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Dark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and Its Revival as a Vital Medicine By Rock Brynner and Trent Stephens (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2001) (228 pages; $16.00 paper)
While reading Rock Brynner and Trent Stephens' analysis of the mid-century scandal of thalidomide, an eerily similar account was unfolding on the national news. After denigration and denials of the mounting evidence, Merck, the maker of Vioxx, withdrew its lucrative pain reliever from the market. A large federal study had unequivocally demonstrated the dangers of heart attack and stroke that Vioxx posed. The public then found that Merck s directors allegedly had been aware of these substantial risks for years. For this reviewer, Brynner and Stephens' historical tale of the duplicity and injustices associated with the effects of another drug, thalidomide, became starkly prescient.
Thalidomide, initially acclaimed as a sedative that was safe even for pregnant women, was actually a teratogenic agent that resulted in the death or horrendous deformity of thousands of infants worldwide in the 1950s and 1960s. The authors, one a biologist and thalidomide researcher and the other a historian who experienced thalidomide therapy firsthand, are uniquely qualified to present thalidomide's troubled history and its evolving promise. Today, thalidomide is being used under...