Also see the book on 99cent-books.com.

Did you know that Vitamin A, taken in excess, is believed to cause depression? Accutane, that remarkably popular drug once prescribed to teens and still available in generic [...]]]> A review of Goose That Laid the Golden Egg by freelance writer Bob Etier, follow her on twitter @katelier, and read the full review here.

Did you know that Vitamin A, taken in excess, is believed to cause depression? Accutane, that remarkably popular drug once prescribed to teens and still available in generic form, is a “molecular cousin” of Vitamin A.

Accutane was prescribed for people suffering from “extreme scarring acne,” but in 2001, Dr. Doug Bremner began research that indicated a very different, extreme effect of Accutane. He found a causal relationship between Accutane and depression—a relationship believed to have resulted in hundreds of teen suicides and homicides.

Manufacturer Hoffman-LaRoche did not welcome Bremner’s findings. In fact, according to Bremner, the drug giant launched a campaign to discredit him that was “designed to suppress his findings and destroy his career and livelihood.” Written in a tremendously informal, nearly stream-of-consciousness style [...]

The Beauregarde Affair is great narrative nonfiction about the author’s time in the 1970s living with his sex drug and rock and roll friends in a house on North Morningside Drive in Atlanta, GA. The author and his friends lived in a stately older home in the Morningside neighborhood of [...]]]>

The Beauregarde Affair is great narrative nonfiction about the author’s time in the 1970s living with his sex drug and rock and roll friends in a house on North Morningside Drive in Atlanta, GA. The author and his friends lived in a stately older home in the Morningside neighborhood of Atlanta while they carried on with wild times. The book is an interesting snapshot of an earlier time in Atlanta by an author who is now an American ex-patriate living in Oslo, Norway. He is also a great illustrator and adds his artwork to the book.

You can access The Beauregarde Affair on Amazon Kindle for $2.99 here or in paperback.

I was attracted to The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg by Doug Bremner because it is the story of the psychiatrist who took down Accutane. You know, that [...]]]> Book Review reposted from Sassy Peach Book Reviewer. Read more book reviews here and follow her blog here and twitter @niccilor here.

I was attracted to The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg by Doug Bremner because it is the story of the psychiatrist who took down Accutane. You know, that drug that the pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to believe changes brain composition and causes depression? Doug Bremner was that very psychiatrist and faced demons of his own, both professionally and personally.

You may remember the whole, “No one really knows…” news segments about this drug. However, reading this book confirmed my suspicions that what you see released to news sources is exactly what they with the most money want you to hear, see, and believe–the spin. You may or may not believe it…

[read more]

What people are saying about The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg: Accutane – the truth that had to be told.

“Riveting, compelling, fascinating.”

“Frighteningly well written.”

“This is an amazing book, especially since it is non-fiction.”

“I could not put this book down until I got to [...]]]>

What people are saying about The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg: Accutane – the truth that had to be told.

“Riveting, compelling, fascinating.”

“Frighteningly well written.”

“This is an amazing book, especially since it is non-fiction.”

“I could not put this book down until I got to the end… Thankfully, his writing is succinct. It is also quite poignant, surprising, revealing and at times even hilarious.”

“Poignant and heart-wrenching.”

“Frightening, moving, personal and redemptive.”

“A raw, honest, prescient page-turner.”

“A moving account weaving together his personal struggles of loss and shame.”

“A must read for everyone who believes in justice for all.”

“A very important tale stunningly well told.”

“A riveting and excellent read – I read it in one sitting. I highly recommend it.”

***

CHAPTER 1

Palm trees lined the road leading from the Orlando airport. A few puffs of white clouds sat unmoving in the brilliant blue Florida sky. My seven-year-old son, Lucca, played a hand-held computer game in the back seat of the cab. My wife, Viola, and twelve-year-old daughter, Lucia, looked out the window. I rode up front, thinking about how much I would be paid for the lectures I would be giving over the next year or so. The year was 2001.

We checked into the Disney World Hotel and went up to our rooms. Lucca grabbed the room key and ran ahead. He opened the door, ran in and jumped on the bed.

“Is this our room?” he asked, excitedly.

“Get your bags, Lucca,” I said.

When the family was settled, I headed for the courtesy room of the private company that organized medical education events on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the makers of the antidepressant drug, Paxil. They had invited me to give the kick-off lecture for their initiative to push Paxil into the market for people with anxiety disorders. They called it Psychnet. The plan was for me to give a lecture to a bunch of psychiatrists from across the country, educating them about the benefits of Paxil in the treatment of anxiety disorders, and they would in turn, for pay, fan out across the country giving lectures to other psychiatrists on the same topic. Not only would I get paid for doing this, but I would be tagged as a preferred speaker for their nationwide lecture series for psychiatrists. Over the next year or two, I would give about 15 talks across the country, with the usual price being $2,000 plus travel expenses. However, I learned that many of the speakers canceled at the last moment, so I could squeeze out as much as $5,000 for giving a talk at the last minute’s notice.

