Sick Money

The Truth About the Global Pharmaceutical Industry

Paperback | 7 October 2021

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An urgent call to build a new model for the pharmaceutical industry, from the multi-award-winning Times journalist.

The pharmaceutical industry is broken. From the American hedge fund manager who put the price of an AIDS pill up from $13.50 to $750 overnight to the children's cancer drugs left intentionally to expire in a Spanish warehouse, the signs are all around. A system that was designed to drive innovation and patient care has been co-opted to drive profit.

What drugs are being researched, how medicines are priced, who has access to which medicines is now being dictated by share-holder value, not the good of the public - who enjoy ever-diminishing benefits for ever-higher prices. Drugs companies are being fined for bribing doctors in Eastern Europe while patients desperate for life-saving medicines are being driven to the black market in search of drugs the NHS can't afford.

Sick Money argues that the way we research medicines and pay for them is no longer working. Unless we take action we risk a dramatic decline in the pace of drug development and a future in which medicines are only available to the highest bidder. In this book Billy Kenber offers a diagnosis of an industry in crisis and a prescription for how we can fight back.

About the Author

Billy Kenber is an investigative journalist at the Times and has worked at the newspaper since 2010. He has won several accolades including prizes at the UK Press Awards, the British Journalism Awards and two prizes from the Medical Journalists' Association including the 2017 award for Outstanding Contribution to Health or Medical Journalism. In 2013 he won the Laurence Stern Fellowship and worked for the Washington Post for three months. He lives in London.

Industry Reviews

'Billy Kenber is one of the most promising young journalists in the land, and he has, unsurprisingly, produced a compelling debut which surprises, entertains and inspires dismay. An essential read'
SATHNAM SANGHERA

'We live in a medicated world. We take drugs for everything. But the story of how Big Pharma lost its moral compass, breaking the social contract with the public in order to over-price and over-medicate us with drugs costing, in some cases, 4000 times more than gold is an incredible untold story. Billy Kenber does a fantastic job, pulling apart the origins of the drugs industry and machinations of its shameless profiteers with surgical precision. From the business opportunity provided by AIDS and the magical invention of blockbusters, to the extraordinary house of cards of Concordia, which Billy exposed, it's quite a ride. A must read for anyone who wants to understand how the drugs industry really does its business'
JACQUES PERETTI

'A forensic and very readable account of the reforms needed to make the pharmaceutical industry serve the public good as well as private profit . . . Kenber's ground-breaking investigative reporting has . . . resulted in a change in the law in the UK, intervention by regulators, cuts in the price of some medicines, life-changing benefits for patients, savings of hundreds of millions of pounds for the NHS and record fines for drug firms'
ANDREW GRICE

'Powerful, gripping and rigorous, this book couldn't have come at a better time. Never has it been so important to delve into the tangled web behind the medicines and vaccines we all rely on. With years of research and reporting under his belt, Kenber is the perfect person to take us on this fascinating journey'
MAEVE McCLENAGHAN, author of NO FIXED ABODE

'A clever exploration of a scandal that affects everyone who uses - and pays for - the NHS. This is an enormously complex subject, but Kenber finds the interesting characters and fascinating details that bring the story to life. A great and important read'
HOLLY WATT, author of CASEY BENEDICT series

'A painstakingly researched and beautifully written history of the dark underbelly of the pharmaceutical industry, which never forgets to tell the stories of the vulnerable people harmed when these companies lose their moral compass. I could not put it down'
NIGEL PRAITIES, executive editor of the Pharmaceutical Journal

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