As the fourth-generation pharmacist, owner and Chief Operating Officer of New York-based C.O. Bigelow Apothecary, America’s oldest pharmacy, Alec Wade Ginsberg’s career is steeped in legacy.
Ginsberg spends his days in Bigelow’s storied West Village location. There, customers can pick up the brand’s iconic hand lotions and soaps, as well as a curated assortment of cosmetics from around the world. However, the true heritage of the company resides at the pharmacy counter, which still fills more than 500 prescriptions a day. Customers come to hear straight talk about the medicines they’re being prescribed — and the companies delivering them.
Ginsberg sees himself as an advocate for customers, helping them navigate the details around drugs such as GLP-1s to pricing shifts affecting those at the pharmacy counter. That advocacy is evident in his newsletter, Drugstore Cowboy, which brings a critical lens to the U.S. healthcare system to help patients better understand the machine behind their prescriptions, along with the cost.
“We’re the front-facing part of the health care system that has to explain to them what’s going on,” he says.
That kind of clarity may feel like a relief for patients who find prescription drug costs increasing and are confused about why a drug they read about in a news article isn’t available at the pharmacy counter. One class of drugs Ginsberg has clear opinions about is peptides, which, as he notes, are wildly popular, with customers buying on their own even as trial-based evidence remains elusive. His stance on their increased use is clear: “Evidence comes first,” he writes in a recent post in his newsletter, about their mainstream adoption. “It just turns the public into the experiment.”
Ginsberg earned a Doctor of Pharmacy from the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina, where he also earned his Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences.
We are delighted Ginsberg is joining our growing DOC 2026 Faculty. Please welcome him to our community!