The Cosgrove Trials

Jamaal Harris escaped a childhood of poverty and violence in a Washington D.C. ghetto by graduating valedictorian from George Washington University and climbing the corporate ladder to vice president of product development at Hayden Laboratories a Baltimore pharmaceutical company. His first major assignment as vice president is to manage the FDA review and approval of Xylophene a drug that treats migraine patients by redirecting the electrical and chemical impulses from the base of the brain to the blood vessels at the top of the brain stopping their contractions and the reduction of blood flow that causes severe migraine pain. Company marketing research shows that the value of Xylophene's commercial introduction will be the impetus for the company to launch a significant public stock offering or to be acquired by a larger competitor creating substantial wealth for company insiders. It will also make the 100000 stock options Jamaal had accepted in lieu of a salary increase when he was promoted to vice president worth millions. Before Jamaal is able to realize his stock option wealth he discovers clinical trial notes written by an unknown doctor describing potentially catastrophic side effects associated with the drug. Disclosure of the trial notes will delay or even prevent FDA approval and he is torn between the incredible wealth his stock options will generate if Xylophene is approved and his ethical commitment to preventing the harm that could fall upon patients prescribed the medication. But unknown to Jamaal powerful forces both inside and outside the company with much more at stake than his stock options from company management to a Columbian cocaine dealer to the White House will use whatever means available to them all unethical most illegal to see that Xylophene is approved. Jamaal resigns in frustration after Andrew Hayden III the company's third generation president refuses to slow Xylophene's introduction by ordering independent verifica