Acceptable Risk Book

***SPOILERS*** I like Robin Cook. No really, I do. I just seem to review those of his books that make me angry, rather than those I enjoy. This one has a double-whammy of irritants: not only is it politically motivated and scientifically inaccurate, but it focuses around my field, an area where Dr. Cook seems to have done very little research. The story is a morality tale about the "evils" of psychopharmacology. My degree is in psychology, and as someone who has both studied and benefited from SSRI antidepressants, I find this kind of prejudice difficult to understand. I'll spare review-readers the lecture. The initial premise of the book is the question of what set off the Salem witch hunts. Dr. Cook offers the interesting hypothesis that it was ergotism, a kind of hallucinatory or seizure disorder caused by the sclerotia (spores) of certain molds; one common one develops on rye, a grain heavily in use by the poorer families of the American British colonies.

I will leave the rest of the plot to the reader, except for my objections to the ending. It has been established that hallucinogenic compounds can build up in the brain, resulting in increased sensitivity, so that even a tiny exposure can trigger a hallucination. However, Dr. Cook's idea of the "reptile brain" taking over when the mind enters this altered state is, to my knowledge, neurologically unfounded. Even if this were the case, and here I speak from my own specialty, there is no reason to believe that a person being controlled by the "reptile brain" would become indiscriminately violent and predatory. Not even alligators bite everything that wanders past, and snakes are quite selective as to their targets. If personality is as deeply rooted in the genes as some psychologists believe, the individuals' behaviors would be dependent on their overall psychological nature.

My apologies, I lectured in spite of my intentions. This book is a fairly interesting read, provided you can suspend disbelieve and ignore the deus ex machina ending. It would probably be a lot more fun for someone without strong personal feelings on the subject matter.