It's the business of saving lives. Miracle Medicines goes behind the
scenes of the pharmaceutical industry and into the high-security
laboratories to tell the stories of the men and women-chemists,
physiologists, medical and clinical researchers, engineers-who have
chosen to toil for years in the lab in order to transform scientific
theories into new lifesaving medicines. You'll witness the day-to-day
labors, victories and defeats of the dedicated professionals who are
waging a war against the diseases that still plague mankind.
From the confines of their laboratories, these pharmaceutical
adventurers explore unknown territories in health and science. Miracle
Medicines reveals what really happens during the long and uncertain
journey that each new drug and its creators must endure from theory, to
research, to testing and, finally, FDA approval and delivery to the
public. It's a very human story within the context of fascinating
scientific innovation.
Through first hand interviews you'll also meet the patients who benefit
from these manmade miracles and learn how, within their bloodstreams, an
ongoing battle is raging.
The drugs profiled are: Advair, GlaxoSmithKline's revolutionary asthma
medication, the first packaged as both a control and emergency drug;
Gleevec: The Novartis' chronic myeloid leukemia treatment born from
decades of medical research in a field of study that was once considered
hopeless; Humalog: Eli Lilly's reinvention of insulin to control
diabetes has been described as being better than nature; Lipitor:
Pfizer's miracle antidote for high cholesterol that was nearly lost to
the pharmaceutical vaults and has since become the world's top-selling
medicine; Norvir: Abbott's contribution to the fight against HIV that
nearly erases all traces of the disease from the bloodstream and
prolongs the life of patients; Remicade: Created for the treatment of
Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis...
