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CHASING MEDICAL MIRACLES
By: Alex O'Meara
The Promise and Perils of Clinical Trials
Walker & Company
June 2009
On Sale: June 9, 2009
272 pages
ISBN: 0802716962
EAN: 9780802716965
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Journalist Alex OβMeara is one of the more than twenty million Americans enrolled in a clinical trialβthree times as many people as a decade ago. Indeed, clinical trials have become a $24 billion industry that is reshaping every aspect of health-care development and delivery in the United States and around the world. As OβMeara chronicles, twentieth-century medical trials have led to epic advances in health care, from asthma inhalers and insulin pumps to heart valves and pacemakers. And yet, although regulations safeguard against grossly unethical tests, significant problems are still associated with how clinical trials are carried out and reported. For example, despite eight clinical trials for Vioxx before the FDA approved it in 1998 for use as a painkiller, Merck took it off the market in 2004, too late for the eighty-eight thousand Americans who suffered heart attacks while taking Vioxx and the thirty-eight thousand who died. Chasing Medical Miracles is the first book to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the complicated world of clinical trials, revealing how a multibillion-dollar industry of private companies conducting them with little oversight has taken root and quietly become a major part of the American medical establishment. Whether you are participating in a clinical trial, considering that option, or interested in our medical system, Alex OβMearaβs ground-breaking book is essential reading.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - July 29, 2009
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