Medicine, Science and Merck

by P. Roy Vagelos, Louis P. Galambos

P. Roy Vagelos grew up during the Depression as a wise-cracking son of Greek immigrants. He left his family's small restaurant to become a doctor and went on to master three professions and become the Chief Executive Officer of the multinational pharmaceutical giant, Merck & Co. Medicine, Science, and Merck follows Vangelos' life from childhood to retirement, from his academic years at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University's Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital through his professional career at the National Institute of Health, Washington University, and Merck. Throughout, Vagelos never lost touch with his family values, his intense desire to help others, and his faith in the partnership principle and the competition that makes it work. P. Roy Vagelos and Louis Galambos offer an unusual perspective on working in three leading professions: medicine, science, and business. They take readers inside the laboratory and boardroom of one of America's large corporations, analyzing the mistakes and the innovations of Merck. P. Roy Vagelos, M.D. served as CEO of Merck & Co., Inc. from 1985 to 1994. Before assuming responsibilities in business leadership, he had won scientific recognition as an authority on lipids and enzymes and as a research manager. The author of more than 100 scientific papers, Vagelos has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Louis Galambos has written extensively on U.S. business-government relations, on economic aspects of modern institutional developments and on the rise of the bureaucratic state. A professor at Johns Hopkins University, Professor Galambos is the author of several books, including Anytime, Anywhere (Cambridge, 2002).

Genres: Science

314 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 2004

Reviews

[Malavika Ramkumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

He has an excellent life story but reading it is a little annoying (very similar vibe to listening to a grandpa talk about his life, times, etc)

[David Jacobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I encountered Roy Vagelos through the molecular life science program at the University of Pennsylvania, which bears his name and which had a significant impact on my development as a scientist by steering me towards a joint physics/biochemistry double major. I was given a copy of this book upon graduating in 2011 but did not read it until now (13 years later).

I knew Vagelos as the former CEO of Merck who donated a lot of money to Penn. Through this book, I also learned that he did research in the heady early days of molecular biochemistry under the titans Earl Stadtman and Jacques Monod before serving for a decade as chair of biochemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. Merck recruited Vagelos to lead their research laboratories out of a kind of desperation: their pipeline empty, they turned to a biochemist who wanted to take a crack at developing drugs that target particular disease-linked enzymes, rather than the traditional approach of screening active compounds in animal or cellular disease models. This approach, targeted at the HMG-CoA reductase that was the focus of Vagelos's academic work, yielded some of the first rationally designed drugs: lovastatin and simvastatin, sold under the names of Mevacor and Zocor and found to significantly lower blood cholesterol.

Between recounting the events of this "life that was lived in fast forward", Vagelos and his co-author give a fascinating look into the day-to-day life and worldview of a high-achieving scientist and businessman. These insights are not found in the book's first chapter, which begins with our young hero in elementary school; readers are advised to press through.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it all, but I do know some people who would only want to skim along until Chapter 8 because their interest would be more in pharmaceuticals as a business. I still encourage them to get hold of a copy on the book and read those last few chapters, as it does tell you a lot from an insider’s perspective, especially when the industry was in the hot seat in the press. It was neat to see how medical progress is made by government institutions, universities and money-making companies building on each other’s knowledge. Sad that other countries can rarely make these same discoveries because of the limitations put on them by their governments. The only convoluted part is the preface, which is signed by both writers and jumps back and forth among I, we and he.