"Candace Pert
By Pamela Ryckman
Hachette, 304 pages, $30
In the late evening of Oct. 22, 1972, a young scientist in a university lab was in the midst of setting up the most important experiment of her life -- conducted in secret, using radiation-infused naloxone, which she had procured illegally. But she also had to pick up her son from school. Few fellow scientists, almost all of them men, would have been in such a position: They wouldn't have been expected to deal with child care, and most dared not perform an experiment with illicit materials while their advisers were out of town. Candace Pert didn't see problems, however; she saw potential. And nothing -- not the law, not a no-kids-in-the-lab rule -- was going to stop her.
Long before the 20th century, physicians understood that opium and its derivatives (such as morphine, codeine and heroin) affect the brain, dampening pain and inducing euphoria. But no one knew how. Was there a specific part of the brain that acted as a receiver? If so, could we manipulate it, block it or even cater to it? A race was on to find the receptors, and Pert wanted to be first -- but after six months and many failed attempts, she needed a fresh angle. And a radioactive drug.
The technique of radioactive-chemical tracing had been used since the 1950s to follow the trail of a "hot" chemical to the site in the body where it takes effect. With the ambiguously procured radioactive naloxone, known to be an opioid antagonist, Pert performed a trace on small slices of mouse brain. She packed up her work, then headed home to wait for the results.
When morning came, the world changed. Pert had discovered the opioid receptor. In "Candace Pert: Genius, Greed, and Madness in the World of Science," Pamela Ryckman writes that Pert (1946-2013) "achieved the kind of breakthrough most scientists only dream about" and simultaneously set a "nightmare" in motion.
Pert had dreams of treating opioid addiction. Instead her work helped launch the opioid crisis. Pharmaceutical companies "borrowed" her techniques to speed up the development of new drugs. Rather than using hundreds of rats and lots of man hours, a technician "could screen for five thousand separate drugs using the brain of a single rat." Along the way, the industry could manipulate a drug's effectiveness. It was a golden ticket, turning Pert's adviser, Solomon Snyder, into what Ms. Ryckman describes as a "power broker." Pharmaceutical companies "exploited her breakthrough," we are told, and accelerated the output and accessibility of opioids. Meanwhile, Mr. Snyder felt he was on a fast track to a Nobel Prize and had been nominated for the Lasker (another prestigious award). The nomination never mentioned Pert's name.
"I woke up one morning and looked in the mirror," Pert once wrote, "only to find Rosalind Franklin looking back." Franklin's work on the double-helix DNA molecule had been purloined by Francis Crick and James Watson: They won the Nobel; Franklin did not. Pert, with a reputation for being "exuberant yet impatient" -- mercurial, brilliant, infuriating, devilishly reckless and driven by laser focus -- wasn't about to take this lying down. Why would she? She'd been trained by the best.
"Snyder had prepared Candace for the vicious clash for credit," Ms. Ryckman writes, and had taught her to "exploit and publicize." Pert wrote letters, she gave interviews, she stirred controversy -- and asserted that significant work by women undergirded an old boys' club. Mr. Snyder won the Lasker, but by 1979 the "scandal-averse Nobel committee" decided to look elsewhere. Many blamed Pert for an "ungenerous" spirit. After all, she was supposed to look up to Mr. Snyder.
Ms. Ryckman doesn't lay all the blame on Mr. Snyder, however. He had elevated Pert, provided her with lab space and funding, chosen her over others who might have been similarly deserving -- partly because she knew how to play the game. After all, she hadn't mentioned some of those whose work she had relied upon either.
In the 1980s, writes Ms. Ryckman, female scientists were often the "objects of scorn," attacked as a "crazy bitch" or told to stay home and have children. It would be the early 1990s before research studies conducted at the National Institutes of Health were required to include women and minorities. Even now, we have yet to leave sexism fully behind: A 2022 study in the journal Nature found that women were 58% less likely to be included on patents than their male counterparts and 13% less likely to be cited in research, even though they did equal work.
Ms. Ryckman, a writer who focuses on women in the workforce, is the author of "Stiletto Network." Her biography of Candace Pert is not an homage to a hero.
This sweeping, tumultuous tale tells of a twisted "sickness" at the center of our health system: sexism, one-upmanship, and a backbiting culture more interested in prizes and grant money than curing disease. She describes the vicious political maneuvering that prevented Peptide T -- a drug for fighting HIV that Pert co-discovered -- from coming to the market in the '80s and '90s. The battle blackens both sides: Pert faced prejudice and deeply unfair treatment, but she also masterminded an international black-market distribution of the drug. There are few heroes who aren't also villains in the world of medical research.
Pert, who died in 2013, burns through the pages of her biography like an arc light. Ms. Ryckman's portrayal reveals a woman who wanted to help people but who took from people too. She borrowed money she never repaid. She lifted up; she tore down. She was brilliant but self-sabotaging. We learn that Pert struggled with mental illness; untreated hypomania helped her through endless hours of productivity but also made her reckless, dangerous and unreliable. We read about her escapades, simultaneously rooting for her as she refuses to follow NIH rules and fearing what she may do next. Yet everything she did -- for better or worse -- had been done first by the men in her life, with far less fallout and blame.
"Time and again," Ms. Ryckman writes, Pert "was steeped in enmity, then outfoxed and brought to her knees. All of this happened in the name of healing and was, after all, how the game was played." With exemplary research, balanced accounts and deeply evocative prose, Ms. Ryckman's biography offers a truly insightful narrative on what it can mean to be a woman at the cutting edge of science.
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Ms. Schillace, the editor in chief of the journal Medical Humanities, is the host of the online "Peculiar Book Club" and the author of "Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher."” [1]
1. How the Game Was Played. Schillace, Brandy. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 15 Nov 2023: A.17.
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