The Hormone Factory : A Novel

A disturbing story that describes how the alliance between science and capitalism can lead to disaster when the people in charge lose track of their humanity Mordechai de Paauw was the Dutch cofounder and CEO of the first pharmaceutical company to invent the contraceptive pill and hormonal treatments. Hitler’s invasion of Holland and the threat he poses to the survival of De Paauw’s family and the Jewish scientists working for him doesn’t affect De Paauw’s urge to test his treatments on his female workers and exploit them sexually. Even after the war, which he survives unscathed, De Paauw will continue his mischief until a catastrophe that he himself couldn’t have imagined allows him to come to his senses long enough to tell us his story. The Hormone Factory weaves questions of scientific integrity, sibling rivalry, and sex into a narrative that is as troubling as it is thought provoking. From the throes of his death bed, Dutch pharmaceutical entrepreneur and megalomaniac Mordecai de Paauw reflects on his life as the co-founder and CEO of Farmacon: the first company to standardize and distribute the contraceptive pill worldwide. With the future of his family business threatened by Hitler's precipitous rise to power and his sexual exploitation of the factory's women soon to be exposed, he struggles to keep his vision afloat, forcing him to choose between his own misguided impulses and his ethically minded Jewish family. An incisive psychological portrait of the inseparable bond between ruthlessness and unbridled capitalism, THE HORMONE FACTORY weaves questions of scientific integrity, sibling rivalry, and sex into a narrative that is as troubling as it is illuminating. Scientific progress and human decency butt heads in this debut novel, which was inspired by the real-life founder of Organon, the first pharmaceutical company to make and market birth control pills and testosterone replacement therapy. A Dutch meat company executive, Mordechai de Paauw built a pharmaceutical empire amid the chaos of Hitler's rise to power, in the process betraying his partner, his twin brother, his wife, and the young women who worked in his factory, whom he exploited sexually. Een oude man kijkt terug op zijn loopbaan als directeur van een fabriek van hormoonpreparaten in het zuiden van Nederland waarin hij weinig last van scrupules binnen en buiten zijn bedrijf had