The Hormone Factory

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.