Robin Cook: Acceptable Risk (UK 1996)

From the Publisher:
From the roots of ancient witchcraft...
a new terror to destroy
With billions of dollars at stake, every scientist in America is fighting to discover the next Prozac, the latest 'feel good' drug.

Edward Armstrong believes he has hit the jackpot. He has isolated a stunningly effective anti-depressant from a bacterial mould first uncovered over two hundred years ago.

But there is more to the drug than anyone could have imagined. When Edward turns violent and the corpses of mutilated animals appear near the laboratory, his girlfriend decides to investigate the truth about this new 'miracle' drug. Before it claims any more innocent lives...

From the doctor whose bestselling thrillers have created fear and excitement for over a decade comes a harrowing tale of ambition, abandoned ethics and uncontrollable greed.

Robin Cook: Acceptable Risk. Pan Books, ISBN: 0330343386 (August, 1996), 406 p., £4.99.

Robin Cook: Acceptable Risk (USA 1996)

From the Publisher:
FROM THE BESTSELLING MASTER OF MEDICAL SUSPENSE...
"A race to capture the patent on a new antidepressant drug." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

Robin Cook has always been on the cutting edge of the latest medical controversies. In Acceptable Risk, he confronts one of the most provocative issues of our time: personality-altering drugs and the complex moral questions they raise. Neuroscientist Edward Armstrong has managed to isolate a psychotropic drug with a strange and dark history -- one that may account for the public hysteria during the Salem witch trials. In a brilliant designer-drug transformation, it is developed into an antidepressant with truly startling therapeutic capabilities. But who can be sure the drug is safe for consumers? Who defines the boundaries of "normal" human behavior? And if the drug's side effects are proven to be dangerous -- even terrifying -- how far will the medical community go to alter their standards of...

ACCEPTABLE RISK

"Cook manages to keep the suspense mounting and the pages turning; and he has some real surprises up his sleeve." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] morality tale of antidepressants and greedy medical entrepreneurs... Acceptable Risk takes its departure from a genuinely fascinating social history." -- Detroit News

DON'T MISS ROBIN COOK'S NEW THRILLER.

Robin Cook: Acceptable Risk. Berkley Books, ISBN: 0425151867 (February, 1996), 388 p., $6.99.

Robin Cook: Acceptable Risk (USA 1995)

From the Publisher:
From the best-selling doctor whose high-voltage thrillers regularly quicken readers’ pulses comes a harrowing tale of greed, abandoned ethics, and ambition run awry in the newest area of medical intervention: cosmetic psychopharmacology. Prozac-like drugs are being prescribed not only for their original purposes but increasingly to alter individual personalities to currently valued norms. With dead-on accuracy and the prescience of tomorrow’s headlines, Robin Cook explores the perilous intersection where fame and unfathomable lucre waylay and seduce the very best and brightest of those sworn to do no harm. When neuroscientist Edward Armstrong begins dating Kimberly Stewart, a descendant of a woman who was hanged as a witch at the time of the Salem witch trials, he takes advantage of the opportunity to delve into a pet theory: that the "devil" in Salem in 1692 had been a hallucinogenic drug inadvertently consumed with mold-tainted grain. In an attempt to prove his theory, Edward grows the mold he believes responsible from samples taken from the Stewart estate. In a brilliant designer-drug transformation, the poison becomes Ultra, the next generation of antidepressants with truly startling therapeutic capabilities.

Acceptable Risk is a story of quest: a researcher's quest for the ultimate drug and a woman's quest for self-understanding. Unbeknownst to either person, the two seemingly separate quests collide with devastating consequences.

Once again, the writer who invented high-tech horror has created a tantalizing medical thriller enriched by the disturbing ring of truth.

Dr. Robin Cook is currently on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He lives and works in Florida.

Robin Cook: Acceptable Risk. Putnam's, ISBN: 0399139710 (January, 1995), 406 p., $23.95.