Professionals & Academics
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Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims
A riveting account of the most notorious drug of the twentieth century and the never-before-told story of its American survivors
In 1959, a Cincinnati pharmaceutical firm, the William S. Merrell Company, quietly began distributing samples of an exciting new wonder drug already popular around the world. Touted as a sedative without risks, thalidomide was handed out freely, under the guise of clinical trials, by doctors who believed approval by the Food and Drug Administration was imminent.
But in 1960, when the application for thalidomide landed on the desk of FDA medical reviewer Frances Kelsey, she quickly grew suspicious. When she learned that the drug was causing severe birth abnormalities abroad, she and a team of dedicated doctors, parents, and journalists fought tirelessly to block its authorization in the United States and stop its sale around the world.
Jennifer Vanderbes set out to write about this FDA success story only to discover a sinister truth that had been buried for decades: For more than five years, several American pharmaceutical firms had distributed unmarked thalidomide samples in shoddy clinical trials, reaching tens of thousands of unwitting patients, including hundreds of pregnant women.
As Vanderbes examined government and corporate archives, probed court records, and interviewed hundreds of key players, she unearthed an even more stunning find: Scores of Americans had likely been harmed by the drug. Deceived by the pharmaceutical firms, betrayed by doctors, and ignored by the government, most of these Americans had spent their lives unaware that thalidomide had caused their birth defects.
Now, for the first time, this shocking episode in American history is brought to light. Wonder Drug gives voice to the unrecognized victims of this epic scandal and exposes the deceptive practices of Big Pharma that continue to endanger lives today.
In 1959, a Cincinnati pharmaceutical firm, the William S. Merrell Company, quietly began distributing samples of an exciting new wonder drug already popular around the world. Touted as a sedative without risks, thalidomide was handed out freely, under the guise of clinical trials, by doctors who believed approval by the Food and Drug Administration was imminent.
But in 1960, when the application for thalidomide landed on the desk of FDA medical reviewer Frances Kelsey, she quickly grew suspicious. When she learned that the drug was causing severe birth abnormalities abroad, she and a team of dedicated doctors, parents, and journalists fought tirelessly to block its authorization in the United States and stop its sale around the world.
Jennifer Vanderbes set out to write about this FDA success story only to discover a sinister truth that had been buried for decades: For more than five years, several American pharmaceutical firms had distributed unmarked thalidomide samples in shoddy clinical trials, reaching tens of thousands of unwitting patients, including hundreds of pregnant women.
As Vanderbes examined government and corporate archives, probed court records, and interviewed hundreds of key players, she unearthed an even more stunning find: Scores of Americans had likely been harmed by the drug. Deceived by the pharmaceutical firms, betrayed by doctors, and ignored by the government, most of these Americans had spent their lives unaware that thalidomide had caused their birth defects.
Now, for the first time, this shocking episode in American history is brought to light. Wonder Drug gives voice to the unrecognized victims of this epic scandal and exposes the deceptive practices of Big Pharma that continue to endanger lives today.
Editorial Reviews
"Wonder Drug is both a first-rate medical thriller and the searing account of a forgotten American tragedy. Drawing on six years of groundbreaking research and guided by a keen eye for the indelible detail and an unwavering moral conviction, Jennifer Vanderbes has produced a shocking saga of pharmaceutical malpractice."-Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain
"Wonder Drug is a tale of scientific detective work, corporate corruption on a grand scale, and human resilience in the face of repudiation and tragedy. This is narrative nonfiction at its most compelling."-Margot Lee Shetterly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures
"A devastating and hard-to-put-down exposé of the thalidomide tragedy . . . Meticulously researched and emotionally powerful, Vanderbes's book uncovers layers of corporate negligence, government inaction, greed, and deception, shedding light on the terrible consequences. Wonder Drug is not only a page-turner but also a much-needed call for accountability and justice-an essential addition to ourunderstanding of medical history."-Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Kingdom
"Jennifer Vanderbes's Wonder Drug is an utterly engrossing, thrilling, and horrifying look at both a shocking episode in the history of Big Pharma and the intersection of medicine, profit, and government bureaucracy. Vanderbes brings a novelist's skill to the extensive archival work she's done, creating a stunning, immersive account of a medical scandal."-Phil Klay, National Book Award–winning author of Redeployment
"Vanderbes's thorough investigative work and her lucid prose bring to life a little-known American tragedy. Wonder Drug is a compelling read and reminds us why regulatory scrutiny of new drugs matters."-Abraham Verghese, New York Times
"Wonder Drug is a tale of scientific detective work, corporate corruption on a grand scale, and human resilience in the face of repudiation and tragedy. This is narrative nonfiction at its most compelling."-Margot Lee Shetterly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures
