Aargh!

As a pharmacologist myself I found the book contained some interesting back stories on the discovery and development of certain drugs. The mechanisms described were simplistic to a fault in some cases. But the pronunciation of many, perhaps most of the drug and chemical names, was awful. For this and similar books we need readers with a background - or extensive tutoring in the field - so that a lay person will hear the big words properly.

108 people found this helpful

I Wanted To Love This--

Really, I did. Anything that smacks of history? And then you add scientific sleuthing with sociology? It should've been a slam-dunk!
Alas, it needed editing. I realize that it wasn't even 8 hours, but it actually goes on and on here, way too in-depth there. I found my mind wandering.
There's plenty here that should be interesting: biology, genetics, medicinal mishaps causing death, a history of how the Pill came to be and how fraught it all was at the time. And it is indeed interesting to a certain point. I just wish there was more sleuthing involved.
Worth most of the time you'll spend on it, but I'm sorry I used a whole credit on it.

35 people found this helpful

History of modern pharmacology

Very interesting and relevant!

A a physician I use (on my patients) all of the drugs that this book covers. The book also covers pretty much all of the drug families. Should've read this much earlier.

33 people found this helpful

Absolutely fascinating

I loved this book! It tells the stories of how different medications came to exist - a compelling mix of history, science, politics, and sociology. Good narrator. I highly recommend this book.

23 people found this helpful

loved it!

Absolutely loved it. This is the type of books I enjoy - non-fiction, storytelling, history of science and discovery outlined in an easy-to-absorb manner, a series of cases (each curious, and all illustrating the changes in drug development over ~150 years).

19 people found this helpful

Fascinating

A very interesting book for anybody interested in medicine or pharmacy.
It turns out we are lucky a modern medicine can successfully treat so many diseases, since discovering medicines is still and has been, despite all the science advances, a lot of luck and serendipity.

17 people found this helpful

Makes me glad I live in the 21st century

This is a great read for others like me who harbor a failed but absurdly optimistic scientist inside him or herself. This book highlights the immense luck involved with discovering and refining seeds of promise to produce true medical breakthroughs.

13 people found this helpful

Nothing New

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No...unless they knew nothing about drugs at all.

Would you ever listen to anything by Donald R. Kirsch PhD and Ogi Ogas PhD again?

Probably not since they see to have nothing to say. Their history of pharmaceuticals was accurate enough but contained nothing not already in Wikapedia.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

The narrator was ok but he didn’t always pronounce the drug names(especially generic names) correctly.

Was The Drug Hunters worth the listening time?

No

Any additional comments?

I just have to wonder how this thing got published.

9 people found this helpful

Enjoyed it very much

Great book. Was much better than I expected with a ton if interesting stories and info. Want to listen to it again just in case I missed anything.

8 people found this helpful

Drugs and how to find them

I found this really interesting. Admittedly, I am ‘in the trade’, working in an Intensive Care Unit and doing some teaching about drugs and their different mechanisms of action, but I’m certainly no pharmacologist.

The book looks at a few major drug groups and gives you the story in each case: Antibiotics, vitamin C to prevent scurvy, beta blockers, insulin, the contraceptive pill, etc. A couple of things come over quite strongly. Firstly, the age in which humanity has used a scientific approach to looking for and designing drugs is very new – we’ve only been doing this for 50-odd years really.

For the vast majority of human history we had no idea about the cause of diseases, and if we ever found a substance to cure or palliate a disease, then this was just by trial and error.
However, even though we are now in a scientific era, there are still unscientific phenomena which play a big part in whether a drug is looked for, found, and then produced. Luck, the determination of individuals, and the profit motive of Big Pharma are three examples.

It is so expensive to bring a drug to market (in the ballpark of a billion dollars), that drug companies need to be assured that they will recover this amount in future sales. For this reason they are less likely to invest in antibiotics, antifungals and antivirals, because these are only taken for a short period. They are much more interested in drugs that are taken for long periods – usually for life. E.g. anti-hypertensives, cholesterol lowering drugs, and drugs to treat depression and schizophrenia.

Although this fact is disappointing, the book doesn’t set out to stick the boot in to Big Pharma. It is more a general overview of how drugs are found or designed, how they work, and the human stories behind them. If this is something that might interest you then I would wholeheartedly recommend the book.

6 people found this helpful