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This article is the final installment of a five-part series focusing on the biotech industry, Genzyme and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Geeta Anand’s book The Cure. Please click here to learn more about this series.

A Conversation With Pulitzer Prize-Winning Reporter Geeta Anand

About Geeta Anand  

Bombay-born Geeta Anand is an investigative reporter and feature writer for the Wall Street Journal. She wrote two of the stories on corporate corruption that won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize in 2002, and she received the top business reporting honor, the Gerald Loeb award, in 2006. Formerly a political reporter for the Boston Globe, she now specializes in health and biotechnology. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two young daughters.

The Interview

About The Cure  

Q: Who is John Crowley and why is he important?

A: John is a smart, highly motivated dad who helped start a biotech company to try to develop a drug to save his kids who had a rare fatal illness called Pompe disease. He’s important because of the passionate, dedicated person that he is but also because he represents the hope that so many Americans have in the promising new scientific developments underway.
 
Q: When and why did you decide to write The Cure?

A: I decided to write The Cure in late 2003 after writing two stories for the Wall Street Journal about John’s attempt to develop a drug to save his kids. I found his story so compelling from a human interest perspective but also a scientific and business point of view that I wanted to write a book.

Writing The Cure

Q: Your book is filled with details about Crowley’s struggles to find a treatment for his children.  How did you get this information and incorporate it into the book?

A: I got the information primarily from extensive interviews with John and his family and the scientists, physicians and business people involved in the quest to develop a treatment for Pompe disease.

Q: Did your feelings about people and their families struggling with rare illnesses change during and after writing the book?  If so, how?

A: I developed even more respect for the dedication, passion and patience it requires to push ahead not only in caring for your sick children but in furthering a treatment. It is such a grueling journey and such an enormous challenge that most families do not survive the ordeal intact.

Q: The Cure ended with Crowley’s children receiving treatment for Pompe’s disease. Are you still following their story? 

A: I stay in touch with the family because I’ve gotten to know them well but not with any explicit intension of writing any more stories about them.

The Business Of Healthcare

Q: What would you like your readers to understand about the business of healthcare after reading The Cure? 

A: I would like readers to understand how challenging it is to both scientifically and financially to turn promising laboratory discoveries into novel medicines.

Q: The Cure provides an interesting “beyond the headlines” look at medicine.  Did your beliefs about clinical research and the biotech industry change after writing your book?  If so, how?  

A: I think I gained a deeper insight and appreciation for the challenges of all players in the business of trying to develop new treatments--not only for how difficult it is for scientists trying to turn exciting laboratory discoveries into medicines but also for the venture investors and companies financing these drug discovery journeys.

Q: You’ve written a lot about the biotcch industry’s pricing strategies.  Do you have a better understanding of why companies like Genzyme charge so much money for their medications because you wrote The Cure?

A: Writing The Cure has given me a more intimate view of the challenge of developing new treatments—not only how costly it is but also how risky—and how often the most promising concepts fail because we still don’t know so much about human biology.

Healthcare & The Changing Media Landscape

Q: In your book, John Crowley used the Internet to find valuable information about potential treatments for Pompe disease.  Today, the quantity of online healthcare content has increased exponentially.  How are you and your peers adjusting to these changes in the media landscape?

A: We rely more and more on the Internet for research and to find people. I found it easier to track down the people I needed to interview and find articles I needed to read for The Cure because of all of the valuable information available online.  

Q: As you may be aware, thousands of people (laypersons and professionals) are writing healthcare blogs.  Given that it is so easy to find blog content via search engines, do you feel that health-focused bloggers have more responsibility to the public than those writing about other topics?  If so, why?

A: I think everyone has a responsibility to try to write truthfully and accurately. But with healthcare, because people may use the information to make decisions on issues related to their very survival, the responsibility to reporter accurately and exhaustively—whether on blogs or in print--is even greater.