The Price of Ovulation: The Truth about Fertility Drugs and Birth Defects and a Solution to the Problem Review

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(More customer reviews)The first thing you'll notice when you pick up Terence Mix's Nautilus Award winning book, "The Price of Ovulation", is that it's big. And I mean BIG in capital letters. It's got a BIG storyline spanning over thirty years of investigation and litigation against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in America. It's a memoir. It's an essay. It's a reference book. It's dramatic. It's informative. It's entertaining. It's BIG. That it manages to be all of these things is a feat in itself, but all of these aspects are expertly melded into a single sword which may just be the ultimate weapon against corporate corruption that Mix had hoped for when he began writing it.

Of course, the second thing you'll notice is the title. "The Price of Ovulation" sounds like an icky educational film from the sixties, and although it's an apt title considering Mix's thesis, and is perfect for publication in a scientific or legal journal (which tend to specialize in icky titles), it just doesn't drive the impact of its message to a mass audience. That's as far as my criticism of the book goes, because the second I opened it I was engrossed by its harrowing first few pages; a love story turned to terror at the hands of a fertility drug called Clomid, which caused Heinz and Ingrid Breimhorst's child to be born with no hands, a clubfoot, and a palsy on the left side of his face.

It quickly becomes clear that Mix knows how to work an audience. What follows feels a bit like a John Grisham novel, except with figures, transcripts, and courtroom testimonies thrown in to inform the reader and provide credibility. Even if you feel inclined to skip over some of the technical insets you'll still gain a lot of information as you ride Mix's roller coaster trial story.

After Mix wins the trial against the pharmaceutical company, Richardson-Merrell, which marketed Clomid, the next portion of the book becomes a more personal journey for the author as he attempts to persuade the Federal Drug Administration to take Clomid off the market. What Mix provides, beyond his warning to expectant mothers, doctors who prescribe fertility drugs, and fellow lawyers, is a detailed account of how the relationship between the FDA and the large corporations it's supposed to regulate ends up working against the consumer instead. Since I'm neither an expectant mother, doctor, nor lawyer, this is what spoke to me most in "The Price of Ovulation". The theme most prevalent in Mix's journey are his encounters, time and again, with the dismissal of evidence that could save thousands because it may infringe on profitability.

"The Price of Ovulation" is a wonderful book that keeps you tearing through, angrily underlining and scribbling in the margins all the way to the end. Terence Mix also does a great job of casting himself as the main character, becoming more than just a talking head full of information. He lets you into to his personal struggles which parallel his legal and scientific journey. He's likable and funny, and utterly alone against an army of corporate doctors and lawyers, all of which serves to make him an extraordinary character to follow throughout this horrifying, sad, and enlightening modern odyssey.

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