Faster Cures: Accelerating the Future of Health

Summary

The definitive account of Michael Milken’s lifetime work to accelerate medical breakthroughs that lead to improved health. An inspirational and hopeful road map for the future.

What if cleaning early-stage cancers from your body could become as routine as going to the dentist to clean your teeth, or if a single vaccine could protect you against multiple viruses, or if gene editing could eliminate many birth defects and slow the aging process? Mike Milken believes these, and many other advances, are within reach.

One part memoir and one part call to action, Faster Cures traces the life-extending acceleration of progress in medical research, public health, and clinical treatments over the seven decades since Milken’s childhood—and shows how he helped transform the process of developing disease cures. Among many examples, he recognized the promise of immunology more than twenty-five years ago and provided crucial support for the emergence of immunotherapy as a powerful life-saving treatment.

Detailing Mike’s unique personal journey from a curious boy with an insatiable thirst for knowledge to his storied careers in finance and health, this book focuses on the events that made him what Fortune magazine called “The Man Who Changed Medicine.” The combined influences of social upheaval in the 1960s and family medical crises in the 1970s propelled Milken to dual quests on Wall Street and in medical research.

Known worldwide as a legendary financier, philanthropist, medical research innovator, and public health advocate, Milken tells fascinating anecdotes and explains his crusade to accelerate cures and treatments so that more people around the world can live longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives.