Author and scientist Neil Pearce packs 15 years of anger into 215 pages of his new book.
If this is revenge, it has been served on ice.
Adverse Reactions: The Fenoterol Story, is a scientific whodunit.
The victims: up to 600 New Zealand asthmatics who died in an epidemic lasting a dozen years, from 1976.
The suspect: the drug fenoterol, marketed as Berotec by BI.
Pearce was part of a team of four researchers who linked fenoterol to the deaths, but had to overcome powerful opposition - from the drug company and their own peers - before the drug was restricted.
It is a story of the lengths to which a company went to protect its multimillion-dollar product. A story of naivete among well-intentioned doctors who refused to believe what the evidence was telling them. And of a timid Health Department, which had to be almost bullied into action.
It is a story which Neil Pearce waited 15 years to write.
"I was too angry at the time - I didn't want to write something that would just be seen as revenge or self-justification."
More
If this is revenge, it has been served on ice.
Adverse Reactions: The Fenoterol Story, is a scientific whodunit.
The victims: up to 600 New Zealand asthmatics who died in an epidemic lasting a dozen years, from 1976.
The suspect: the drug fenoterol, marketed as Berotec by BI.
Pearce was part of a team of four researchers who linked fenoterol to the deaths, but had to overcome powerful opposition - from the drug company and their own peers - before the drug was restricted.
It is a story of the lengths to which a company went to protect its multimillion-dollar product. A story of naivete among well-intentioned doctors who refused to believe what the evidence was telling them. And of a timid Health Department, which had to be almost bullied into action.
It is a story which Neil Pearce waited 15 years to write.
"I was too angry at the time - I didn't want to write something that would just be seen as revenge or self-justification."
More
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