I stood for a moment before the door and checked my suit to see if it had any spots on it. Then I knocked.

“Come on in, Dr. Bremner,” an attractive and smiling Asian woman said as she opened the door. “We’re going over your slides now.”

The room was filled with a bunch of good-looking young people hunched over laptops who seemed bright and energetic. A floor-to-ceiling plain glass window looked out over palm trees evenly spaced over a closely cut green lawn with the blue of the Florida sea just beyond.

“How does this look?” The woman waved me over to one of the laptops.

I scrolled through the slides.

“You’ve got some great graphic art support,” I responded. That brought on a spontaneous smile.

“Thanks, Doctor. Any corrections?”

“No, these look great. When do I go out?”

“Your talk is in 30 minutes.”

There was a knock at the door. She walked over and opened it.

Scott Sproul entered the room. We had hung out together at a bar the year before and gossiped about the ups and downs of the pharmaceutical industry. Scott was one of the most up-beat people I ever met. He was now head of the Paxil marketing team.

“Thanks for coming down, Doug.” He slapped me on the back. “How’s the family?”

“They’re doing great.” The attention made me feel uncomfortable.

“Have they ever been to Disney World before?”

“No, this is the first time. Thanks for the invite.”

“Well, it’s great to have you here, Doug. I think you’re gonna really help us get our message out about Paxil.”

“Glad to help.” And I meant it.

“Here’re some tickets for Disney World for you and your family, for the weekend.”

“Wow, that’s really nice of you. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Ready for your lecture?”

“Yeah, OK.”

We walked toward the lecture hall. He opened the door and slapped me on the back.

“Go on out there and sell some Paxil, Doug!”

* * *

A few weeks later I was coming back through the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta after giving an out-of-town lecture, when I ran into Charlie Nemeroff, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, where I had just been recruited. He was an energetic and gregarious man who was in constant motion. Nemeroff was known as one of the leaders in the field of academic psychiatry, what we called a “shining light.” A recent magazine article about him was called “Boss of Bosses,” and prominently featured him on the cover, in a white jacket with his arms folded across his chest.

“How’s it going, Doug?” he asked.

“Great. Thanks for the recommendation to be a speaker for the Psychnet program.”

“We take care of our faculty at Emory. Hey, Doug. About that Accutane study you’re doing?”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure you meet with the dean about it. He’s a dermatologist. We don’t want any political hot potatoes. And get the dermatologists involved. They can refer acne patients to you.”

He looked tired. He’d probably been on the road for a while.

“OK, no problem.”

“Well, I’ve got to run. Catching a plane to Fort Lauderdale to give a talk about norepinephrine and depression. Are you interested in norepinephrine, Doug?”

“Yeah, sure.” Nemeroff had done some research on the effects of Paxil on the norepinephrine system. GSK was using that angle to market Paxil as being better than the other SSRI antidepressants. They were eager to get people like Nemeroff out there talking about the science behind it all.

“Ok, catch you later.” He turned and walked off, pulling his rolling suitcase behind him.

I stood there and watched him walk away. While waiting for an appointment with him just after moving to Atlanta, I had seen his curriculum vitae sitting out on a table. It listed work as a consultant for the maker of Accutane, but it didn’t look active, and he was consulting for a gazillion other drug companies, so I figured it was no big deal. Nevertheless, I felt a little uneasy. Whenever there was money involved, you had to be careful.

Don’t worry about it, I thought. Just meet with the people like he asked you to do, don’t make any waves, do what you’re told, and everything will work out fine.

Read all the reviews for The Goose here.

Continue reading THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGG on Kindle for $0.99 here or paperback here.

As many people have been known to comment when facing their own or another’s misfortune, ‘So long as you have your health ….’.

So what happens when you haven’t or, even worse, your children haven’t? You want a magic cure, of course, and typically this is represented as a magic [...]]]> by Tim Roux (guest post)

As many people have been known to comment when facing their own or another’s misfortune, ‘So long as you have your health ….’.

So what happens when you haven’t or, even worse, your children haven’t? You want a magic cure, of course, and typically this is represented as a magic pill.

There is no question that many modern medicines are miraculous, giving people a better quality of life than they could conceivably have imagined.

They also give people hope, often a good in itself (viz. the placebo effect), but also where misunderstandings and darker magic step in.

Inevitably, synthesised chemistry, however intelligently devised, is nothing like as subtle or calibrated as natural human chemistry, so just as inevitably the magic pill will have dark magic side-effects. Sometimes these are mild and occasional, but often they are significant and relatively common.

