Placebo (24 page)

Dr. Cyrus Arlington had never killed anyone.

Per se.

Yes, people had died because of his actions, or, more accurately, because of his lack of action, but that's the way the system was set up, the only real means of scientific advancement when you're doing medical research on human subjects.

After all, you need a control group, a baseline. So if you're testing a new drug, you give your experimental medication to one set of patients, a placebo to another, and you need a third group, a control group, that receives no treatment at all. It's the only way to measure the true efficacy of a drug.

Of course, as the test progresses, even if the drug appears to be working, you don't stop the trials in the middle to administer it to the dying people in your control group. It's not just a matter of protocol, it's a matter of science. Even with a double-blind study, there are too many factors that can affect the research, so you need a large enough sample to really verify your findings. If you assume too much too early, it could be detrimental to the lives of millions of people in the long term.

So, yes, some people will inevitably die during the process, but it's the only way to collect the data that you need to determine whether or not a drug is effective.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

And of course, the more people you have in your control group, and the more time they go without getting their potentially life-saving drugs, the more of them that will die.

But they would, of course, die anyway. Eventually.

Ultimately, health care is a numbers game, and there are only two rules, two guiding principles that are taught at every school of medicine in the country:

Rule #1: Everyone dies.

Rule #2: There's nothing you can do to change Rule #1.

“We prolong life; we do not save it,” one of Cyrus's professors at Harvard Medical School had told him. “Don't try to be the savior of the world. Just do your best to help ease the greatest number of people's pain as much as you can, for as long as you can. At its heart, that's what medicine is all about.”

The Hippocratic Oath:
Primum non nocere.

First, do no harm.

Not quite as in vogue today as it used to be, not with physician-assisted suicide and third-trimester abortions, but the point was well-taken.

And so, during his twenty years of overseeing research before taking over as RixoTray's CEO, Cyrus had been part of hundreds of studies and seen thousands of people die. It wasn't his fault that cancer or AIDS or congestive heart failure took those people from the world. But paradoxically, even though he had not killed them, if you wanted to be technical about it, he could have stopped the tests. It was, in one sense, his fault that the people didn't live.

They might've been saved if compassion for them trumped the scientific advancement that their deaths advanced.

But it had not.

It could not.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

For a while, watching others die, even though he knew he could stop the process, had been like a thorn in his thoughts, an uncomfortable irritation that made his daily work less enjoyable, but you have to move on, have to come to terms with your role in life. And Dr. Cyrus Arlington had done just that.

He'd begun to look at the big picture and had initiated the most expensive research program in the history of his company to find the cure for aging, which would, in many ways, be the cure for everything.

Telomeres, protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, erode as cells reproduce, and so the cells eventually degrade and enter a state referred to as “senescence” when they no longer reproduce. This causes the effects we associate with aging—dementia, increased risk of stroke, muscle atrophy, and decreased organ function, sight, hearing, and so on. Put simply, the enzyme telomerase protects the telomeres from degrading and thus slows aging.

If it were possible to use telomerase on humans to stop telomeres from shortening when cells reproduce, there would be no reason for those cells to begin breaking down. Would it add years to your life? Yes. And undoubtably, it would also dramatically increase your quality of life during the decades up until then.

Stopping senescence halts the negative effects of aging and, at least in the 2010 Harvard studies on rats,
reverses
those effects by increasing neural function, regenerating nerves, and rebuilding muscle tissue.

But there was a problem. Cancer cells initiate telomerase, which is one reason cancer cells don't degrade with time, so increasing telomerase in the body of a person who has no cancer would cause him to become more immune to it, but someone with cancer would become more riddled with it.

All of this means that if you could create a drug that releases telomerase, you would either need to administer the drug to people who don't have any cancer cells growing in them, or give the enzyme
to people in short doses so that it decreases the risk that the cancer cells they already have would spread.

Unless the drug increased the level of telomerase only in cells that were not cancerous.

And that's exactly what RixoTray was on the verge of producing.

It would be the one drug that everyone on the planet would want to take, and it would make thousands of other drugs obsolete.

The pharmaceutical company that could create the first-generation telomeres protector would be positioned to become one of the most financially lucrative firms on the planet. Perhaps one of the most profitable companies of all time.

And that company was going to be RixoTray Pharmaceuticals.

They needed a little more funding, yes, and a little more time. The funding would come from the Pentagon, and the time would come from—well, it certainly wouldn't come from the added restrictions the president was going to propose in his speech tomorrow at eleven at Independence Park just outside of the Liberty Bell building.

———

Cyrus threaded his Jaguar down the narrow streets of South Philly. Groups of gangbangers huddled on the street corners; abandoned buildings littered the block. The row houses in this primarily African American neighborhood were all in disrepair. And it was not the kind of place someone of Cyrus's stature would normally venture.

He was heading to the house with the dumpster in the cramped alley behind it. The dumpster that accepted the remains of what happened in the basement of that building during the night.

