Flight of the Rondone: High School Dropout VS Big Pharma: The Fight to Save My Son's Life
Business biography, Law and crime biography, Science and medicine biography, Journals and memoirs
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
Flight of the Rondone is a true rags to riches tale the New York Times stated is &“meant for television.&” The protagonist, a high school dropout, is nicknamed in Italian U Carneveil (Walking Circus) for his entertaining and eccentric nature.… Patrick Girondi starts his career shining shoes, stealing car parts, and escaping life-threatening situations while outwitting the Chicago police. He claws up to being a famous success story on the Oprah Show. His fortunes quickly change when his eldest son, Santino, is diagnosed with a fatal blood disease. Girondi hunts for a cure in a drama that has boundless implications in the world of gene therapy. As Girondi writes, &“I&’d been strangled, shot at, skated more than twenty arrests, made it through 3 FBI witch-hunts and went from the docks to trading and big money. I would see my son cured. How hard could it be?&” After decades of struggle, he delivered the world&’s first commercial batch of vector with the potential to cure Sickle Cell Disease and Thalassemia. But again, the success of the cure—and the fate of his son—is imperiled, in a world of lab jackets, mysterious deaths, and cut-throat Wall Street banksters. This is a story of love, beating the odds, or as Girondi calls it, pure luck. It is a gritty and realistic tale told with little regard for empire or etiquette.