Power to Harm

Cornwell (Earth to Earth) reconstructs the story of Joseph Wesbecker, on medical leave from his job in a Louisville, Ky., printing plant, who returned to his workplace in 1989 and shot 20 fellow employees, killing eight of them before killing himself. He also relates the battle by the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company to fight the damage suit brought by the survivors of Wesbecker's murder spree and the families of the dead, who alleged that his action had been caused by his use of Prozac. The antidepressant drug accounted for about a third of Lilly's multibillion-dollar sales, and eventually the company settled the case via a payout kept secret even from the judge. Cornwell discusses questions being debated by neuroscientists and psychopharmacologists about the link between brain states and human behavior, with some affirming the Cartesian dualism of mind and body, others believing in a narrow reductionism in which the brain is seen as a ""meat machine"" capable of being controlled, still others asserting the nonmechanistic opinion that human beings have a measure of mental freedom. Cornwell presents a profound analysis of the fundamental question of human identity and of epistemological matters sure to be ongoing concerns as pharmacology becomes even more prevalent in treating the emotionally unstable. (Oct.)