Candace Pert Genius, greed, and madness in the world of science

Pert, a neuroscientist and pharmacologist who pioneered research on opioid receptors, pushed boundaries. When she wasn't credited for her work, she fought back. Ryckman (Stiletto Network, 2013) notes that women are still 13 percent less likely to be listed on articles and 58 percent less likely to be included on patents than male collaborators. Pert's detractors say she liked to be the center of attention, and she didn't always act like someone who served as chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health. At the height of the toxic shock syndrome epidemic, she arrived at a party for National Institutes of Health employees dressed as a bloody tampon. Ahead of her time, she embraced alternative medicine, publishing Molecules of Emotion: The Science behind Mind-Body Medicine (1997) with a foreword by Deepak Chopra and becoming a revered New Age celebrity. In 2013, at age 67, Pert, who was taking supplement estrogen and menstruating again, died of cardiac arrest. Ryckman provides a well-reported deep dive into the life of a radical and complicated genius.

In this riveting biography, journalist Ryckman (Stiletto Network) chronicles the life and career of pharmacologist and neuroscientist Candace Pert (1946--2013), who at age 26 was the first to identify the human opiate receptor. Pert had trouble getting recognition from the male-dominated scientific community and was snubbed when her lab chief won the prestigious Lasker Award for the opiate research, which he had urged Pert to abort, in 1978. Despite becoming chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1983, she increasingly alienated the scientific establishment by promoting controversial assertions about the mind-body connection, including her postulation that "prayer and meditation strengthen the frontal cortex." From there, Ryckman traces Pert's midlife transformation "from diehard scientist into mind-body guru" who profited handsomely from speaking gigs and book deals. In 2007, Pert started a pharmaceutical company that illegally raised funds on promises to monetize drug patents it didn't own even after she had been reprimanded by NIH for infringing on those patents only a couple of years earlier, setting in motion a scandal that blew up only after her death from heart failure. Ryckman's nuanced portrait depicts Pert as a tragic figure so desperate for recognition and wealth that she was willing to break the law to get what she felt was her due. Readers will be engrossed. (Nov.)