Fatal Care (10 page)

“Such rare and different forms of cancer,” Hoddings pondered. “It seems so unlikely that they could somehow be associated with one another.”

“But malignancy is malignancy,” Joanna argued, “no matter what name you give to it. And we have two malignancies occurring in a very small group of patients.”

“And their only common denominator is that both patients underwent the artery-cleansing procedure. Correct?”

“Correct,” Joanna said. “And for obvious reasons we need to establish whether there is cause and effect here. Can you help us?”

“I can try.”

With an effort Hoddings pushed himself up from his swivel chair. He was a big, heavyset man with jowly features and disheveled gray hair. His most prominent feature, however, was his large head which had a bulging frontal area, as if his brain were too big for his skull. And that may well have been the case, because Wallace Hoddings bordered on genius. He was a pioneer in gene splicing and was said to have narrowly missed winning the Nobel Prize for his work in that area. But the prize might come to him yet. Hoddings was also an expert in environmentally induced tumors, particularly those in which some agent caused chromosomal mutations that led to cancer. He fit perfectly into Joanna’s committee. Hoddings not only knew all about gene splicing, he was also a renowned authority on tumor induction.

Hoddings walked over to a computer in the corner of his office and began punching buttons on the keyboard. “Come on over and take a look, Joanna.”

Joanna sat beside him as he pushed the ENTER button. The computer screen lit up instantly and began listing agents associated with various malignancies. It was like someone flipping through the pages of a large book. The computer flashed from one list to the next. The columns of agents seemed endless.

“What we’re looking at now,” Hoddings said, absently reaching for his pipe, “are all the definite and probable carcinogenic agents known to man.”

“Lord!” Joanna said softly. “The list must be in the thousands.”

“Perhaps we can narrow it down.”

Hoddings punched in another set of instructions. “Let’s see if there are any environmental enzymes that are known to induce cancer.”

The computer screen blinked and flashed up numbers and names almost too rapidly for the eye to follow. The screen went blank and then spelled out its message.

Hoddings leaned back in his chair. “That’s what I was afraid of. There are no enzymes that have ever been shown to induce cancer.”

“But this is a new enzyme,” Joanna countered.

“Not really,” Hoddings said. “From what I understand, the enzyme used to clean arteries is a form of lipase, which is as old as mankind itself.”

Joanna tried to think through the problem, wondering if the enzyme wasn’t the culprit at all. “Could there be some contaminant in the enzyme preparation used in the procedure?”

“I can’t answer that,” Hoddings said. “But I know someone who can.”

“Who’s that?”

“Eric Brennerman.”

Joanna squinted an eye. “I thought he left Memorial to start his own biotech company.”

“He did start his own biotech company, and it’s done wonderfully well. But he never really left Memorial.”

Joanna stared at Hoddings, surprised at what she’d just heard. There was supposedly an ironclad rule at Memorial that forbade any faculty member from owning a for-profit medical research corporation. “And how did Brennerman manage to pull that off?”

“He and Simon Murdock worked out an arrangement that benefited both Eric and Memorial.” Hoddings reached for the phone. “Let’s see if he is in his laboratory.”

Joanna leaned back in her chair, nodding to herself. That was just like Simon Murdock. He’d sell out to anyone and break his own rules if there was enough money in it for Memorial. She wondered what the payoff was. It had to be in the millions if Brennerman’s Bio-Med Corporation was as profitable as everyone thought it was.

Hoddings placed the phone down. “He’ll be with us shortly.”

“May I ask about the arrangement Eric has with Memorial?”

Hodding’s face closed. “I really don’t know that much about the details.”

Oh, but I’ll bet you do, Joanna wanted to say. You know every detail, including the dollar amount that came from Bio-Med to Memorial and how much of that ended up in the coffers of the Biogenetics Institute. “Let me tell you why I’m interested,” she said. “As you may know, I do a lot of consulting work outside of Memorial.”

“I’m aware of that,” Hoddings said, carefully lighting his pipe.

“And I’ve been giving a lot of thought to opening a private office,” Joanna went on. “But I was always under the impression I’d have to leave Memorial to do it. Now it seems as if that may not be so.” She quickly held up her hand. “I hope you’ll keep what I’m telling you in confidence.”

