The Goldilocks Genome

by Elizabeth Aden

• ISBN13: 9781684632541
• ISBN10: 1684632544
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781684632558
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2024-05-21
• Publisher: SparkPress
• More Book Details

Summary

When San Francisco–based FDA epidemiologist Dr. Carrie Hediger uncovers a rash of unexplained deaths while investigating the suspiciously convenient death of her best friend, she becomes determined to find answers—even if it leads her to a murderer, and even if confronting authority, using her wiles, and bending the rules to get justice risks her future in the FDA.

To unravel the puzzle, Carrie assembles a team: some talented post-doctoral fellows, a quirky pharmacologist, an unctuous chemist, and a skeptical FBI agent that she can’t help her attraction for. Together, they follow the data through the twists and turns, eventually uncovering that the Goldilocks effect in prescription drugs—the premise that people are inclined to seek “just the right amount” of something—is central to understanding these mysterious deaths. Through the twists and turns, Carrie and her team enter a race to uncover the truth . . . and catch a killer.

Grounded in real data analysis techniques, real science and pharmacology, and actual current psychiatric practices, The Goldilocks Genome is simultaneously a taut, race-against-time thriller and a condemnation of the psychiatric industry’s failure to implement genetic-based “personalized medicine”—a problem that persists to this day.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Reed Aden, PhD earned her doctorate in bio-medical anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. After conducting extensive epidemiology and serology studies and teaching as an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she began career in the pharmaceutical industry, where she rose to be Senior Vice President for Global Pharmaceutical Strategy at a major Swiss pharmaceutical company. After leaving Big Pharma, she held leadership positions in various biotechnology companies, founded and co-founded biotech companies, consulted for a wide range of clients, and served on Boards of Directors. Since 2017, she has brought multiple previously unpublished cozy murder mysteries written by her godmother, Eunice Mays Boyd, to print, among them Dune House, Slay Bells, and A Vacation to Kill For. The Goldilocks Genome is Elizabeth’s debut medical thriller. She is currently working on a memoir, Hepatitis Beach, which she hopes to have published by 2025. She lives in Berkeley, California.