Hurray for Harvoni
February 17th, 2016
For forty years Kim Goldberg never told anyone she had Hepatitis C. She railed against doctors and Big Pharma. Then she was completely cured, at no cost, during clinical trials conducted for a drug called Harvoni, developed by Gilead Sciences Inc., with a wholesale price of $1,125 per pill. We learn from her memoir Undetectable (Pig Squash Press $19) that approximately 250,000 people live with chronic Hepatitis C in Canada, often furtively. “The way to end the stigma is to normalize discussion about Hepatitis C,” she says, “the same way we openly discuss cancer or diabetes.” Goldberg’s account of her healing uses the Japanese literary style called haibun–a travel diary paired with haiku–after she was inspired by reading Matsuo Basho’s Narrow Road to the Interior. 978-0-9949868-0-1
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