The Cure

by Douglas E. Richards

  Erin shook her head. If she hadn’t believed this was possible before, Raborn certainly hadn’t helped his case by explaining it was even more difficult than she had thought. She wasn’t a molecular biologist, but cells had numerous complex mechanisms for controlling genes. There was a lot going on at the molecular level, and trying to understand such a complex interaction, let alone measure it, had to be fantastically difficult. “And you were able to determine the precise levels needed for all eight genes?” she asked skeptically.

  “Unfortunately, no. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but this proved to be an intractable problem. Even with mice. I ended up having to arrive at the answer through trial and error. As far as I can tell, there is no other way. It took many hundreds of attempts to get it right. Much as you might have to try hundreds or even thousands of combinations to stumble on the one that would open a padlock.” He paused. “For the modulation of these genes, theory doesn’t help. It has to be determined empirically.”

  There was a long silence on the line.

  “I know my call is out of left field, and what I’m telling you sounds utterly fantastic. But I urge you to look up my credentials and read some of my work, which is quite rigorous. And I’d be happy to send you all of the data I’ve generated so far. I think you’ll find it quite eye-opening.”

  Erin considered. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that you send me your data and it’s everything you claim it to be. So if it is, why haven’t you initiated clinical trials in man to try to get this cure of yours approved?”

  “That’s the rub,” said Raborn, the enthusiasm in his voice giving way to weariness. “This therapy will never be approved. Not using the standard drug-approval pathway. First, the FDA likes to see efficacy in two animal species, if possible, and I only have one. One that hasn’t even been designated as an appropriate model yet. And even if they accept my model, the therapeutic window in mice is too small to ever get past them. The effective dose and the lethal dose are too close for comfort. Even though I have theoretical and experimental reasons for believing the therapeutic window will be larger in man.”

  “For something this important, won’t the FDA take that into account?”

  Raborn laughed. “I see you haven’t had many dealings with the FDA. They’d make a steel pipe look flexible. Trust me, they’d never let me begin a trial.”

  Erin’s eyes narrowed. “I see. Why do I have a sick feeling that I know why you called me?”

  “I need your help, Erin. I could sense your passion in the article I read. Your drive to give society a tool to deal with these monsters. It came through, loud and clear. And you’re one of only a handful of researchers going into prisons and studying psychopaths, and taking MRIs of their brains on a daily basis.”

  “You want me to test your therapy on my inmates, don’t you?”

  There was another long silence on the line.

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Erin.

  “It’s the only way. It has to be done empirically.”

  “Sure. And I go to jail.”

  “No one will ever know. I’ll give you the therapeutic cocktail, and separately, the eight genes whose precise modulation is critical, at a wide variety of expression levels. You just have to add them to the mix in every possible combination until you find the one that works. It won’t be easy, since we can be all but certain the delicate balance of these genes that does the trick in mice won’t be the same balance needed in man. It took me hundreds of experiments, and it might take you the same. But when you’ve found the right combination, you’ll see a complete reversal of the condition. The brains of your psychopathic subjects will read as normals. Their amygdalas will light up when given emotionally charged words. And as I mentioned, these abnormal genes would not only be replaced, but expressed correctly. So their brain structures will revert to normal—they will be normal—at the level of their DNA. Right down to their sperm and ova. And your MRI data will be there to document the entire thing.”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to work. But if there is one perfect combination of gene expression levels, I’m guessing there’s at least one imperfect combination. A combination that is lethal. How many mice did you kill along the way?”

  “Surprisingly few,” said Raborn. “The vast majority of the wrong combinations do nothing. And as I’ve said, the therapeutic window with mice is very tight. It should be wider in man. So there is even less chance of hitting a lethal combination.”

  “But you have no idea really. Less chance doesn’t mean no chance.”

  Erin heard a sigh at the other end of the phone. “No. There are never guarantees when testing experimental medicines. Test subjects have lost their lives in the name of clinical research and will do so again. It’s unfortunate that this has happened. But that’s the nature of drug development. It’s a risk we have to take if we ever want to bring important new drugs to the world.”

  “This is true, but in FDA-sanctioned trials, these patients give their informed consent. The benefits and risks are carefully explained to them before they sign on. They know there is a chance things could go wrong, but they are volunteers. Going in with their eyes open.”

  “Look, Erin, you know that even if the FDA would allow a trial, psychopaths would never volunteer. They’re all convinced there isn’t anything wrong with them—it’s the rest of us who have the problem.” He took a deep breath. “Erin, you’re working with violent offenders, most of them repeat offenders. And when they get out they’ll do it again. You know they will. They have no conscience, no soul. If a few of them don’t survive our trial, this will be a tragedy. But nothing like the tragedies they’ve already caused in countless lives. And will again.”

  “I won’t do it,” said Erin emphatically. “There is nothing you can say that will get me to change my mind about this. Period. I agree with what you say. And I have a history with a psychopath myself. I decided early on to study this condition, but not at the cost of my own soul. I vowed not to ever let this work erode my own moral standards.”

