Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 1992 Book Review: The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition Joseph A. Page Georgetown University Law Center,
[email protected] This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1146 47 Food & Drug L.J. 459-481 (1992) (reviewing Charles C. Mann & Mark Plummer, The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition (1991)) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Food and Drug Law Commons, and the Marketing Law Commons Book Review jOSEPH A. PAGE* The Aspirin Wars: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Com petition, by Charles C. Mann and Mark Plummer. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (201 E. 50th St., New York, N.Y. 10022) (1991). 420 pages. $25.00. l. INTRODUCTION The recent identification of a possible link between the long-term use of aspirin and a reduced incidence of colon and rectal cancer1 has directed renewed attention to a familiar household medication whose origins reach back to antiquity.2 Competition from other painkillers had begun to cut deeply into the market once dominated by aspirin-based products3 when studies indicated the possibilities, first that the regular consumption of aspirin might pre vent second heart attacks,4 and later that it might lower the risk of heart attacks in healthy individuals.5 If these two discoveries, as well as the new finding about colon and rectal cancers, hold up under further scientific scrutiny and gain acceptance within the medical and regulatory communi ties, the growth potential for the sale of medicines made from acetylsali cylic acid (the chemical name for aspirin) would be virtually unlimited.