The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million--and Bucked the Medical Establishment--in a Quest to Save His Children [Paperback]

Geeta Anand (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 2009

The riveting true story of John and Aileen Crowley's race to find a cure for Pompe disease that inspired the movie Extraordinary Measures

With three beautiful children, a new house, and financial security, John and Aileen Crowley were on top of the world—until their two youngest children, fifteen-month-old Megan and five-month-old Patrick, were diagnosed with Pompe disease and given only months to live. Refusing to accept a death sentence, John quit his financial consultant job and invested his life savings in a biotechnology start-up to research the disease and find a cure. Battling scientific setbacks, conflict of interest accusations, and business troubles, John and Aileen would be tested to their limits as they valiantly fought, and succeeded, in finding revolutionary new treatment for the disease—offering hope to Megan, Patrick, and the many children and families affected by Pompe disease around the world.

The inspiration for the captivating film Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, The Cure is a remarkable true story of cutting-edge science, business acumen and daring, and one family's indomitable spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

At 15 months old, Megan Crowley was diagnosed with Pompe disease, a rare genetic disorder that was likely to reduce her life span to five years at most. Her five-month-old brother, Patrick, shared the same disease and its crippling progression. Their father, John Crowley, a freshly minted Harvard MBA graduate, was determined to use his brains and connections to find a cure. He started a family foundation to fund research on Pompe disease and eventually headed a biomedical start-up company with a promising approach. Ironically, the more involved he got in efforts to find a cure, the slimmer the prospects were for his own children as hard business decisions and conflict-of-interest questions thwarted his efforts. Blocked from getting his children into clinical trials that could prolong their lives, and watching them grow weaker and weaker, Crowley concedes that he was occasionally tempted to simply steal the precious drugs. But he pressed ahead. Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with the Wall Street Journal, delivers a detailed and heart-wrenching account of a father's extraordinary efforts to save his children and find a cure for a debilitating and life-threatening disease. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Amazing. . . . The Cure explores human courage under the most trying circumstances.” (New York Post )

“Anand, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with the Wall Street Journal, delivers a detailed and heart-wrenching account of a father’s extraordinary efforts to save his children and find a cure for a debilitating and life-threatening disease. (Booklist )

“Suspenseful, poignant…Anand’s The Cure is a wild rollercoaster ride at the edge of medicine.” (Jonathan Weiner, author of His Brother's Keeper )

“Brilliantly written! This is the story of a marriage and family that survived despite incredible odds.” (Abbey Meyers, president of the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) )

“Intensely moving, powerful...This gripping account will inspire and sustain hope for all parents whose children are stricken with disease.” (Louis Freeh, former FBI director )

“Inspiring.” (Rutland Herald )

“A well-researched, skillfully written, inspiring account of one man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.” (Boston Globe )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; 1 edition (December 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006073440X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060734404
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #758,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Geeta Anand is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and feature writer for the Wall Street Journal. Formerly a political reporter for the Boston Globe, she now specializes in health care, education, and environmental challenges in India. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and two daughters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It makes you think and it makes you care, October 13, 2006

By 

John Sheehy (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million--And Bucked the Medical Establishment--In a Quest to Save His Children (Hardcover)

This wonderful book has a lot of emotional depth and complexity. John Crowley, the young father, is brash, brilliant, arrogant, and ignorant. He makes personal mistakes and business mistakes, yet you remain drawn to his story by empathy for his desperation as he fears that his small children will suffer a slow painful death. It's an honest and interesting portrait of a real human being, not a one-dimensional hero.

It's not really a business book and you don't need any familiarity with venture capital financing to understand the text, but John Crowley's business provides the book with a fascinating emotional contrast between his frantic urgency as a parent and the dispassionate PowerPoint analyses expected by his investors. They share a common goal, but the mindset is completely different.

It's not really a science book, but the drug development process adds to the story's drama. There's no Eureka! moment when all the problems are solved. Patients are desperate for anything they can get as soon as they can get it, but the science is ambiguous, the bizarre biotechnology manufacturing processes are difficult to operate, and then the clinical trial results are uncertain. An experimental compound might kill a young patient, or bring quick improvements that fade over time, or have different impacts on different patients. And even with these uncertain prospects there's strong competition among parents for the extremely limited number of places in trials.

One of the most appealing aspects of the book is the author's light touch. She never puts herself or her opinions into the story. The book ends with an Afterword relating events subsequent to the basic text, but the author doesn't seize pages to tell us what it all means. At the end I found myself wondering, "Well, what does it all mean?" I looked up Pompe disease information on the internet, wondered what people in the Pompe "community" thought about the book, and wanted to know how the science has progressed. The book makes you think and it makes you care.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book About an Inspiring Family Story, September 4, 2006

By 

Nasir Khan (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million--And Bucked the Medical Establishment--In a Quest to Save His Children (Hardcover)

As a father myself, I was incredibly moved by this book. It's an inspiring story about the things parents will do for their children. The writing is effortless, vivid and sensitive - you go through the Crowley's ups and downs with them from chapter to chapter, and you cannot stop until you have finished the entire book. I never thought reading about biotech firms could be this enoyable either - the author does an excellent job of taking you into world of biotech and venture capital and making it at once interesting, informative and easy to understand.

This is simply a great book about a family's incredible, heart-wrenching story. A must read for all, especially for parents (and would be entrepreneurs).

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great story of where business and family collide, September 3, 2006

By 

JHR (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million--And Bucked the Medical Establishment--In a Quest to Save His Children (Hardcover)

Kudos to this story of John Crowley's unbelievably ambitious, frequently frustrated and sometimes ethically reckless effort to find a cure for the fatal disease that afflicts two of his children.

This book's perfect pacing and lean, utilitarian prose treats a tale that could have been as saccharine as a Lifetime movie as an unremittingly suspenseful thriller as Crowley has to balance his fiduciary responsibilities as the head of a biotechnology firm with his pressing need to get his children into a clinical drug trial before they die.

It's a predicament that makes Sophie's Choice seem like a simple dilemma to resolve, but the author effortlessly weaves the complex world of biotechnology research and venture capital into a family story that any parent could identify with. It reminds me of David Simon's Homicide or Jon Harr's Civil Action.

Crowley may now be a rich man, but it's uplifting to read about a CEO driven to succeed -- even if it means bending the rules -- by motives far more moral than the soul-sucking avarice that dominates Wall Street today.