Amanda Banks, M.D.

Amanda Banks, M.D., is a practicing physician, a drug developer and a mom of a daughter in recovery for anorexia nervosa (AN). After her daughter's diagnosis in early 2024, she spent two years diving into the literature, learning deeply the evolving science of AN, speaking to and collaborating with many of the leading clinicians, researchers and patient organizations in the field, and working with investors and colleagues in the biopharma industry and venture investing to reframe how AN is understood and how capital is allocated.

She has become a leading advocate in many areas of women's health. She is committed to changing the way AN is perceived, catalyzing investment in the kind of quality science required to continue to move the field forward to better treatments, and putting guardrails around GLP-1 agonist prescribing to keep vulnerable people safe. Together with her colleagues in the Biotech CEO Sisterhood and others, Dr. Banks helped lead the biotech and pharmaceutical industry response to the 2024 Supreme Court case FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which preserved patient access to mifepristone for safe abortion care, and staved off a fundamental challenge to the FDA's role in regulating medicines in the United States.

Dr. Banks completed her undergraduate work in Biology at Tufts University, went to medical school ten years later at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and continues to take care of patients at the Philadelphia VA Hospital.

Dr. Banks has been a founder, CEO, Chief Medical Officer and has led Business Development in several biotechnology companies. She is the author of the Substack newsletter Hijacked by Anorexia, and her work on AN has been published in a variety of journals and reports, including the New England Journal of Medicine. This is her first book.