Race for the Mind: Book Review

Published December 1, 2017.

Daniel Gerard Welch draws on his decades' long experience working in the international pharmaceutical business to write this corporate thriller, Race for the Mind, published in December of 2017.

The book's "MacGuffin" is a drug being developed as a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Given the severity of the symptoms and the increasing prevalence of this disease, a lot of companies are hungry to be the one to manufacture and market this medicine.

The average person may not realize how complicated the process is for bringing a drug to market. It's not just the science and the patents; it's the personalities of the business people that can determine a lot about how a drug moves from a research lab to a pharmacy.

This novel has a number of characters, but Jack Callahan is the character with the most frequent and most sympathetic point of view. He's a business man who adopts various workplace assignments in an effort to get this drug--developed by scientist Dr. Win Lin to market.


Callahan faces foes from Nathaniel Shah and others from competing companies. A lot of people want to be part of this forthcoming drug. Additionally, Callahan has to ward off attacks from enemies within his own company. It's his task to decide who he can trust and who will stab him in the back at the first opportunity.

To humanize the disease, Welch weaves in a narrative about a famous scientist, Dr. Darya Rostov, who is living with Alzheimer's disease and being cared for by her journalist son, Alex. And while there are a number of characters who depict the worst of The Boys Club of corporate boardrooms, there are a handful of formidable women who contribute significantly to the development of the plot and challenge the "boys with be boys" shenanigans.

Reading this novel makes me more in awe that any drug moves successfully from an hypothesis to a FDA-approved drug. Welch pulls back the curtain and lets the lay reader see some of the process--which is dramatized for effect, I am sure; nevertheless, it did help me--as a long-time employee of universities--see a little bit about the games that business people play and the luxurious settings in which these deals play out.

Related: 

Alz Awareness Month