The tendency is to ban the use of drugs with common significant side-effects, which is a bit unfair on those who need those magic pills and will not be affected by them, but that is a chance the FDA and other health regulatory bodies are unwilling to take.

Magic pills are not cheap to bring to market. They require a lot of research, a lot of experimentation, a lot of tests and approvals, a lot of marketing, and they will sooner or later face a lot of competition, not least from generic copies.

So there you are as a pharmaceutical company, you have invested your billions and now you have billions of income in return from your magic pill – you have jumped all the hurdles, you are in the clear – and then some smart-ass comes along and points out that it is probably killing rather than curing a tiny minority of people.

What do you do? If this becomes a generally accepted scientific finding, you face the double-whammy of having to withdraw the drug worldwide and having to defend massive law suits.

Might it not be that bit cheaper and easier to bury the smart-ass instead? After all, nobody loves a smart-ass, especially Swiss-based corporations where commercial secrecy has been elevated to the status of a religion policed by the Spanish Inquisition.

Such a story is recounted in ‘The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg’ in which Dr. Doug Bremner discovered that a drug that was invaluable in addressing severe teenage acne was also associated with teenage depression, suicide and acts of unpremeditated violence.

These findings did not make Dr. Doug a popular bunny, oh dear me, no. Bunnies are vermin – pass me the shotgun.

And that particular pharmaceutical company took rather a number of pot shots at the good doctor. Indeed, they hired a couple of snipers, just to make sure.

The good doctor?

One of the many charms of this racy thriller of a tale is that Dr. Bremner never bills himself as being good. He is psychologically troubled, he starts up a cyber-affair, he makes mistakes in the data, but maybe this is the make-up of every caped crusader. Doesn’t Superman have his off moments? Didn’t Gotham City turn on Spiderman?

And what do you do when you find that desperate teenagers – someone’s daughters and sons – are dying needlessly, committing suicide, as a result of taking a drug that doesn’t suit them although it benefits many others.

The wise option is probably to throw all your research results on the fire and go and work on something less controversial and life-threatening. The courageous option is to stand up as one David against a multi-billion dollar, 100,000 workforce Goliath.

Dr. Doug Bremner, on this basis, has a lot more courage than sense, but he did thereby help bring this particular drug company to its own senses …..

…. and saved many lives.

This was originally posted on Speak Without Interruption here.

The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg is now available on Kindle for $0.99, find it here.

Bremner’s text is a personal narrative and social polemic, both. Finely written, his personal quest to honor his late mother who had died when he was a [...]]]> An indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, “The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg” illuminates the greed and unscrupulous nature of pharmaceutical companies and their market driven interests.

Bremner’s text is a personal narrative and social polemic, both. Finely written, his personal quest to honor his late mother who had died when he was a child is interwoven with his fight as an ethical psychiatrist to expose the dangers which lie hidden in prescription drugs.

Bremner writes the story of his beginnings at Yale Department of Psychiatry , a place of conflict and ruthlessness, frightening in itself to read of. One would expert more from this institute of higher learning and its pursuit of psychiatric public health information. It is this inauspicious beginning which will ultimately lead to an investigation spearheaded by Hoffman-La Roche Pharmaceutical against Bremner.

In an attempt to discredit Dr. Bremner for a study he conducted which found a causal relationship between the acne drug Acutane and brain changes causing depressive and suicidal behavior in teens, this preemptive strike against the doctor and his research is a microcosm of the onslaught of society waged by the aggressive big business of Pharmacology.

Early in the book, we become enlightened: Told by FDA that they trusted drug companies to do their own research, Dr. Bremner asks if this is wise. He tells us that the drug industry obtained legislation, passed by Congress, requiring that the drug companies pay the salaries of FDA employees.

Chilling in its implication, and unsavory in its details, early in this unwinding David and Goliath saga, we sense in Bremner the type of the hero, who is willing to kick against the goads for the ideals of truth and public safety.

Interwoven throughout this social account is Bremner’s personal and spiritual quest involving his dead mother, and his prose reveals a true writer, with its highly perceptive observations of his early childhood and his surroundings:

I remembered the wind blowing through the leaves of the madrona tree at our house on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. The peeling red bark. Sitting on the beach with a playmate, putting sand in a bottle and eating it. Dancing with my teddy bear to the song, ‘I wanna Hold your Hand’. . . my mother limping around the house, carrying me on her hip….

I highly recommend this text for anyone who wants to read a compelling and spell-binding narrative which fuses the personal and social in a heroic quest conducted by a physician who is a model for our era. Bremner fights and wins – Acutane has since been withdrawn from the market – and the truths he uncovers are personal and and political. In this sense “The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg” is an American story, with the ending we hope for: The victory of the hero we have been rooting for throughout the book’s chapters.

See the original review here.

Follow Susan Marie Kovalinsky on twitter @smkovalinsky or her blog here.