Faster Cures

Accelerating the Future of Health

By: Michael Milken

Narrated by: Grant Gottschall

Partly a memoir and partly a recent history of medicine, the definitive account of Michael Milken’s lifetime work to accelerate medicine's evolution from a dark past to a bright 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.

Beginning with a description of the 1950s civilization and culture that helped shape Milken's early views, 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 his 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 Milken 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 him 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 inspiring crusade to accelerate cures and treatments so that more people around the world can live longer, healthier, and more meaningful lives.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Michael Milken is an amazing human being.

This book was eye opening on all the amazing work that Milken and his vast team have done across Healthcare, economic mobility and social mobility. Great inspiration on what a “well lived life” looks like!

Interesting omission

As a physician I found this book to be very interesting and informative and we all owe a debt of gratitude for Mr. Milkin's enormous role in helping to finance and promote medical technology and research. My only complaint is that he took great pains in this book not to mention the only president who acknowledged his redemption by pardoning him: Donald Trump. He mentions Project Warp Speed as if he was the one who thought of it but never mentions Trump as the President who got out in front of it by promoting a private/public partnership with the pharmaceutical industry.

I fear his praise of Fauci and others will come back to bite him when history reveals how lockdowns and promotion of an unending string of vaccines have been so harmful to millions. Still, his role cannot be denied in the creation of financing mechanisms and his generous charitable contributions to medicine and public health.