** johnson & johnson (and all the rest).

The author is credible and well-researched The writing itself was a bit bumbling at times, but I liked the timeline focus & structure overall. The explanation of nuances and historical figures over the decades made the history more interesting. The portions on the last 1 or 2 decades were subtly terrifying. I’m not sure why I was surprised to learn of yet another way in which Ronald Reagan presented as the dev*l reincarnate, but here we are. Boo.

3.5 stars

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating, bur I struggled to pay attention as there was a bit too much detail and too many names for me to manage well with an audiobook. The fact that bringing in meds from Canada to save money dates back to the 1910s with aspirin really horrified me. This country has been a wreck for a long time.

[Angelica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to learn how related to Bill Gates and current events.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was well researched. Good information. Just not what I was expecting and didn't really hold my attention.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve always known medication patents have created global medication pricing issues and that Big Pharma has a lot of influence and power, but I didn’t truly understand how complex and deep it is.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me so frustrated because I remembered some people's absolute disdain for human life

[Eila Mcmillin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Factually fascinating but the presentation I felt was not super compelling.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

rounding up from a 3.5