In her new book, Trusted: Children and aspirin, a deadly dance of science, business and politics, physician and epidemiologist Karen M. Starko tells how in the late 1970s, partly through trawling medical journals and observations from up to a century before, as well as talking with parents whose children had so recently died after sudden ghastly illness, she came to identify the likely link between the killer named and classified in 1963 as 'Reye's syndrome' and humble, bestselling, family-friendly aspirin.

Deborah Blum, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Poison Squad, calls Trusted 'a riveting and sometimes horrifying investigation ... a medical thriller packed with troubling history, first-class science, and first-class compassion for those harmed along the way'.

At the time of the events, Karen Starko was a young doctor in a male-dominated profession, worrying sometimes if she was spending enough time with her baby. Part of Trusted's appeal is its humility, its foregrounding of families and communities in the efforts to overcome scepticism and denial from powerful sections of the medical profession, government, and, of course, pharmaceutical companies. For them, it mattered much that aspirin should be seen forever to be 'as gentle as a mother's kiss'.

The American Academy of Pediatrics honored Dr Starko's work as a Milestone at the Millennium.