Kane took a blissful sip of ouzo and put his glass down.
“For a couple of years now, I’ve been chairman of a scientific advisory group called the Board on Marine Biology . . . BOMB, for short,” Kane said. “The board includes some of the most brilliant minds in the field of ocean biomedicine. We work with the National Research Council, and advise the government on promising scientific discoveries.”
“And what was your promising discovery, Doc?”
“About a year after I had moved the lab to Bonefish Key, we acquired a rare species of jellyfish related to the sea wasp. We named it the blue medusa because it had an amazingly bright luminescence, but the toxin that the thing produced was what really blew our minds.”
“How so, Doc?”
“The medusa’s toxin didn’t kill. It immobilized the prey so that the medusa could dine on food that was still alive. That’s not an unknown practice in nature. Spiders and wasps like to keep a fresh snack handy.”
Austin nodded in the direction of the restaurant’s lobster tank.
“Human beings do the same thing.”
“You see my point, then. The steers and hogs that we turn into steaks and pork chops have better medical treatment than many humans. We even load those animals down with antibiotics and other medicines to keep them as healthy as possible until we can eat them.”
“Animal husbandry isn’t my strong suit, Doc. Where are you going with this?”
“The blue medusa toxin is the most complex naturally produced chemical I’ve ever seen. It puts up a wall that keeps pathogens at arm’s length. The doomed prey enjoys the best of health while it waits to be devoured.” Kane leaned across the table and dropped his voice. “Now, just suppose we could put those same protective qualities in a drug for humans.”
Austin pondered Kane’s words.
“You’d have an all-purpose pill,” Austin said. “What the snake oil salesmen used to call a cure-all.”
“Bingo! Only this was no snake oil. We had found a medical miracle that just might neutralize some of the greatest scourges of mankind, the ailments caused by viruses, from the common cold to cancer.”
“So why all the hush-hush?” Austin asked. “If people knew you had discovered a cure-all, the world would build statues in your honor.”
“Hell, Kurt, at first we were nominating ourselves for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. After the initial euphoric thrill, we realized that we were about to open Pandora’s box.”
“You wouldn’t get any love letters from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries,” Austin said. “But, in the long term, you’d get a healthier world.”
“It’s that long term that worried us,” Kane said. “Say we give this boon to the world, no strings attached. An easily accessible cure-all goes into production. The average life span increases stratospherically. Instead of six billion souls on the planet, we’d have ten or twelve billion. Picture the pressure that would put on land, water, food, and energy resources.”
“You could have riots, wars, governments toppled, and starvation.”
Kane spread his hands apart as if to say Voila!
“Now imagine what would happen if we kept the discovery secret.”
“Nothing is secret forever. Word would leak out. Those who didn’t have access to the medicine would resent those who did. People with life-threatening diseases would be pounding down the doors of city hall. Chaos again.”
“The scientific board reache
d the same conclusion,” Kane said. “We were in a quandary. So we compiled a report, which we transmitted to the government. Then fate intervened. An epidemic broke out in China, an influenza-type virus with the potential to set off a worldwide pandemic that would kill millions. And guess what? Our crazy little lab held the key to the cure.”
“Blue medusa?”
“Yup.”
“Is that what you meant when you said your research could impact everyone on the planet?”
Kane nodded.
“Turns out our research held the only hope to fight this thing,” he continued. “The government took over the lab, locked the doors, and worked with the Chinese government to keep the research under wraps until we could come up with a synthesized form of the chemical. They put out a cover story suggesting that the new virus was simply an outbreak of SARS and thus controllable. Which it isn’t. It’s a mutated strain that’s even more virulent than the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. In one year, that virus killed millions.”
Austin let out a low whistle.