“Of course,” Hoddings said earnestly.

Bullshit
, Joanna thought. Hoddings and Murdock were close, and within the hour they would be talking on the phone. Which was fine with Joanna. It would make Murdock think twice before he imposed any more unreasonable demands on her. “So anything you could tell me about Eric’s arrangement might be very helpful.”

Hoddings shrugged. “I don’t know all the details of their arrangement, but I could give you a broad outline, if you’d like.”

“That would be great,” Joanna said appreciatively.

“Let me start from the beginning. That way you’ll understand why the arrangement was made.”

Hoddings puffed on his pipe as he told the story. Eric Brennerman began his career at Memorial ten years ago as a postdoctoral research fellow in Hoddings’s laboratory. He was a genius right out of the gate, with a unique insight into gene splicing. It seemed as if he made an important discovery every month, and his work was published by the very best scientific journals. Brennerman was given a faculty position after only one year at Memorial. His star shone brighter and brighter. He became a world expert in transspecies gene splicing and was one of the first to show that the vitamin A–producing gene in a daffodil could be inserted into a rice plant with the end result being a type of rice with very high levels of vitamin A. Brennerman’s research led to over a dozen patents involving genetically modified foods, and both he and Memorial received handsome royalties from agricultural conglomerates eager to buy their patents.

But Brennerman’s main interest was atherosclerosis, the deadly process that lays down plaques in arteries, occluding them and leading to heart attacks and strokes. And his intense interest in this disease process wasn’t just a case of scientific curiosity. He was trying to save his own life. His father and brother had died of heart attacks in their mid-forties. His mother dropped dead of a stroke on her forty-sixth birthday. In his family, atherosclerosis was rampant. Very few people lived beyond the age of fifty. Brennerman was already forty-five.

It was as if Brennerman were racing with the clock.

“So that’s how he came up with the lipolytic enzyme to cleanse arteries,” Joanna interjected.

“That’s almost another story in itself,” Hoddings went on. “But a damn interesting one.”

“I’d love to hear it.”

Hoddings relighted his pipe before continuing.

Brennerman had found a family living in Santa Barbara that had extremely high levels of cholesterol, yet never suffered heart attacks or strokes. He surmised that the family must have some genetic factor—perhaps an enzyme—that prevented plaque formation and protected the family members. So he began studying the genes in that family, looking for the magical factor. He worked in his lab seven days a week, sometimes even sleeping on a cot in his office. He skipped lectures and meetings so he could spend every spare moment looking for this factor. Finally he requested that he be relieved of all teaching and administrative duties so he could concentrate solely on his research.

Simon Murdock refused, not wanting to set a precedent. Brennerman was furious and promptly went out and searched for a venture capitalist who would fund the start-up of a new biotechnology company. He found one and resigned the next day. Murdock quickly backtracked and offered to give Brennerman whatever he wanted. But it was too late.

“So they reached an agreement,” Hoddings concluded. “Brennerman was made an adjunct professor of genetics at Memorial and allowed to keep his laboratory, and this permitted him to continue to receive NIH grants. He was also given permission to run his new Bio-Med Corporation, in which he holds a substantial interest. As I understand it, the majority interest belongs to the venture capitalist who put up the initial funding.”

“And what does Memorial get out of this?” Joanna asked.

“Royalties on everything that comes out of his lab at Memorial,” Hoddings told her. “So far, there are four patents on genetically modified foods which are owned by Bio-Med, but from which we receive royalties.”

Joanna nodded, noting the word
we
. Contrary to his earlier statement, Hoddings knew exactly how much money changed hands between Bio-Med and Memorial.

“So,” Joanna thought aloud, “for some handsome royalties, Memorial allows Eric Brennerman to use its name and laboratories, and of course he can also do his clinical trials here—as he did with the arterial cleansing procedure.”

“Precisely,” Hoddings said. “In these days of tight money for medical research, Memorial is like all the other medical centers. We have to scratch and claw for every nickel.”

“Scratch and claw,” Joanna repeated agreeably. But she was thinking that Murdock and Hoddings had sold out for a price.

“Did Brennerman discover his magic enzyme here or at Bio-Med?”

“At Bio-Med,” Hoddings replied. “But it’s not quite as magical as people make it out to be.”

Joanna leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

The intercom on Hoddings’s desk buzzed. It was his secretary informing him that Brennerman would be tied up with an experiment for another twenty minutes.

Hoddings pushed his chair back. “Twenty minutes to Eric can turn out to be two hours. We’d better go see him.”

They walked out of Hoddings’s office and down a long corridor that was lined with laboratories. Most of the doors were closed and unmarked, although some had warning signs indicating the presence of biohazardous materials. Over the entrance to one laboratory was a flashing red light and a sign that read:

Joanna turned to Hoddings and picked up the conversation where they’d left off. “You mentioned that the arterial cleansing agent wasn’t quite as wonderful as people had thought. Is there something amiss with it?”

“No,” Hoddings said at once. “It’s just not as potent as we’d like. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on old, hardened plaques. That’s why they use a laser to clean out the hard material first.”

“Do you think there’ll ever be an agent which will clean out the walls of all arteries, regardless of the types of deposits?”

“We’re working on it.”

“So, with one injection, your arteries would be clean as a whistle.” Joanna marveled at the thought. It would make myocardial infarction a disease of the past. “Do you think one shot would do it?”

“Who said anything about a shot?”

Joanna’s eyes widened. “Are you talking about a pill?”

“We’re working on that, too.”

They came to a closed set of double doors at the end of the corridor. On one door was a sign reading LABORATORY FOR BIOGENETIC RESEARCH, on the other the name ERIC BRENNERMAN, M.D., PH.D.

Hoddings led the way inside. It was a huge laboratory, measuring five thousand square feet, with walk-in, glass-enclosed cubicles lining the walls. In the center of the room were workbenches with sophisticated equipment atop them. A skylight overhead let in natural light.

Hoddings took Joanna’s arm and guided her past a glass cubicle where a technician was tending to a grossly deformed rat. Joanna paused to study the animal more closely. There was a rounded object protruding out from under the skin on the rat’s back. It took her a moment to realize what it was. “Is that a human ear growing out of that rat?”

“Yes,” Hoddings said, watching the animal jump around. It seemed oblivious to the growth on its back. “And it’s coming along rather well, don’t you think?”

“Why doesn’t the rat reject the human ear?” Joanna asked.

“Because the inner part of the ear is a flexible form of plastic,” Hoddings explained. “It’s covered, however, with skin cells from a human.”

Joanna scratched her neck, still not understanding. “But why doesn’t the rat reject the human skin cells?”

“Because the rat has been genetically altered so that its immune system believes that those human skin cells are its own.”

“I take it that those skin cells belong to a patient?”

Hoddings nodded. “To a young girl whose ear was chewed off by a pit bull.”

Joanna grimaced as she envisioned the young girl’s mangled ear and the heartache and pain it must have caused. She pointed to the animal inside the cubicle. “And the ear growing there will be removed from the rat and then surgically attached onto the young girl?”

“That’s our plan.”

They moved on to the next cubicle. It was climate controlled and contained patches of growing plants and vegetables. The tomatoes were large and juicy and bright red. Stalks of corn were eight feet tall and glistened in the natural light coming from above.

“And here we have problems to be solved,” Hoddings said.

“But everything looks so fresh and delicious,” Joanna commented.

“Looks can be deceiving.” Hoddings pointed to the ripe tomatoes. “Those tomatoes have been genetically modified so they contain thirty percent more flesh and thirty percent less fiber. And they can last on the shelves in food stores for days longer than ordinary tomatoes.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“They’ve lost their taste and we have to find out why.”

Hoddings peered over at the corn, his head moving up and down as if he were measuring the stalks. “And the corn presents an even greater problem. These plants were genetically altered by a Midwestern university so they would resist various pests. In essence, a piece of DNA was inserted into them and this instructs the plant to make its own pesticide. That way farmers would no longer have to spray. And it worked fine. But unfortunately the corn’s inborn pesticide killed more than pests. It killed butterflies and caterpillars and other lower forms of life.”