Wonder Drug
Book description
Longlisted for the Andrew 2024 Carnegie Medal for Non-Fiction
The shocking, never-before-told story of America's thalidomide victims
In Germany on Christmas Day 1956 a baby girl was born without ears. She was the first victim of the notorious thalidomide epidemic. There would be over 10,000 more across 46 countries.
For…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Wonder Drug as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This remarkable story illustrates that if something in healthcare sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I had to stop listening to it before going to sleep because the compelling narrative was keeping me up at night.
The author seamlessly combined this compelling narrative with exceptional research behind the Food and Drug Administration, the heroine who prevented thalidomide approval in the United States, and the catastrophic effects of a pharmaceutical company using loopholes.
From Brian's list on medical history that changes medical perspective.
Wonder Drug covers the startling untold story of Thalidomide, a sleeping pill, in the USA.
The standard story is that the tenacity of two women Frances Kelsey and Helen Taussig supposedly kept this drug that caused horrific birth defects off the market. The facts are that drug company machinations and FDA incompetence meant thousands of pregnant women had this drug and hundreds of babies were deformed and disappeared.
Kelsey and Taussig had a token triumph, but the company escaped blame, FDA bureaucracy increased dramatically in size, and the bureaucrats seem as tightly enmeshed with companies now as they were in…
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