Despite the low-income demographic of the neighborhood, Cyrus wasn't afraid to leave the Jag on the street. He was known as a friend of Mambo Atabei, and no one around here would dare cause any trouble for one of her friends.

He parked in one of the four spots in front of her house left vacant for her visitors. Walked to the porch, knocked on the door.

Waited for her to answer.

There were generations of African Santería practitioners in Philadelphia who have been around since colonial times. And although Mambo Atabei was not from Africa, the ceremonies she performed had been originally exported from there to Haiti, adapted, and then imported from Haiti to North America.

The cloth doll in Cyrus's office was, of course, a gimmick. No one who was a serious voodoo worshiper would use a doll like that. It was for the tourists in places like New Orleans and some of the neighborhoods in Miami. Real voodoo has much deeper roots and much different methods.

When the door opened, Cyrus could smell incense. It was meant to mask the other smells that emanated from the house, or peristyle, as it was known in Mambo Atabei's religion.

She stood in front of him, fiftyish, slim, black—she hated being called African American because, as she said proudly, she was Haitian, not from Africa, not from America. “You don't hear Caucasians preface their identity by naming their ancestors' continent of birth: ‘European-American' or ‘North American–American.' All of this political correctness is only thinly veiled bigotry used to create divisions between people groups that need to be drawn closer together, not separated by hyphenating their identities.”

“Dr. Arlington.” Her voice was soft and congenial but had a raspy edge to it. The result of a throat injury sometime in her past.

“Mambo Atabei.”

“It's been, what? Two months? Three?”

“Something like that.”

Without another word she invited him into the living room.

The brown and white doves that she would use in the basement were caged in the corner of the room, out of reach of the gray cat that stalked across the footstool in front of her couch. The doves squabbled with each other, oblivious to what awaited them. The cat eyed them with calculated interest.

Cyrus wondered about the cat. He hadn't known Mambo Atabei
to use cats, but he wasn't really sure what all went on in her basement. He'd only witnessed her using doves and chickens—although he did know that larger animals were part of some of the ceremonies she performed.

A wide variety of liqueurs and rums were collected on an end table in the corner of the room. An HDTV, two chairs, a lamp, a crucifix on the wall, a shelf of DVDs, and knickknacks rounded out the room. A typical living room.

At the far end of the room, a curtain was drawn across an open doorway. He knew that the curtain concealed the steps that led to the basement.

A basement that was not quite so typical.

He'd been down there on numerous occasions, just as an observer. But he'd seen what went on around the pole, the
poteau-mitan
, in the middle of the main room, had seen what caused the dark stains on the dirt floor beneath it.

There is, of course, a dark side to voodoo, a strand that's not about dancing and drinking or trying to find out some insights about life from a Loa. There's a side that has nothing to do with blessings or celebration.

It was the side Mambo Atabei counted herself a part of, the highly secretive Bizango Society.

Cyrus was not easily rattled, but Atabei had a certain unnerving quality about her and studied him with a quiet intensity that made him slightly nervous. “And what exactly can I offer you tonight, Dr. Arlington?”

“I'd like to put something into play.”

“Regarding?”

“A man who is in a coma.”

“A coma.”

“Yes.”

He knew that in Atabei's tradition, a donation for services was expected. The nature of the request determined the size of the donation.
“I'm willing to make a donation to the peristyle.” For now he held back from telling Mambo Atabei exactly what he wanted from her. “A sizable one.”

She tapped the thumb of her right hand against her forefinger, evaluated what he'd said.

He heard bleating from the stairwell to the basement. A goat.

He pretended not to notice it.

“What is it exactly that you want me to do?” she asked.

And Dr. Cyrus Arlington told her, in depth, the nature of his request.

The jet's engines purr, but other than that the plane is quiet as Xavier and Charlene do their research beside me.

It's been half an hour and I've been scanning Dr. Tanbyrn's book. He actually does make reference to potential negative effects of quantum entanglement when it comes to thoughts, mentioning some of the same examples as Xavier used with me earlier today—shamans and witch doctors. Curses.

After all, if placebos can be used to help people heal themselves merely by their thoughts, could their thoughts also be used, conversely, to destroy them? Certainly, the debilitating effects of psychosomatic illnesses and depression were just two examples. And if a person really can affect another person's physiology by his thoughts, as Tanbyrn had demonstrated, there was no reason to believe that the effects would necessarily always have to be positive.

His conclusion: if either blessings or curses affected reality, the other would imperatively do so as well.

As Dr. Tanbyrn wrote:

Most religions believe in the power of blessings and curses. In medicine we have placebos that eliminate pain or, in some cases, treat diseases. In psychology we find that the power of positive
thinking affects behavior, and there is ample evidence that those thoughts can actually rebuild neural pathways that have been damaged by severe depression. From quantum physics we know that an observer's thoughts and intentions determine the outcome of reality. So we have religion, medicine, psychology, and physics all saying essentially the same thing—our thoughts and intentions have the ability to affect reality in inexplicable, but very real, ways. To shape the outcome of the universe.

