Our First Harm: Credo
Description
The Valerian family are gods of modern medicine, their name etched into the marble wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their gospel, the Valerian Credo, is a sacred promise that has built an empire: Our first responsibility is to the patient. It is a soaring melody of healing and philanthropy that has made them saviors in the public eye.
But beneath the beautiful song is the low, dissonant hum of a machine that runs on human tragedy. Patriarch and CEO Conrad Valerian, driven to surpass his father's legacy, views death not as a tragedy, but as a "rounding error"-a simple cost of doing business. While his heir, Julian, begins to hear the "dissonant hum of hypocrisy" in his father's words, the family's brilliant head of R&D, Dr. Eleanor Valerian-Hayes, is haunted by the secrets she's been forced to bury in the data of their blockbuster opioid, Valerium.
Worlds away, in a grim Ohio office, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Carter is building a case to dismantle the Valerian dynasty, not as a corporation, but as a "criminal enterprise" under the RICO statute. He is unknowingly allied with Maya Flores, a fierce young activist radicalized by her brother's death from a Valerium prescription, who refuses to let her family's grief be silenced or sanitized.
Their paths are set on a collision course when a principled FDA reviewer discovers a terrifying, buried truth about the Valerians' next blockbuster drug. His desperate call to Eleanor, his former mentee, forces her to make an impossible choice: continue to protect the family that has given her everything or expose a lie so monstrous it will obliterate their name from history.
CREDO is a searing, high-stakes thriller about the battle between a seductive narrative and a devastating truth. It exposes a world where philanthropy is used to "launder" a reputation , where science is an instrument of commerce, and where the people behind the statistics are the ultimate price. How far will a family go to protect its legacy, and who will survive when the hum of hypocrisy finally becomes a roar?
More details
Person
T. K. ANGA is a public health specialist and health promotion activist with over nineteen years of experience on the front lines of the global health crisis. Their work has taken them from remote clinics in Namibia.
After two decades of writing reports, analyzing data, and designing public health interventions, T. K. ANGA came to believe that the greatest barrier to change was not a lack of evidence, but a lack of empathy on a global scale. Facts and statistics can describe a crisis, but they often fail to convey the profound, human truth of living within it.
The Invisible Epidemic is an act of "narrative epidemiology"?an attempt to use the immersive power of fiction to expose the complex, interconnected, and often invisible systems that shape our health. It was written out of the conviction that to truly change the world, we must first be able to feel its wounds. A story, unlike a policy brief, can be a powerful prescription for a new way of seeing.
T. K. ANGA lives and works in Namibia, where the global story of our health is being written every day.
