Side Effects

Nonfiction thriller hits close to home

By LAURA DARGUS

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While working as the mental health reporter for the Boston Globe in 1995, Alison Bass received the tip of a lifetime. Donna Howard, disgusted with discoveries she'd made while in Brown University's psychiatry department, was calling to report on funding from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health that was being obtained under false pretenses.

Howard's tip led to a series of stories for the Globe that became Bass' first glimpse into the conflicted nature of the misappropriation of funds within the psychiatric field and the study's interconnectedness with the pharmaceutical companies that catered to it. Eventually, the story brought her to Rose Firestein, the state prosecutor from Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office in New York. Firestein was responsible for the state's groundbreaking case in which GlaxoSmithKline was accused of having misled American doctors about the effectiveness of their blockbuster drug Paxil for use on children and adolescents. The result is the engrossing book Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial. Through key interviews, each outlining a different piece of the convoluted puzzle, Bass illuminates Big Pharma's ever-reaching influence. She maps out questionable instances in which the Hippocratic Oath was all but forgotten by practitioners of psychiatric medicine.

The main question is: Where is the money coming from? If substantial funding is funneled from the people doctors are supposed to be critical of during clinical trials, does that skew the results? No doubt about it. The case brought to light Food Drug Administration corruption, called-in favors among some of the nation's top psychiatric professionals and sparked the evolution of standards among the field's published journals. In Side Effects, Bass charts its development from the ground up. She outlines in a simple and straightforward manner how all things were, and still are, not as they seem. Her personal narrative style, giving a look into the case's key players' lives, helps drive home the overall effect the industry had on not only their work, but their personal lives as well. The anecdotes keep the story from being cumbersome—it could have easily been bogged down with jargon.

Considering the latest developments regarding the supplementary income of Dr. Joseph Biederman of MGH and Harvard Medical School (which Bass has blogged about on her site), Side Effects is not only still relevant, but it should be required reading. Especially for New England residents, given Massachusetts' own heavy involvement in medical research. Bass' scary chronicle spells out a truth most people are already all too familiar with, but could benefit in knowing more about.

ALISON BASS

TUESDAY 6.17.08

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