Acceptable Risk

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.

A researcher on the verge of marketing the ultimate psychotropic drug decides to experiment on himself--with catastrophic results. 4 cassettes.

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.

Dr. Robin Cook is the author of thirty-one previous books and is credited with popularizing the medical thriller with his wildly successful first novel, Coma. He divides his time between New Hampshire and Florida. His most recent bestsellers are Death Benefit, Cure, and Intervention.