Foreword

As a practicing physician, I found this second edition to be very up-to-date, interesting and useful. It would be an excellent text book for the first semester in the standard two-semester course taught at most pharmacy schools. Much of it describes concepts and metabolic processes for which there was limited knowledge or was completely unknown when I was a medical student. The information presented provides undergraduate, medical and pharmacy students with useful information about the indications for and applications of modern medicinal chemistry. It will also help currently licensed physicians prepare for Board certification and recertification. Many of the old questions may have new answers. For example, 30 years ago, it was believed that genetic information could flow only from DNA to RNA to proteins, or that patients could not have an autoimmune disease. Thirty years ago the correct answers would have been yes – now they are no! I also found the book to be very helpful in describing medicines that I currently prescribe to patients and new drugs that are being developed. On frequent occasions, a patient will ask, “Why aren’t doctors doing more to find cures for common diseases”. The information in this book provides useful answers. I am also frequently asked questions about nutrition, dietary supplements and environmental toxins. The information about these subjects was written in clear, simple language that most people can understand. Other important and useful information regards the environmental toxin and endocrine disruptor, bisphenol A, or BPA. The popular literature and mass media debate whether microgram quantities of BPA in plastic products are harmful, but they ignore the milligram quantities of BPA that are found in most receipts that you get from ATM machines and cash registers. It is especially important to not let infants put such paper in their mouths as they explore the world orally or make spit wads in school as adolescents. It could harm their reproductive development. So, the book is very readable and has a multi-disciplinary approach. It teaches the kind of things that I would like to see medical and pharmacy students learn and could even be useful to lay people.