The City of Chicago and two California counties are challenging the drug industry’s way of doing business, contending in two separate lawsuits that “aggressive marketing” by five companies has fuelled an epidemic of addiction and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in insurance claims and other health care costs.- says a popular daily print media. Chicago's pre-eminence in both medicine and industry has made the city a manufacturing center for medical products. Practitioners and patients throughout the world depend on a vast array of supplies and drugs produced in Chicago-area laboratories and factories. In the past Chicago's Charles Truax & Co. had revolutionized the surgical instrument making by establishing some simplified standard designs and implemented the techniques of mass production to what had formerly been an individual craft. In 1929, a California based physician Donald E. Baxter developed a method to produce safer intravenous solutions. With two partners, in 1931 he founded what would become Baxter Laboratories and soon opened a production site in a former garage in Glenview.
Chicago's first druggist was Philo Carpenter, who had arrived in 1832 and opened a drug store on present day Lake Street area. Moreover, the founding of Rush Medical College in 1837 had made Chicago an important center of medical education, and by 1859 the city could boast of its own pharmacy school, the Chicago College of Pharmacy. Pharmaceutical manufacturing also became an important part of Chicago's economy by the end of the nineteenth century. One of the nation's largest drug companies, Abbott Laboratories, had originated in the city in 1888. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Chicago-area's largest medical and pharmaceutical manufacturers were operating outside the city, with large campus headquarters and manufacturing facilities in the suburbs. Abbott, headquartered in suburban North Chicago and with 15,000 employees in Illinois, was named Chicago's number one company by the Tribune in 1999. Baxter International, with 4,000 Illinois employees, is in north suburban Deerfield.
Chicago, the "Windy City" as it is often called, lies along the shores of Lake Michigan. It is known for its vibrant arts scene, numerous cultural attractions, excellent shopping, and interesting architecture. The city enjoys a worldwide reputation as a focal point of 20th century architecture and art, with architects such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, and artists like Picasso, Mirõ, Dubuffet, and Chagall having left their mark. The city also has much to offer in the sporting sphere, too, with the Chicago Bears in American football, the Chicago White Sox and Cubs in baseball and the Chicago Bulls in basketball. Last, but not least, are the beautiful beaches.