A Simple Cure: Melanoma, Our Worst Nightmare by
From a top reviewer: A Simple Cure is an “Intense, Riveting, Medical Thriller.” The novel engages the reader in the search for the cure of malignant melanoma, a cancer that kills one American every hour.
If you think for one moment that A Simple Cure by Lawrence W. Gold is going to be another run of the mill medical thriller straight from the same test tube as all the rest, you would be so wrong! First, I highly suggest you read what the author has to say in the beginning of the book, it’s fascinating and educational, because once you get to the first page of this fast-paced novel, you will be in for the ride of your life!
When nature, in her ultimate act of irony, strikes Richard Powell, a cancer specialist, with malignant melanoma, his wife, Terri devotes her life to curing the dreaded disease.
While publically supported research laboratories are characterized as noble in search of cures, and proprietary drug companies are caricatured as ruthless and materialistic, too often, the distinctions aren’t so clear.
When a drug courier is murdered to obtain an experimental and promising treatment for malignant melanoma, the act unleashes a chain of devastating consequences. People for Alternative Treatment (PAT), a company created to find cures for rare diseases, had fallen on hard times and became a subsidiary of Kendall Pharmaceuticals, a company with very different set of values.
Experimentation with a vaccine against tuberculosis is showing surprising effects in controlling malignant melanoma at PAT and UC Medical Center. Kendall is enthralled with the economic potential of such a treatment in melanoma and in many other cancers while researchers are leery and have many unanswered questions. Kendall’s determination to push the vaccine into clinical trial at all costs is in conflict with Terri and her ethical associates.
When clinical trials begin, the vaccine’s effects are miraculous. Soon, however, once again, we see the rule of unintended consequences.
About the author of the medical thriller, A Simple Cure: Lawrence W. Gold, M.D.
I was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, moved to Queens, and then, as New Yorkers say, we ascended to the Island.
First, Do No Harm was published in April 2007. No Cure for Murder was released in August 2011. For the Love of God was published in January 2012 and The Sixth Sense in July 2012.
In the last two years, I’ve written three screenplays based on my novels and hope to see one or more produced for the screen. I submitted my screenplay, Rage to the 80th Annual Writer’s Digest contest and won honorable mention (57 out of 11,000).
We live in beautiful Grass Valley with 13 year old Mike, a terrier mix and Bennie, a 7 year old purebred though enormous Yorkie.