The daughter of the scientist who pioneered the Primodos hormone pregnancy test will reveal his trail of deception in a memoir about to hit bookshelves.
Joanne Briggs reveals the truth about her father Michael’s compromised research and its devastating consequences in The Scientist Who Wasn’t There: A True Story of Staggering Deception.
Published by Ithaka Press and released on 5 June, the book was awarded the inaugural Bridport Prize for Memoir in 2023.
ACDHPT chairwoman Marie Lyon has already read the book, and said: “This is a must-read because it includes a number of revelations that expose why our babies were harmed.”
Book synopsis
What would you do to find out the truth about someone you love? A forensic, propulsive book about the line between fact and fiction.
Renowned scientist Michael Briggs was many things – a space expert at NASA, an advisor to the World Health Organisation, and a successful Big Pharma executive.
But he had a secret. A scandal broke out in 1986 when research he conducted was revealed to be compromised. Patients were also claiming that a pregnancy test he pioneered had caused devastating birth defects. Soon after his fall from grace, Briggs was dead, struck down by a mystery illness in a foreign country
Briggs left behind a long list of publications, patents, and inventions, including his involvement with Primodos. But he also left behind hundreds of people who believe they are victims of his negligence and who are still fighting for justice to this day.
And he left someone else: his daughter, Joanne. After decades of wondering who her father really was, Joanne decided to investigate for herself. In hypnotic prose, she uncovers the secret that shaped her father’s entire life and made his story more fantastic than any science fiction. As Joanne discovers, her father’s greatest invention was himself.
Reviews
“As soon as I started reading Jo’s book I knew it was something special; it’s a propulsive, goosebump-raising mystery reminiscent of Sam Knight’s The Premonitions Bureau or Emmanuel Carrère’s The Adversary. But the full story of Michael Briggs also raises profound questions of public interest, akin to those in the Post Office Scandal. The fact that this forensic, luminously-written book was written by none other that Briggs’ daughter makes it truly an astounding read.” – Sarah Braybrooke, publishing director of Ithaka Press
“In this hypnotic true story of academic glory, deception and a trail of destroyed lives, the daughter of scientist Michael Briggs – an internationally acclaimed academic whose compromised research had devastating consequences – investigates the mystery of her father.” – Waterstones
“A page-turner with a mystery to solve, and a meditation on what it means for a child to know their parents.” – Cathy Rentzenbrink, memoirist
“An exceptional, entirely unpredictable, real-life thriller, this is not about death but life: how it is lived and perceived, what is real and what is not. Told from the inside, where it hurts the most. In today’s world, in the face of AI, fake news, the abandonment of fact checking and deep fake identities, Joanne, lawyer turned truth-sleuth, keeps you hooked throughout anticipating the next revelation as she crosses the boundaries of belief. Far, far stranger than fiction and far more salutary.” – Michael Mansfield, barrister and author of The Power In The People
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