"A devastating and hard-to-put-down exposé of the thalidomide tragedy . . . Meticulously researched and emotionally powerful, Vanderbes's book uncovers layers of corporate negligence, government inaction, greed, and deception, shedding light on the terrible consequences. Wonder Drug is not only a page-turner but also a much-needed call for accountability and justice-an essential addition to ourunderstanding of medical history."-Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Kingdom
"Jennifer Vanderbes's Wonder Drug is an utterly engrossing, thrilling, and horrifying look at both a shocking episode in the history of Big Pharma and the intersection of medicine, profit, and government bureaucracy. Vanderbes brings a novelist's skill to the extensive archival work she's done, creating a stunning, immersive account of a medical scandal."-Phil Klay, National Book Award–winning author of Redeployment
"Vanderbes's thorough investigative work and her lucid prose bring to life a little-known American tragedy. Wonder Drug is a compelling read and reminds us why regulatory scrutiny of new drugs matters."-Abraham Verghese, New York Times
Short Excerpt Teaser
One
Rain pounded the hood of Frances Kelsey's car as she inched through the downtown Washington, D.C., traffic. She'd be late, again. For the past five weeks, every morning had been a struggle to get to work on time. Because she was not a woman short on accomplishment-she had two advanced degrees and a scientific textbook to her name-her lateness had become a family joke. Even though Mom had won national research prizes and harpooned sperm whales, she was being bested by traffic, unable to make it from the family's new house in Chevy Chase to the National Mall in under an hour.
Today Frances was driving through the fringes of Hurricane Donna, with rain dousing the Northeast. High-speed winds bent and rustled trees along the road. Excitement was in the air, if not in Frances's life.
It was September 12, 1960, and the forty-six-year-old married mother of two had just moved halfway across the country for a position at the Food and Drug Administration. After decades of hands-on lab research with beavers and armadillos and summer boating trips to collect massive whale gland specimens, Frances was now an FDA medical reviewer: a doctor who assessed paperwork, not patients. A bureaucrat. It was not the profession she'd trained for, but she knew it was important work, and a necessary concession to her husband's new job.
Three years before the publication of The Feminine Mystique launched the feminist revolution, Frances was an oddity of her day: She held both an MD and a PhD and had forged a career in the hard sciences while married with children. She wasn't emotive. She wasn't frilly. She relegated makeup to special occasions and ignored the gray in her blunt-cut chin-length hair. Born in rural Canada, Frances-a solid five foot seven-remained tomboyish well into adulthood, fishing, clam digging, lugging her stick out to a field for a game of hockey whenever the air was crisp. She neither cooked nor cleaned house, but she knew that to keep her family running smoothly she had to relinquish some professional ground to Ellis. In seventeen years of marriage, Frances had moved states, shifted careers, earned degrees, and secured freelance work a half dozen times to oblige his career.
But this nine-to-five FDA desk job was a jolt for the normally bustling Frances. For the past seven years, living in South Dakota, where Ellis had chaired the university's pharmacology department, Frances had juggled a host of on-the-go jobs. In addition to her university lab research with beaver thyroids, she had regularly hopped the overnight train to Chicago to secure her radioisotope diagnostics license. She had spent a full year commuting to Yankton for a hospital medical internship, leaving Ellis to cook dinners and put the girls to bed. Frances also zipped across the state for weeks at a time to fill in for vacationing small-town physicians. Often the first female doctor to grace the Badlands outposts, Frances made headlines: "Lemmon Patients Are Treated by Lady Physician," boasted a local newspaper. So remote was the town of Lemmon that Frances had been dropped there by a chartered prop plane.
Frances had loved juggling emergencies in these remote South Dakota communities. Births, burst appendixes. Any "hectic series of crises" fascinated her, and she proudly embraced the grisly. One story she often recounted was of the hunter she tended upon her arrival in Lemmon-a man blasted in the abdomen by an antelope rifle in a hunting accident.
Back at home with daughters Susan and Christine, Phillip the Siamese cat, and their Saint Bernard, George, Frances tried to make the most of university-town life. She and Ellis, a hulking charmer of a man, socialized at the Vermillion Eagles Club and religiously played bridge. Brilliant, fun-loving, and quick-witted, the duo shared a zest for life that earned them a reputation as bon vivants. "Frankie and Kelse" were known for their well-stocked bar and the lively parties around the fireplace of their white clapboard colonial home. The parties were so lively that, before they began, the whole family laughingly tugged closed the "Weeks curtains"-thick drapes the couple had installed on their dining room windows after discovering that the dour man living next door was university president I. D. Weeks. Frankie and Kelse had "borrowed" a reel-to-reel audio device from the university and set it up behind the couch to record the gatherings. The girls spent the night crisscrossing the crowd of adults, carrying platters of olives and soda crackers and bacon-wrapped chicken livers.
