MADreads

Race for the cure

January 18th, 2007 Lesley - Central

Allegra Goodman’s (Kaaterskill Falls) latest novel, Intuition, takes the reader inside the world of high-stakes cancer research at a prestigious institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Young postdoc Cliff Bannaker’s experiments with cancerous tumors in mice provide amazing results which seem almost too good to be true for Robin Decker a fellow researcher and former girlfriend.  She is unable to repeat his results and suspects the unthinkable: that his findings are fraudulent.

Robin becomes the scapegoat for Cliff’s experiments and eventually leaves her position. Meanwhile, Sandy Glass, the institute’s codirector and publicity-seeking oncologist, begins a PR campaign announcing the results before established protocol and methodology needed for sound science can occur. With the pressure for funding and grants ever present in his mind, Sandy risks the future of the Philpott Institute in his quest for a cancer cure. 

An inquiry into Cliff’s lab results and Robins’s allegations of fraud eventually include a congressional hearing as the reader is led to possible consequences found in the competitive world of scientific research.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction