Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

And then two things occurred.

First, he, Manwaring, was named secretary of Health and Human Services. He was an old friend of this president and he liked him very much, even if he did not always share the man's black-and-white view of the world.

Several months after he was approved by Congress, Manwaring was asked to come to a meeting at the White House. There he met with the president's chief of staff and Brewster Ford. To his surprise, his predecessor-a liberal, from the other party-was also present. As was Chase Welles, the new head of the Food and Drug Administration. At this meeting, the arrangement with the pharmaceutical companies was explained to him and to Welles. Ford laid out the entire potentially devastating scenario. Welles seemed to have no problem with any of it. But it disturbed Manwaring. His predecessor as secretary saw his resistance and, in answer to one of Manwaring's questions about the real necessity for the pact, said, "Necessary? Here's how necessary this is. Forget about the government trying to ban cigarettes. Pretty soon we'll have to make smoking obligatory, just so we can kill off a few billion people."

Manwaring was deeply troubled, morally and politically, by the implications of what he heard. But he accepted it. He understood that he was a crucial piece in this puzzle because so many of his decisions, so much of his work with the FDA, would be directly affected by what he was hearing. He weighed the pros and cons, listened to the arguments- all from people he respected and trusted-and he decided that he could live with such an arrangement. He decided that he was dealing with two evils, but one was definitely greater and more damaging to the world as a whole.

But things changed.

Accepting something in theory was quite different from accepting it in practice. The FDA, led by Chase Welles, approved several drugs and supplements that caused severe adverse effects. Several deaths, yes, but also many recorded cases of liver damage and heart failure. An anti-depressant, released by MayDay, drove eleven people to suicide over a three-month period. A drug that was widely used in the treatment of breast cancer, released by Selwick, damaged kidneys and caused strokes. Still, Manwaring told Justin and Deena, he remained silent. The logic, he kept telling himself, was the same that applied during wartime. It was acceptable to sacrifice the few to save the majority.

After September 11, however, he clashed with Kransten. KranMar held the patent for a drug that was extremely effective against anthrax. They did not have the facilities to make enough of it-or at least enough to satisfy a public that was panicking and desperately needed reassurance. During the first few months after the World Trade Center attacks, it was nearly impossible to determine potential threats. No one knew what the terrorists were capable of or willing to do. There was a legitimate fear that anthrax could be used, via mail or via the water supply, to wipe out millions of people. Manwaring lifted KranMar's patent, allowing a Canadian company to make a generic version of the drug. The action enabled millions more people to have access to it. But Manwaring was called into the Oval Office and told, by the president himself, that this was never to happen again. Manwaring argued-never telling the president the truth behind the pressure that was being placed on him, strictly explaining the need for such actions-but his arguments did no good. It became clear to him that the lesser of two evils could quickly become, and might already have become, the greater danger.

Three months after that, KranMar introduced a pill that was marketed as one that caused fat to bypass the body's system entirely. It was an extraordinary success from the first day the television advertisements ran. Within a year, twenty-eight people had died after using the pills. Manwaring ordered production held up so more testing could be done. He had an extraordinary clash with Chase Welles, who publicly hinted that Manwaring was being bribed by rival pharmaceutical companies who were developing similar products. The White House did not back Manwaring, instead siding with the Food and Drug Administration chief. False information was disseminated to the media and Manwaring found his integrity and judgment attacked from both the left and the right. Still he was a good soldier and said nothing. He kept trying to look at the bigger picture and the ramifications of going public with what he knew.

Then he was contacted by Maura Greer.

At this point in the story, Helen Roag stepped forward. She had changed into a pair of khaki pants and a cotton blouse. Manwaring still wore his robe.

Helen said that she had been working at the Aker Institute, a subsidiary of KranMar, for several years. She had a research background but was asked to assume more of a managerial role than she had anticipated. She was stunned at the raises she was given, so she rarely argued about the responsibilities they were assigning to her. She knew she was being paid two, three, even four times the amount someone in her position should have been paid.

At some point, she was asked to have lunch with Douglas Kransten himself. She was dumbfounded but, no question about it, flattered. He praised her work to the skies, and then, midway through the meal, he began to talk to her about a special assignment. One that he said was a little tricky. There was some risk involved, he said, but its scientific value was incalculable. He said that as early as 1970, he had become convinced that human growth hormones were the key to eradicating many of the problems that struck the human body as it aged. He'd had a team of scientists working on it since that time. Kransten told Helen that they'd done some experiments around the country, beginning as early as 1972. They'd had astonishing success with some of their subjects. He showed her that, in the northeast region alone, eighteen subjects-ten males, eight females-had lived to be over one hundred years old. Kransten was convinced-no, more than convinced, absolutely certain-that his people had discovered a way to slow down the aging process.

He showed her some of the experimentation. Groups of people had been fed and injected with various combinations of such supplements as L-arginine and glycine and L-ornithine and L-glutamine. There were some miraculous results at first. Wounds healed, immune responses to bacteria, viruses, and tumor cells improved. The loss of skeletal muscle diminished, as did fatigue. Gradually, the results became even more miraculous. Many of those who had participated in the experiments were living longer. The aging process had been delayed, in some cases substantially. Helen had looked at the data, agreed that it was interesting and impressive, but she disagreed with him that the proof was absolute.

It's not ready to be released to the public, he told her. There are problems. But the problems are close to being solved.

We are on the verge of doubling the life span of the normal human being, Kransten told her. And there is absolute, undeniable proof.

She asked to see it, but he just shook his head. The proof is overseas, he told her. Someday she would see it. But not yet.

He told her what he wanted her to do and she agreed. The money he added to her salary was the main inducement, but so was the scientific value of his experiment. Everything had to be done in strict secrecy. They were doing a good thing, Kransten said, but the government did not agree. They will never allow this, he told her, until it's absolutely safe and proven. But it was a Catch-22. The only way to reach that stage was to continue with the forbidden experimentation. She accepted his logic.

She was assigned to half of the eighteen survivors of the early 1970s testing. She saw each of them every three months. If they needed her they could contact her via Growth Industries, a shell corporation set up only to distance KranMar from the subjects. All of the elderly subjects were living at different old-age homes. Their expenses were fully paid. They were given anything they needed to make their lives easier and pleasurable. When she saw them, she not only collected new data, she was charged with giving them their hormone injections. The experiments had continued all these years. What was being injected varied, as testing and information had gotten so much more sophisticated over this period. But the ones who survived continued to survive. Several of them outlived the managers of their homes. She had one subject, in Vermont, who was now 122 years old-and healthy and vital.