Good Intention, is a talc of vaulting ambition.

greed, and hubris set against the tragic backdrop

of the world s number-one health crisis: AIDS.

Bruce Nussbaum takes us behind the scenes

to reveal how America s top scientists are at the

center of a triangle of power. He shows how the

National Institutes of Health allied with the drug

company Burroughs Wellcome. secretly helped by

the FI)A, to steamroll a thirty-year-old drug,

AZT, into becoming the only approved treatment

for AIDS.

At the heart of the story is a small group of

scientists that hold the lives of tens of thousands

in their hands. There s the puppet master, the bril-

liant i)r. David Barry, Burroughs Wellcome s chief

strategist; Dr. Tony Fauei, who grabbed control of

the government s AIDS research program only to

squander $1 billion without developing a single

new drug; and Michael Callen, who fought for his

life by battling the research labyrinth with a new

biomedical underground.

An old-boy network of powerful medical

researchers dominates in every disease feld, from

AIDS to Alzheimcr s, Nussbaum reports. They

control the major committees, they run the most

important trials. They are accountable to no one.

I)espitc the billions of taxpayers dollars that go

to them every year, there is no public oversight.

Medieal scientists have convinced society that

only they can police themselves.