Wonder Drug

Starred review from June 19, 2023
In this mind-boggling horror story of pharmaceutical malfeasance, journalist and novelist Vanderbes (The Secret of Raven Point) profiles one of the most notorious drugs in history: thalidomide. In 1957, West German drug manufacturer Grünenthal began pushing a new miracle drug for a range of common ailments, including morning sickness, touting it as “completely atoxic, safe for everyone, children and pregnant women included,” despite scant data to prove these claims. By 1962, thalidomide “was revealed to have killed or disfigured more than ten thousand babies world-wide,” Vanderbes writes. Though FDA reviewer Frances Kelsey refused to approve it because of the lack of evidence of the drug’s safety, eventually forcing a change to the FDA’s nearly automatic patent approval process, thalidomide was still distributed to thousands of women throughout the country through an unprecedented maneuver by its U.S. distributor, the Merrell Company: doctors were enlisted “as clinical investigators” to “test” free and unmarked samples on their patients. Merrell escaped without a single legal penalty; the unwitting test subjects, many of whose children were born without limbs, were unable to prove they had been given the drug. Vanderbes sheds light on the cover-up, surfacing new documents and interviewing individuals involved who have never spoken on the record before. It’s a deeply researched and chilling must-read.

Starred review from June 1, 2023
In this exhaustively reported look at the reckless use of the sedative thalidomide, prescribed for everything from insomnia to nausea during pregnancy, Vanderbes practices "show, don't tell" journalism at its best. She mines archives and interviews 283 victims, scientists, lawyers, doctors, and journalists to figure out how the premature distribution of a horrifyingly understudied drug led to more than ten thousand babies born with "flipper-like 'seal limbs.'" The short answer: Blame corporate greed, shoddy research, and regulatory failures. Victims give heartbreaking insights. Eileen Cronin, born in Cincinnati in 1960, says her mom didn't feel any kicks during pregnancy: "Then I was born missing legs." Even though the FDA never approved thalidomide, the pharmaceutical company gave out samples in the U.S. and set up about 750 "studies" involving 15,000 patients. Vanderbes highlights heroes, such as FDA medical reviewer Frances Oldham Kelsey, who doggedly asked for more information, and cardiologist Helen Taussig, who, in 1962, said, "The evidence is overwhelming that thalidomide causes a specific and ghastly malformation." Journalists also stepped up, including Harold Evans in the United Kingdom, who published a newspaper series that got the word out. Vanderbes makes a complex and important story understandable, ending with an epilogue about thalidomide today. This is a medical must-read.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 15, 2023
A novelistic investigation of the shocking story of thalidomide in the U.S. In 1962, an article in Life magazine alerted readers to the severe birth defects suffered by babies in Germany and England whose mothers had taken the allegedly safe sleeping pill thalidomide early in their pregnancies. What the piece didn't mention was the fact that the drug was also circulating widely in the U.S. At the time, Cincinnati-based drug company William S. Merrell was not only pressuring the FDA to approve its version of thalidomide; it was also distributing samples of the drug to more than 700 doctors, who passed it on to approximately 20,000 patients as well as to other physicians. Although FDA approval of thalidomide was blocked--largely through the efforts of implacable medical reviewer Frances Kelsey, who, unusually for the time period, "held both an MD and a PhD and had forged a career in the hard sciences while mar-ried with children"--little effort was made to retrieve the drug samples that had been distributed to doctors. As a result, dozens of children were born with shortened limbs and a variety of other defects. In a wide-ranging, thoroughly researched, and suspenseful account, novelist Vanderbes creates a compelling cast of heroes and villains: Kelsey and the researchers she enlisted to help her study the drug on one side; and the unscrupulous administrators of the drug companies, both in the U.S. and Germany, where the drug was developed and insufficiently tested in a company run by former members of the Nazi Party, on the other. Interviews with those who were born with damage caused by the drug--some of whom were abandoned by their parents--add another compelling, emotional layer to the text. The author weaves the various strands of her riveting tale together with aplomb, and she clearly explains even the most puzzling aspects of it. A significant work about a horrifying example of widespread pharmaceutical negligence.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.