Main description:

Each year, nearly 700,000 people in the United States will have a stroke. A drug known as tPA can drastically reduce the long-term disability associated with stroke if it is administered within the first three hours after the event occurs. Many of those who are lucky enough to be treated with tPA have made full recoveries-to the extent that one can hardly believe they suffered a "real" stroke. Others still do not receive the drug; many suffer permanent disabilities,
and many die.

Authors Zivin and Simmons argue that most Americans have never heard of tPA. Why would such an effective pharmaceutical, one that has a remarkable rate of success with the third leading killer of Americans, be so disregarded? tPA for Stroke: The Story of a Controversial Drug explains the drug's beginnings within pharmaceutical giant Genentech, and its eventual marginalization due to a convergence of unfortunate political, fiscal, and medical circumstances. Readers will learn about
an extraordinary treatment for acute stroke that they may then seek if a stroke occurs and anyone interested in the unique process of drug development, marketing, and promotion, told from an insider's perspective, will have an interest intPA for Stroke.

Contents:

To the Reader

PART ONE: Discovery

Chapter One
Code Stroke on Market Street

Chapter Two
Clotbuster: The Natural History

Chapter Three
Dead or Alive

Chapter 4
Brain-O

PART TWO: Change, Resistance, and Transformation

Chapter Five
The Brain Doctors Cometh - Slowly

Chapter Six
What Emergency?

Chapter Seven
Money and Brain

Chapter Eight
Deer in the Headlights

Chapter Nine
Call 911, 112, 15...Even 999

Chapter Ten
Persistence of a Most Controversial Drug

Chapter 11
Through the Looking Glass

Post-Script
The NINDS Stroke Study: A Personal Statement

List of Interviews
Bibliography