Seizure by Robin Cook Page B

neurosurgeon who’d be willing to lend a hand.”
    â€œI can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Stephanie said. “It sounds like you’ve already talked yourself into doing this crazy, unethical experiment, and that’s what it would be: an uncontrolled, risky experiment on a single human subject. No matter what the outcome, it would be devoid of value, except possibly for Butler.”
    â€œI don’t agree. By doing this procedure, we will save CURE and HTSR, meaning millions of people will ultimately benefit. It seems to me a minor compromise in ethics is a small up-front price to pay for an enormous back-end payoff.”
    â€œBut we’ll be doing exactly what Senator Butler accused the biotech industry of doing in his opening statement this morning: using ends to justify means. It would be unethical to experiment on Senator Butler, plain and simple.”
    â€œYeah, well, perhaps to some degree, but who are we putting at risk? It’s the villain! He’s the one asking for it. Worse yet,he’s conniving for it by extorting us with information he got by somehow coercing the FBI to do an illegal investigation.”
    â€œThat all may be true, but two wrongs don’t make a right, and it doesn’t absolve us of our complicity.”
    â€œI think it would. We’ll make Butler sign a release, and we’ll put everything in the release, including the fact that we are fully aware that doing the procedure would be considered unethical by any research advisory board in this country, because it’s being done without an appropriately approved protocol. The release will state unequivocally that it was Butler’s idea to do the procedure and to do the procedure outside of the country. It will also state that he used extortion to get us to participate.”
    â€œDo you think he’d sign such a release?”
    â€œWe won’t give him any choice. Either he signs it or he doesn’t get the benefit of HTSR. I’m comfortable with the idea that we’ll be doing the procedure in the Bahamas, so we won’t be violating any FDA rules, and we’ll have a rock-solid release in case we need it. The onus will be squarely on Butler’s shoulders.”
    â€œLet me think about it for a few minutes.”
    â€œTake your time, but I really think the moral weight favors our doing it. It would be different if we were forcing him in any way, shape, or form. But we’re not. It’s the other way around.”
    â€œBut it could be argued that he’s uninformed. He’s a politician, not a doctor. He doesn’t truly know the risks. He could die.”
    â€œHe’s not going to die,” Daniel said emphatically. “We’ll err on the conservative side, meaning the worse-case scenario is that we won’t give him enough cells to get his dopamine concentration high enough to get rid of all his symptoms. If that happens, he’ll be begging us to do it again, which will be easy, since we’ll maintain the treating cells in culture.”
    â€œLet me mull it over.”
    â€œSure,” Daniel said.
    They rode the rest of the way in silence. It wasn’t until they were going up in the hotel elevator that Stephanie spoke up: “Do you honestly think we would be able to find an appropriate place to do the procedure?”
    â€œButler spent a good deal of effort on all this,” Daniel said. “He wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Frankly, I’d be shocked if he didn’t have the clinic he mentioned investigated for appropriateness at the same time he had me investigated.”
    â€œI suppose that’s possible. Actually, I remember reading about the Wingate Clinic about a year ago. It was a popular, unaffiliated infertility clinic out in Bookford, Massachusetts, before it moved under pressure to the Bahamas. It was quite a scandal.”
    â€œI remember it too. It was run by a couple of maverick