In a rapidly moving world of online diet culture, Daniel Kalla shares his insight as an emergency doctor in his new novel Fit to Die.

Kalla is a physician and author based in Vancouver. He has written over a dozen books, including The Darkness in the Light, Lost Immunity, We All Fall Down and The Last High.

Fit to Die is a medical thriller following the effects of a deadly diet pill known as DNP across Los Angeles and Vancouver. The track star son of a U.S. senator, a global pop star and the co-owner of a popular wellness centre all overdose on the same illicit drug. Dr. Julie Rees, a toxicologist in Vancouver and two unlikely detectives are set to uncover the mystery of this unknown and widely spreading drug.

Kalla discusses modern beauty standards and how he first learned of DNP with Rogers.

It's a terrifying chemical in that it's an explosive agent with a fascinating history. It was developed for World War One and they noticed in the ammunitions factories in France, as they were synthesizing this chemical for the bombs that workers started to feel hot all the time and many of them started to lose weight. Then it reemerged in the 1930s, when a Harvard chemist synthesized it into a diet pill that just happened to be killing a lot of its purchasers, and then it was banned for like 50 years by the FDA. But it always existed as this industrial agent and unfortunately, bodybuilders in the late 2990s discovered it was a great chemical for building muscles. But what they also soon discovered is that it's extremely poisonous – the equivalent to cyanide in a high enough dose, and it has existed, unfortunately, in the dark and grey web as this chemical that is sold as a weight loss supplement.

Unfortunately, it was a case I'd heard about in the medical community. I wasn't at all involved in it, but of a young person who presented to an emergency department and had admitted to having taken four of these online pills and had a fever and that's the typical symptom. They talk about it cooking people alive; it causes this hypermetabolic state and a fever that is not controllable. Tragically, the patient did die 12 hours later. I was just stunned to hear that there was a poison out there that was available online that could kill as cruelly and efficiently as this poison does.

Obviously all I can do is imagine them and read about them, but it's just immense. Like lots of people who fight conditions, eating disorders and their counterparts addictions, in many senses it's a lifelong struggle with wins and losses. She is meant to be so proud of her early success in getting over her eating disorder. But of course it's more complicated than that and she's still hiding her issue somewhat in plain sight. She's unfortunately under some very negative and toxic influences in her life and gets easy access to this medication. She epitomizes the most vulnerable, especially to the toxic social media culture that perpetuates these ridiculously unattainable standards for beauty.

I hope so. I mean it's a great question, I don't know how you feel about it. One trend I notice having two daughters myself who are now in their mid- and early 20s, is that my younger daughter grew up in a time where body positivity started to emerge online. It almost seemed like her classmates and peers had a little less struggle with the whole body image thing than my oldest daughter did because there is this counter movement that I hope continues to gain strength. I tell everybody it's so much more important that you're comfortable in your own skin than what you weigh.

They sell a myth and the mind over body is actually alive right in the name of their business. They're using this drug in a very different way in what they think is a safer way to get what most people want, which is a quick fix, right? People often don't want to do the work. They want to be able to have something that gives them immediate results. So it's a con and I think that even though there's some great things about the wellness industry, there is a lot of shadiness about it as well.

I work in Downtown Eastside Vancouver and I've seen such devastation from the opioid crisis among our clientele. I see a lot of darkness in my work and things that I view as potentially avoidable, not always in the moment but maybe in a larger societal sense. I love taking that as the hypothetical and putting it out there in a story and at least suggesting some potential resolution and making people think about it. I think even though people have mentioned to me the worry about bringing attention to this horrible drug that's available on the Internet. But to me awareness is far more important, people need to know and understand. I think in the end, it's safer for people to be aware than to be blithely ignorant.