Aspirin, how a struggling painkiller was reborn as a heart medicine and earned billions for Bayer

Say you have a headache. Your fever’s rising. Your back is aching. What do you take? Probably ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil), maybe acetaminophen (Tylenol), possibly naproxen (Aleve). Together, those drugs comprise nearly four-fifths of the $2 billion-plus over-the-counter pain relief market, prospering from aggressive ad campaigns and cheap manufacturing costs.
But say you’re having a heart attack. What do you take now?
If you’ve been listening to the advice of medical professionals for the past few decades, you’ll pop an aspirin while you wait for the ambulance. And if you’ve been listening closely, you’ve already been taking it every day. Aspirin’s benefit to heart-attack victims is common knowledge these days, while its effectiveness as a painkiller, or analgesic, is increasingly overlooked.

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