  Just after she had decided on the course her life would take, Erin had stumbled across a famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: a warning. Battle not with monsters lest you become a monster, he had written. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you. She had taken this admonition to heart, determined not to let her work with monsters turn her into one herself.

  “I’m not asking you to lower your moral standards. Just to reconsider them. I’m asking you to look at the big picture. Think of how many lives you’d be saving if you could wipe this scourge from the face of the earth. I’m not suggesting you kill psychopaths to get rid of them. All I’m asking is to cure them. Turn them into humans. Give them back a soul. You’d be doing them the ultimate service.”

  Raborn paused for just a moment to let his points sink in and then pressed forward. “And think about the thousands and millions of victims around the globe you’d be saving. Not just the victims of violent crimes, but of swindles, and heartbreak, and manipulation. Now and for all future generations. If you knew the death of a few of these remorseless killers you study in prison would save tens of thousands of lives, tens of thousands of rape victims—often children—wouldn’t this be worth it? And again, not just for this generation, but for all eternity. The total decrease in human pain and suffering would be monumental. Incalculable. And I’m not even saying any of your subjects will die, because I don’t think they will. But if I’m wrong, and a few did end up dying, are you saying they wouldn’t have died for a noble cause?”

  “I won’t do it,” said Erin.

  But she said it with far less conviction this time. And she made no move to end the conversation.

  8

  ERIN PARKED THE Ford rental car in the large parking lot shared by Asclepius Pharmaceuticals and several other biotech companies in the industrial park. The sky was a vibrant blue, and exotic, tropical vegetation could be seen everywhere a visitor looked. Streams and small
fake waterfalls wound their way along the common grounds of the biotech park, and the modern buildings were all four stories tall and made of blue-tinted glass, only the engraved marble obelisks in front of each differentiating one from another.

  Here goes nothing, thought Erin nervously. Would Raborn be in? How would he react to her surprise? And where would she be spending the night?

  She tried to convince herself that it was fun not knowing. Her life had become too programmed, she decided.

  During her last conversation with Raborn, he had made no mention of travel, so she had high hopes that he would be in. If not, maybe she’d treat herself to the zoo or SeaWorld before she met Courtney for dinner. One way or another, she was determined to have a fun, relaxing vacation, and stay well clear of any of the local prisons. In fact, as far as she was concerned, she was done with prisons forever.

  She eyed Asclepius’s lobby for a moment, but decided against this route. In for a penny, in for a pound. No use coming this far only to spoil the surprise by having a receptionist let Raborn know she was here. Sure, it was awkward to meet in the flesh after two years of a great Skype relationship. But Courtney had insisted that once Raborn saw Erin in spectacular 3-D, he would never be satisfied with Skype again. Especially if she was able to seduce him.

  Raborn’s office was inside Asclepius’s vivarium, located within a nondescript building not officially affiliated with the biotech park, a few blocks away from their main offices, unlabeled so as not to attract attention from animal rights activists. She approached the entrance, a glass double-door, and pulled. She wasn’t entirely surprised to find it locked, especially since there was a key-card scanner affixed to the wall nearby.

  She peered inside. As expected, she couldn’t see any animals, but she did spot a young technician in a white lab coat walking purposefully toward a door leading deeper inside the facility. But he was walking away from her.

  She quickly rapped on the glass. A few seconds later, the tech changed directions and opened the door halfway, his body blocking the entrance. “Can I help you?” he said.

  Erin smiled. “Yes. I’m an old friend of Dr. Raborn. In from out of town. But I was hoping to surprise him.”

  The tech eyed her up and down, but didn’t find anything suspicious about her. She was wearing light cotton pants and a blue blouse, fairly form-fitting. The outfit was tasteful, but left little room for hidden weapons, cans of paint, or other items a militant animal rights activist might bring. And her beauty was disarming. If she was an activist, the tech decided he might consider joining the movement himself. “Old friend, huh? You don’t look old enough to be anyone’s old friend,” he said flirtatiously.

  She threw him a thousand-watt smile. “Okay, you caught me,” she said. “I’m actually a young … ish … friend of Dr. Raborn. He told me his office was at the back of your vivarium. Is he in today?”

  The tech threw the door open and stepped to the side. “You’re in luck. I just saw him in his office fifteen minutes ago. Do you want me to take you to him?”

  “That would be great,” said Erin.

  The vivarium was an expansive stainless-steel complex. A high-throughput, fully computerized animal-processing plant. It was designed to facilitate animal experimentation and it performed its function flawlessly. Erin had never been in one, but she knew all about them. Animals were routinely sacrificed for the sake of science across the world, in immunology classes in undergraduate and graduate school, and for experimentation of every kind.

  Pharmaceutical companies were typically filled with well-meaning animal lovers who had no choice but to develop a clinical callousness toward the many animals that were sacrificed. The FDA required that experimental drugs be tested in animals, and even required companies to administer higher and higher doses of their drugs until exactly half of the animals tested were killed—a dose called the Lethal Dose 50, or LD50—before allowing a drug to be tested in humans.

  “Would you like me to tell you about the facility while we walk?” asked the young lab tech.

  Erin realized she had been openly gawking. “That obvious I’m a tourist?”