But by 1956, three years into their South Dakota stint, Frankie and Ellis had overstayed their welcome. "This is a desolate area," Ellis wrote to a friend, "from the standpoint of profes...
Rain pounded the hood of Frances Kelsey's car as she inched through the downtown Washington, D.C., traffic. She'd be late, again. For the past five weeks, every morning had been a struggle to get to work on time. Because she was not a woman short on accomplishment-she had two advanced degrees and a scientific textbook to her name-her lateness had become a family joke. Even though Mom had won national research prizes and harpooned sperm whales, she was being bested by traffic, unable to make it from the family's new house in Chevy Chase to the National Mall in under an hour.
Today Frances was driving through the fringes of Hurricane Donna, with rain dousing the Northeast. High-speed winds bent and rustled trees along the road. Excitement was in the air, if not in Frances's life.
It was September 12, 1960, and the forty-six-year-old married mother of two had just moved halfway across the country for a position at the Food and Drug Administration. After decades of hands-on lab research with beavers and armadillos and summer boating trips to collect massive whale gland specimens, Frances was now an FDA medical reviewer: a doctor who assessed paperwork, not patients. A bureaucrat. It was not the profession she'd trained for, but she knew it was important work, and a necessary concession to her husband's new job.
Three years before the publication of The Feminine Mystique launched the feminist revolution, Frances was an oddity of her day: She held both an MD and a PhD and had forged a career in the hard sciences while married with children. She wasn't emotive. She wasn't frilly. She relegated makeup to special occasions and ignored the gray in her blunt-cut chin-length hair. Born in rural Canada, Frances-a solid five foot seven-remained tomboyish well into adulthood, fishing, clam digging, lugging her stick out to a field for a game of hockey whenever the air was crisp. She neither cooked nor cleaned house, but she knew that to keep her family running smoothly she had to relinquish some professional ground to Ellis. In seventeen years of marriage, Frances had moved states, shifted careers, earned degrees, and secured freelance work a half dozen times to oblige his career.
But this nine-to-five FDA desk job was a jolt for the normally bustling Frances. For the past seven years, living in South Dakota, where Ellis had chaired the university's pharmacology department, Frances had juggled a host of on-the-go jobs. In addition to her university lab research with beaver thyroids, she had regularly hopped the overnight train to Chicago to secure her radioisotope diagnostics license. She had spent a full year commuting to Yankton for a hospital medical internship, leaving Ellis to cook dinners and put the girls to bed. Frances also zipped across the state for weeks at a time to fill in for vacationing small-town physicians. Often the first female doctor to grace the Badlands outposts, Frances made headlines: "Lemmon Patients Are Treated by Lady Physician," boasted a local newspaper. So remote was the town of Lemmon that Frances had been dropped there by a chartered prop plane.
Frances had loved juggling emergencies in these remote South Dakota communities. Births, burst appendixes. Any "hectic series of crises" fascinated her, and she proudly embraced the grisly. One story she often recounted was of the hunter she tended upon her arrival in Lemmon-a man blasted in the abdomen by an antelope rifle in a hunting accident.
Back at home with daughters Susan and Christine, Phillip the Siamese cat, and their Saint Bernard, George, Frances tried to make the most of university-town life. She and Ellis, a hulking charmer of a man, socialized at the Vermillion Eagles Club and religiously played bridge. Brilliant, fun-loving, and quick-witted, the duo shared a zest for life that earned them a reputation as bon vivants. "Frankie and Kelse" were known for their well-stocked bar and the lively parties around the fireplace of their white clapboard colonial home. The parties were so lively that, before they began, the whole family laughingly tugged closed the "Weeks curtains"-thick drapes the couple had installed on their dining room windows after discovering that the dour man living next door was university president I. D. Weeks. Frankie and Kelse had "borrowed" a reel-to-reel audio device from the university and set it up behind the couch to record the gatherings. The girls spent the night crisscrossing the crowd of adults, carrying platters of olives and soda crackers and bacon-wrapped chicken livers.
But by 1956, three years into their South Dakota stint, Frankie and Ellis had overstayed their welcome. "This is a desolate area," Ellis wrote to a friend, "from the standpoint of profes...
