Read Online Next by Michael Crichton - Free Book Online Page B

wrong.”
    “BioGen must take precautions…”
    “Of course. But sometimes the precautions are inadequate,” the man said.
    “Who are you?” Burnet said again. He was looking around, through the glass walls of the conference room, at the larger office outside. He saw people walking back and forth. He wondered where his daughter had gone.
    “I’m nobody,” the young man said. “You never met me.”
    “You have a business card?”
    The man shook his head. “I’m not here, Mr. Burnet.”
    Burnet frowned. “And my daughter—”
    “Has no idea. Never met her. This is between us.”
    “But you’re talking about illegal activity.”
    “I’m not talking at all, because you and I have never met,” the man said. “But let’s consider how this might work.”
    “Okay…”
    “You can’t legally sell your cells at this point, because the court has ruled you no longer own them—BioGen does. But your cells could be obtained from other places. Over the course of your life, you’ve given blood many times in many places. You went to Vietnam thirty-two years ago. The army took your blood. You had knee surgery twenty years ago in San Diego. The hospital took your blood, and kept your cartilage. You’ve consulted various doctors over the years. They ran blood tests. The labs kept the blood. So your blood can be found, no problem. And it can be acquired from publicly available databases—if, for example, another company wanted to use your cells.”
    “And what about BioGen?”
    The young man shrugged. “Biotechnology is a difficult business. Contaminations happen every day. If something goes wrong in their labs, that’s not your problem, is it?”
    “But how could—”
    “I have no idea. So many things can happen.”
    There was a short silence. “And why should I do this?” Burnet said.
    “You’ll get a hundred million dollars.”
    “For what?”
    “Punch biopsies of six organ systems.”
    “I thought you could get my blood elsewhere.”
    “In theory. If it came to litigation, that would be claimed. But, in practice, any company would want fresh cells.”
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    “No problem. Think it over, Mr. Burnet.” The young man stood, pushed his glasses up his nose. “You may have been screwed. But there’s no reason to bend over for it.”
    From Beaumont College Alumni News
    STEM CELL DEBATE RAGES
    Effective Treatments “Decades Away” Prof. McKeown Shocks Audience
By Max Thaler
    Speaking to a packed audience in Beaumont Hall, famed biology professor Kevin McKeown shocked listeners by calling stem cell research “a cruel fraud.”
    “What you have been told is nothing more than a myth,” he said, “intended to ensure funding for researchers, at the expense of false hopes for the seriously ill. So let’s get to the truth.”
    Stem cells, he explained, are cells that have the ability to turn themselves into other kinds of cells. There are two kinds of stem cells. Adult stem cells are found throughout the body. They are found in muscle, brain, and liver tissue, and so on. Adult stem cells can generate new cells, but only of the tissue in which they are found. They are important because the human body replaces all its cells every seven years.
    Research involving adult stem cells is for the most part not controversial. But there is another kind of stem cell, the embryonic stem cell, that is highly controversial. It is found in umbilical cord blood, or derived from young embryos. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they can develop into any kind of tissue. But the research is controversial because it involves the use of human embryos, which many people feel, for religious and other reasons, have the rights of human beings. This is an old debate not likely to be resolved soon.
    SCIENTISTS SEE A BAN ON RESEARCH
    The current American administration has said that embryonic stem cells can be taken from existing research lines, but not from new embryos. Scientists regard