  “Pretty much,” said the tech. “But that’s okay. We’ve all given plenty of tours to friends and relatives.” He began walking and turned back toward Erin. “So we house seven different species here: rats, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, hamsters, and Yucatan mini-pigs.”

  “Yucatan mini-pigs?”

  “Yeah. They’re about eighty pounds and they look like fangless wild boars. So don’t be thinking of the adorable little pink ones that you see in children’s zoos.”

  “Got ya,” said Erin.

  “Animals are delivered, put in cages with barcodes, and placed in separate rooms by species. Water is purified and piped into each cage automatically—computer controlled. Humidity, temperature, air quality, and lighting in each room are carefully monitored as well.”

  “Right. Making sure you eliminate all extraneous variables from your experiments.”

  “Exactly.” He waved his arm toward a doorway. “Those are the surgical suites. I won’t take you in, but they’re pretty much what a human surgical suite would look like. We go beyond government mandates when it comes to anesthesia and are as humane as we can possibly be.”

  She nodded grimly. Billions of chickens and other food animals were killed each year, maybe even each week for all Erin knew, but for some reason a vivarium run by a pharmaceutical company just seemed more like a horror chamber. She wasn’t sure why.

  What was truly remarkable was her mind’s ability to partition itself. To create a nearly impenetrable barrier to block out, not just the memory of the night she lost her family, but the emotional content of these memories as well. She was now in a facility that did experimentation on animals, which might be expected to trigger her memory of a mutilated puppy. And it did. But only for an instant, before another part of her mind was able to clamp down on this and push it away. After years of nightmares and debilitating fear and mistrust of others as a child living with her aunt and uncle, of waking in the middle of the night screaming, drenched in sweat, her mind had, mercifully, made an adjustment that had allowed her to live a normal life—free of her demons.

  For the most part.

  “Carcasses are taken out through the unsterilized side of the building,” continued the lab technician, “bagged, and thrown into large freezer units. We have an outside service remove the ones we make radioactive during the experiments.”

  “Where do they take them?”

  The tech tilted his head in thought. “Good question,” he said. “I really don’t know. Wouldn’t you rather ask where the nonradioactive ones go?” he added with a smile.

  “You read my mind,” said Erin, returning the smile. “Where do the nonradioactive carcasses go?”

  “I’m glad you asked. These are donated to the San Diego Zoo and put on the menu for the carnivores there.”

  Erin raised her eyebrows. “I guess if their polar bears start glowing in the dark, you know you’ve mixed up the carcasses.”

  The tech laughed and continued walking. As they approached a long black lab table, made of a substance that was smooth and seemed as hard as concrete, the tech said, “You may find this a bit … grisly.”

  A row of glass cylinders were aligned on one of the black benches, one every two feet. Attached to each apparatus was a single pink, throbbing, disembodied reddish-pink mass, about the size of a small pebble, continuously being bathed in a solution, half of which contained experimental drugs. Each fleshy mass, which could only be a heart, continued beating rhythmically as though unaware it was now without an owner. A thin wire led from each heart to a computer monitor that recorded the frequency and force of each contraction.

  “Rat hearts,” said the tech.

  The hearts beat with inhuman speed. Thump thump! Thump thump! Thump thump! Erin’s lips curled up in disgust. Grisly was an understatement, she thought. “So rat hearts will keep beating, even witho
ut the rat,” she mused. “Who knew?”

  The tech took a quick detour into a doorway where a female lab technician in a long white lab coat held a rat by its tail. She set it down and deftly placed a two-pronged metal probe, which resembled a small tuning fork, quickly into the rat’s beady red eyes, while simultaneously pressing a button that delivered a powerful jolt of electricity directly into them. The rat went into a convulsion and she carefully recorded the duration of this in a lab notebook that was open on the table.

  “Ah … I think I’ve seen enough,” said Erin. She was able to seal off her traumatic memories, but there was no need to push it. “Not that I don’t appreciate the tour. This was really interesting, in a torture-chamber-straight-out-of-a-horror-film sort of way. But I should be surprising Dr. Raborn while the surprising is good.”

  The tech nodded. “You got it.” He led her another thirty yards, took a left, and stopped in front of an office. The outside had a placard that read Dr. Hugh Raborn, M.D./Ph.D., Vice President, Neuroscience.

  Erin’s pulse raced. The moment of truth had arrived.

  Raborn’s door was open and he was busily typing into his computer as they approached. Erin stood at the door, ignoring the butterflies in her stomach and hoping her face wasn’t flush from the excitement she was feeling.

  “Dr. Raborn, an old friend of yours is here to see you,” said the lab tech, gesturing toward Erin standing slightly behind him.

  Raborn looked up from his computer and his eyes fell upon Erin. He looked her up and down for several seconds, his face expressionless. Finally, he turned back to the technician. “Troy, if this is some kind of joke, I’m afraid I’m missing the punch line.”

  Erin’s jaw dropped open at the sound of his voice. For just a moment she was unable even to speak.

  “She said she was an old friend of yours and wanted to surprise you,” said the technician, inching away from Erin and now studying her suspiciously.