Daughters of Shandong
by Eva J. Chung
“Education, while only in one facet, creates a foundation for working toward other goals. It can lift people out of poverty, and break harmful cycles that have endured for centuries.”
“Chinese people have a saying: Zhong nan qing nu, which means “Value men; belittle women.”
Based on the author’s family history, beginning in 1948 during the Chinese Communist Revolution, and specifically her grandmother’s, Chung describes in her gripping novel how a mother and her three daughters escape to Taiwan despite all odds – being destitute, enduring starvation, and severe illness. The family is part of a prosperous landowning family whose parents are more concerned with not having a male heir, than helping their entire family escape the war. The family abandons the young daughters, Di, Lan, and Hai, and their mother to fend for themselves because they are considered “useless” females and just “more mouths to feed.”
The daughters and their mother eventually embark on a 1,000-mile journey to locate the rest of the family who planned to relocate to Taiwan. It’s a riveting account about their incredible resilience and loyalty to each other. Their determination to help future generations of their family experience a better life is extraordinary. A moving testament, readers who aren’t familiar with the history regarding the devastating Communist Chinese Revolution will read about it, along with what can be achieved by hope and resolve. I look forward to reading Chung’s future books. She is an international women’s human rights attorney.
The Shell Seekers
by Rosamunde Pilcher
The joyful and enchanting novel, The Shell Seekers, was on my “to read” list for ages but newer books always became my priority. Well, I finally read it and absolutely love it and understand why it has been immensely popular since it was published in 1987. It’s about 64-year-old Penelope’s life – her charming Cotswold cottage with its splendid garden, her passions, tragedies and secrets, her self-centered adult children, her optimistic Bohemian life style, and the beauty of life’s simple pleasures. Her father was a Victorian painter. His breathtaking painting “The Shell Seekers,” epitomizes to Penelope her early carefree childhood in Cornwall during the 1900’s. It’s her most cherished possession.
The story opens with Penelope recovering from a heart attack. A strong woman, she checks herself out of the hospital and proceeds to carry on with her life. Her adult children are appalled and urge her to let them control her life and affairs, while all Penelope wants is to enjoy the rest of her life, independently as always.
Meanwhile her children discover their grandfather’s art is again back in vogue and demanding astronomical prices. Since Penelope owns some of her late father’s artwork, including the magnificent “The Shell Seekers,” her children urge her to sell all of it. Family turmoil ensues with disturbing ramifications.
Moving between Penelope’s early life and current time, it’s an uncomplicated, yet captivating read. Readers will thoroughly enjoy the realistic characters, and this timeless, superbly written, and moving saga.
Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims
by Jennifer Vanderbes
“No government agency or health authority had done what this loosely knit group of concerned citizens had: expose and stop the largest pharmaceutical scandal of the twentieth century.”
“As a sleep-inducing agent, Kevadon is at least as potent as the most effective barbiturate, and so safe that it has never harmed a living thing (animal or plant) regardless of dosage level.” ~ William S. Merrell Company, Kevadon brochure, 1960
Thalidomide, “the wonder drug,” killed about 10,000 children in Europe and caused thousands more to be born with devastating birth defects. The inventor of Thalidomide, the Chemie Grünenthal company, conducted shoddy testing and both it and its distributors lied about the drug’s safety. This is a devastating and momentous story, 60 years after the fact, about corporate corruption and greed, scientific/medical incompetence, and betrayal. Vanderbes’s research and interviews with hundreds of survivors along with scientists, attorneys, physicians, surviving victims, and their families expose the intentional deception by the international scientific community and the pharmaceutical companies. The corporate efforts to generate positive medical articles about thalidomide’s safety and to suppress information about negative effects in order to win approval from the FDA to sell the drug in the U.S. is appalling. The companies willfully minimized evidence that the drug had serious side effects, and continued to push it into new global markets. “It was touted as a sedative with no hangover. It was hailed as non-addictive. It was rumored to present no side effects. It was trumpeted in medical journal ads as ‘astonishingly safe’ and ‘completely non-poisonous.’”
Thalidomide was given to uninformed, trusting patients, causing a medical disaster. Sold and distributed under various names and derivatives as a sedative and cure for morning sickness in pregnant women in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it caused phocomelia (a shortening of the “limb/s being reduced or missing and leaving distal elements (handplate) in place” and other terrible defects, along with damage to internal organs in infants, and often death. “It was invented in Germany in 1954 by Chemie Grünenthal, a pharmaceutical company which employed Nazis – one of thalidomide’s developers experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, killing hundreds…Thousands of dead or deformed babies resulted in a German criminal case against Grünenthal, which ended without a conclusion in 1970. Nearly 40 years later, the company apologized to the approximately 5,000 surviving German victims.”
“Chemie Grünenthal partnered with the Cincinnati-based William S. Merrell Company in 1959 to distribute millions of samples of the drug in so-called experimental trials in the United States.” Later, the Merrell Company, the U.S. pharmaceutical distributor, released a press release that “affirmed that thalidomide was never sold in the United States.” Vanderbes states however, “sold” did not mean not “distributed.”
In 1960, Merrell sent out drug “detail men,” now known as pharmaceutical sales representatives who call directly on doctors and advise them about specific drugs. Because thalidomide had not yet been approved, their goal was to ask doctors to provide samples of the medication and try it out on patients. The more the sales representatives convinced and pressured the doctors to participate, the bigger their bonuses would be. This was a marketing ploy to create demand for the new drug. These sales people recruited more than 1,200 doctors, who gave thalidomide to more than 20,000 innocent Americans assuring them it was safe.
Vanderbes’s illuminating book chronicles how only a handful of people in the world recognized the drug’s dangerous toxicity and tried to stop it from being sold in the U.S. and abroad, and how they attempted to alert the medical world and the general public. Harassed and ignored, they continued to pursue evidence to determine whether or not it was safe, since they believed there was a dearth of scientific data to prove it was safe for humans.
Trial transcripts reveal how the Merrell Company withheld the toxic data from the FDA. Other drug companies also buried evidence of the drug’s nightmarish side effects and were duplicitous in promoting it.
In 1961, Germany’s Ministry of Health asked Grünenthal to withdraw the drug but were told by Grünenthal “they are unable to do so for financial reasons”!
Thankfully, Frances Kelsey, an FDA medical reviewer, scientist, and physician, “single-handedly kept thalidomide off the American market.” As a result of her heroic efforts, in preventing U.S. approval of thalidomide, she received a presidential medal from John F. Kennedy.
At present, as a repurposed drug, Thalidomide now is used as a cancer drug and despite there being no Research & Development costs incurred, it costs a cancer patient approximately $60,000 per year or $5,000 per month to use it. Insurances may possibly cover some of the costs.
FYI regarding 2023 revenue for the top producing pharmaceutical companies: Johnson & Johnson $85.16 billion, Roche $65.32 billion, Merck $60.1 billion, Pfizer $58.5 billion, Novartis $45.44 billion (From theFierce Pharma website: http://www.fiercepharma.com)
Adult book reviews are by Susanne Dominguez.