The last statement seemed like hyperbole to me, but it was a similar point to the one Xavier had made when we were talking earlier in the hospital.

A couple of observations that I find significant: according to Dr. Tanbyrn, it's more effective if the person who is cursed knows it and believes in the power of the curse. Research on curses that were spoken over people who were unaware of it or didn't believe in them had mixed results. The deeper the personal connection, the more pronounced the effect, just like in his love entanglement studies at the Lawson Research Center.

Tanbyrn didn't mention Jesus cursing the fig tree, but he did mention Balaam being hired to curse the Israelites in the Old Testament.

After a lifetime of studying the secrets behind illusions and mentalism, I can't help but be skeptical about all of these claims. However, the test results from when Charlene was in the Faraday cage showed that my thoughts had somehow affected her physiology, and the dozens of research studies mentioned by Dr. Tanbyrn in his books add validity to the theories. Needless to say, the findings at least piqued my curiosity.

Whatever the actual relevance of all this, one thing is clear: Xav was right; for thousands of years people of faith have believed in the power of words, thoughts, and intentions to both heal and to harm. And recent breakthroughs in the study of quantum entanglement and human consciousness support those claims.

My phone vibrates, and I see another text message from my producer at Entertainment Film Network.

Oops. Forgot all about that.

Now that I'm on my way to Philly, it's definitely time to give her a call.

I speed-dial Michelle Boyd's number and she picks up almost immediately. “Jevin! What happened? I've been texting you all night.”

“It's been a crazy day. I assume you heard about—”

“Of course I heard. Are you kidding me?” She's excited, sounds almost exuberant. “Fill me in. I need to hear it. Your take on everything.”

It takes me a few minutes to relay the story of the fire at the center and Abina's death and the fight with Banner and Dr. Tanbyrn's hospitalization. For now I leave out the detail that I'm in the air on my way to Philadelphia.

“What about the study? Were you able to debunk it?”

“No, but at this point I don't think that's really the primary issue.”

“Of course it's not the issue. This Tanbyrn deal, this fire, that's the story. This whole thing with the doctor is great.”

I feel myself bristle at her words. “Great? How is it great that a man is in a coma?”

“No, no, no, not that. That he survived! I'm talking production value. What a great story—human tragedy, heroism, a life-and-death struggle. Viewers will love it. If we can just pull some footage together before tomorrow's—”

“Production value? That's what this is to you? Viewers will love the fact that a man—”

“You're missing the point here, Jev. This is a Nobel laureate who was the target of an arsonist's flames. Viewers will love that you saved him, that he's valiantly fighting for his life. Don't you see? It's the perfect way to take your series in a new direction. We were aiming for more of an investigative approach this time around anyway. And I mean, let's be frank, debunking psychics and sideshow acts? Come on, Jev, even you have to admit that that gets old after a while. Viewers want something unique, something fresh, something different.”

“So, a dying man is fresh and different.”

“Listen to me, Jev, every news station in the country is following this story, but you have the inside scoop. You were there. You saved a man's life, for God's sake. This isn't just Tanbyrn's story, it's yours.”

On one level, I know that what she's saying is true—other networks will cover this, and I had been there; I'd experienced it all firsthand. It was certainly a tragic and gripping story that viewers probably would love, and it made sense that Charlene and I would be the ones to tell it. I can't put my finger on precisely why I'm not excited about pulling what we have together into an episode, apart from the fact that it seems to be leveraging a man's suffering to promote ratings.

Which, of course, it is.

“Dr. Tanbyrn might die,” I tell Michelle. An obvious fact, yes, but I feel like it needs to be said.

A pause. “Yes, well, that would be tragic, but viewers would be forced to think about their own mortality in light of his death and would be inspired to live better lives themselves. They'd be moved to tears, would remember him and his work in a positive light. If he makes it through, he's a fighter; if he succumbs, he's a martyr in the name of scientific advancement. Either way, we come out ahead.”

That's it.

No one comes out ahead when an innocent man suffers. And no one comes out ahead when an innocent person dies.

“I'm out.”

“What do you mean, you're out?”

“I mean I'm out. I'm not going to be involved with this.”

“You have to be. You drop this and I'll drop your show, I swear to God—”

“Do it. You just said that debunking psychics and sideshow acts gets old after a while. And yeah, you're probably right. I don't need the money and you don't want the show. Find something you're excited about and we both win. There's plenty of extra footage left over from previous shows. I'll give it all to you. It should be enough for you to round out the season.”

“I don't want that, I want
this
. I want Tanbyrn.”

“Get used to disappointment.”

I hang up and notice Charlene eyeing me. “Breaking out lines from
The Princess Bride
now, are we?”

“In this case it seemed appropriate.”

“So, I couldn't help but overhear that—your side of the conversation, at least. We're officially freelancers now, I take it.”

“Yes. I suppose we are.”

“It actually might be better this way.”

“Yes.” I feel an unexpected spark of excitement at the thought. “It just might.”