Marlo Coleen - Blood feud: the man who blew the whistle on one of the deadliest prescription drugs ever

A PLUME BOOK

BLOOD MEDICINE

KATHLEEN SHARP is an award-winning journalist and radio producer as well as the author of Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood and In Good Faith. She has won six awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, among other honors. She lives in California.

Praise for Blood Medicine

Kathleen Sharps Blood Medicine rivals Jonathan Harrs A Civil Action for best nonfiction book of the past twenty years. Its doubly amazing that Jan Schlichtmann, protagonist of A Civil Action, reappears as the crusading attorney in this latter work. In Sharps more than capable hands, this complex and intriguing story of a justice-driven drug salesman named Mark Duxbury going up against Big Pharmas greed and deception is irresistible. Blood Medicine should be required reading for anyone interested in the business of medicine and in Big Pharmas abuses and questionable drug therapies and practices. If thats not your issue, then simply read it as a high-stakes legal thriller. But whatever you do, get your hands on this book and read itBlood Medicine is nothing short of simply great.

John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of The Hunter

In a timely historical examination of the rapid diffusion of epoetin, Kathleen Sharp describes the confluence of aggressive, unethical marketing; a rush to shape, and then capitalize on, insurance coverage of a promising therapy for a desperate patient cohort; and the turning of a blind eye to medical ethics. The author documents how biotechnology concurrence led to widespread overuse of an unproven costly drug.

Questionable practices and policies and increasing demand for shrinking health-care dollars mandate that this cautionary tale cannot be ignored. As our country examines how inappropriate health-care services contribute to the growing economic crisis, policy makers must learn from this alarming and ongoing story. Particularly disturbing are the chronicled accounts of how a lack of science supporting clinical benefits did not deter broad overuse of this costly drug, with little concern for patient safety.

Dennis Cotter, president of the Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute, Bethesda, Maryland

Kathleen Sharp launches us into a sobering, insightful human journey full of heroes, hustlers, and corporate weapons. Weaving pharmaceutical history in a vividly written style reminiscent of E. L. Doctorow and Arthur Miller, Blood Medicine is a must-read to understand what we face every day hoping to stay alive. This should be required reading in all medical schools, a story of our modern quixotic truth tellers that needs to be told.

Andrew Davis, director of The Fugitive, Holes, and The Guardian

Sharp makes the potentially hard to grasp easy and compelling to follow.

The Associated Press

Kathleen Sharps writing style leads the reader effortlessly through this horrifying saga of deceit, greed, and human destruction. Her use of dialogue and description move the story along at a rapid pace, much like good fiction does. The book reads like a Robin Cook medical thriller and should be on every Americans bookshelfparticularly now as debates swirl around national health care and the solvency of Medicare.

New York Journal of Books

BLOOD MEDICINE

Blowing the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever

Kathleen Sharp

Previously published as Blood Feud

A PLUME BOOK

PLUME

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition as Blood Feud.

Copyright Kathleen Sharp, 2011

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:

Sharp, Kathleen.

Blood feud : the man who blew the whistle on one of the deadliest prescription drugs ever / Kathleen Sharp.

p. ; cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-525-95240-4 (hc.)

ISBN 978-0-452-29850-7 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-101-61713-7 (ePub)

I. Title.

[DNLM: 1. Duxbury, Mark. 2. McClellan, Dean. 3. Schlichtmann, Jan. 4. Amgen Inc. 5. Johnson and Johnson, inc. 6. Drug IndustryeconomicsUnited States. 7. Epoetin AlfaeconomicsUnited States. 8. Anemiadrug therapyUnited States. 9. Epoetin Alfaadverse effectsUnited States. 10. Marketing of Health ServiceseconomicsUnited States. 11. WhistleblowingUnited States. QV 736]

LC classification not assigned

338.4'76153dc23 2011034552

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To my first boon companions, my siblings: Danny, Kevin, Peggy, Patty, and Maureen

Contents

Prologue

I N the moments before she became a widow, veiled in blood, Sharon Lenox was happier than shed been in ages. Her fifty-four-year-old husband, Jim, had just returned home from the hospital where hed spent the night receiving infusions of magnesium, potassium, and trace minerals. After enduring months of toxic cancer treatments, the six-foot-tall, 120-pound man had become so dehydrated, hed required immediate medical attention. Now, on this mild winter evening in January 2008, a week after Jims birthday, Sharon was standing at the kitchen sink, washing dessert plates in soapy water, listening to her high school sweetheart patter on about their future together.