Michael Crichton - Drug of Choice

“Naw. That’s old stuff. Now we’re working with Sybocyl.”

The elevator arrived at the tenth floor. Clark unlocked the door to his apartment. “Sybocyl? What’s that?”

“New stuff, just finished clinical testing. The FDA is going to release it in about a week.”

“Yes; but what is it?”

“Marvelous stuff,” Moss said, sitting down and opening his briefcase.

Clark took off his jacket and tie. “Yes, but what?”

“The FDA is just finishing up on it. Testing the rats and monkeys. For a while, we didn’t think we could market it, because it caused toxic reactions in the yellow ostrich.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Seems it drove them insane. Lost all desire to bury their heads in sand. Of course, it only affected female ostriches.”

“Who discovered this?”

“The FDA. They also discovered that it turned the second. molars of immature Hamadryas baboons an odd brown color. That was a setback, too.”

“I’m sure. But what about people?”

“Well, you know how it is. With such odd reactions in animals, the FDA was unwilling to release it for clinical trial. And after the business with the Norway rat—”

“What was that?”

“Well, they discovered that administration of the drug to the Norway rat, research strain K-23, induced uncontrollable vomiting.”

“Unfortunate,” Clark said.

“A mechanism involving the chemoreceptor trigger zone in the medulla was postulated.”

“Quite naturally.”

“Well, no,” Moss said. “After all, there might have been a peripheral effect as well as a central one.”

“Yes,” Clark admitted. He had learned long ago that you had to let Moss talk for a while. Like most detail men, Moss had attended a junior college in business administration; he knew nothing about science or drugs, but had read the journals and dutifully memorized them.

“Of course,” Moss continued, “there was one hitch. In order to induce the vomiting, they had to administer rather heavy doses.”

“Oh?”

“In fact, they had to administer the rat’s own weight in the drug.”

“I see.”

“Hardly a physiologic condition. After all, can you imagine giving a 150-pound man 150 pounds of penicillin? Make anyone sick. Still, the FDA was suspicious. It was months,” Moss said, “before we started the clinical trials. They were done in Baltimore, Chicago and Cleveland, and fortunately, responses were gratifying. Sybocyl passed with flying colors.” Moss reached into his satchel and produced a small bottle of pink capsules. “And here it is!” he cried dramatically, thrusting it into Clark’s hands.

“Very nice,” Clark said, looking at the bottle.

“Sybocyl,” said Moss, “is the ultimate wonder drag. It stops cardiac arrhythmias, is a bronchodilator, has direct diuretic effects, stimulates the myocardium to increase contractility, is bactericidal, and is a CNS stimulant and sedative.”

“A stimulant and sedative?”

“Strange as it seems,” Moss said, “it is. The ultimate wonder drug. You can give it for anything except measles and clap.”

“Remarkable,” Clark said, frowning. “Any side effects?”

“None.”

“None?”

“None at all.” Moss chuckled. “It has so many therapeutic effects, there’s hardly room for side effects, eh?”

“What about contraindications?” Contraindications were medical situations in which the drug could not be given.

“Relatively few. There are one or two.”

“What are they?”

“Here,” Moss said. “I’ll give you the literature.” He stood and looked at his watch. “Time for me to be off. Can I leave anything else with you?”

“Some aspirin,” Clark said. “I have a headache.”

Moss frowned. “We have something much better than aspirin. Have you tried Phenimol?”

“No.”

“Great stuff. Antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, and very strong analgesic. No side effects. And it works very well on cancer of the colon, if you happen to have—”

“I don’t.”

“Well, it’s just great for headaches. Just great.”

“Addicting?”

“Well, yes…”

“I’ll take the aspirin,” Clark said.

Moss gave it to him regretfully. As he was leaving, Clark said, “By the way, Pete. You keep up with the experimental drugs, don’t you?”

“Well, I try.”

“Heard anything about a drug that changes urine color?”

“Changes it how?”

“Turns it blue.”

“Blue? No. Why?”

“How about a drug that puts you into a coma?”

Moss laughed. “I can’t imagine a market for it.”

“Neither can I,” Clark said. But the joke started him thinking: suppose Sharon Wilder and Arthur Lewis hadn’t taken the drug accidentally. Suppose they had taken it for a purpose, a specific reason, and the coma was an unrelated side effect…

He shook his head. He didn’t even know that Sharon or the Angel had taken a drug.

After Peter Moss had gone, Clark picked up the bottle of Sybocyl and read the sheet of effects, indications, and contraindications:

Contraindications: Sybocyl should not be used with diabetics, hypertensives, pregnant women, males over 40, infants, children, adolescents, persons with myopia or dental caries. The drug may otherwise be prescribed with absolute safety.

“Great stuff,” Clark said. He crumpled the sheet and took the bottle into the bathroom. He poured the pills down the toilet and flushed it, watching as the pink capsules swirled, and were gone.

HE SAT IN HIS apartment and thought over what had happened to him. He decided that it had all been very peculiar, and very unenlightening. He could, of course, make further calls; he could check with Sharon Wilder’s other doctors, and with George K. Washington, whoever he was. But he had the strange feeling that nothing would come of it, and meantime, there was his Mexico trip to plan for. He was about to call his travel agent when the phone rang.

It was Harry, the intern. “Listen, Rog, I thought you’d want to know. Andrews, the Chief of Medicine, just called. Wanted to know about people urinating blue.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I told him about the two cases you had, and described them.”

“And?”

“And he thanked me and hung up.”

“No explanation?”

“None. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he called you later.”

“Okay,” Clark said. “Thanks.”

As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again.

“Dr. Clark speaking.”

“Clark, this is George Andrews.”

“Hello, Dr. Andrews.”

“Clark, I’m calling about some patients you’ve seen. An Angel named Arthur Lewis, alias Little Jesus, and—”

“Sharon Wilder.”

“Yes. That’s right” Andrews seemed surprised. “How did you know?”

“They were the same kind of patient.”

“That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. As I understand it, they presented with coma, no localizing signs, no respiratory or cardiac depression, and no after-effects when they recovered. Is that right?”

“Yes sir.”

“And they both urinated blue?”

“Yes sir.”

“The reason I ask,” Andrews said, “is that I just got a call from Murdoch at San Francisco General. They get a lot of the Berkeley drug abusers, as well as the Hashbury loonies. Yesterday they got five people in coma as the result of a police raid. General didn’t know what to do about them, so they waited, and the people all came out of it. And there was this blue urine business as well. Murdoch wanted to know if we’d had any similar experience.”

Clark frowned. “He had five cases?”

“Five. Everybody up there is terrified of more. Murdoch’s convinced a new kind of drug is going around. They don’t know where it’s coming from, or who’s making it, or what the chemical nature is like. And the kids aren’t talking, when they come out of the coma. They claim they don’t remember.”