Human Trials

Over fifty million people suffer from some form of autoimmune disease--multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus, and other afflictions in which the body attacks itself--none of them with a lasting cure. Susan Quinn has investigated the worlds where new autoimmune drugs are being developed: the research labs, the drug-company boardrooms, and the clinics where patients become "subjects" in the search for new medicines and treatments. Her story is one of real people: fiercely competing scientists, ambitious venture capitalists, and, anxious, sick human beings. She takes the reader inside these otherwise closed worlds, into the lead investigator's diaries, the tense closed-door meetings with investors, and the hopeful or heart-rending encounters in doctor's offices. Hers is the archetypal story of all medical research: the roller-coaster trip from the lab bench to the medicine cabinet, in which only a very few new drugs and treatments survive. Susan Quinn catches the hopes, triumphs, and crushing failures, the greed and the idealism in these dramatic human trials.