Free Invasive Procedures by Aaron Johnston

worsened when the project concluded and Galen returned to his post at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a small component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).There Galen discovered that his annual budget was still a paltry two percent of the NIH’s annual allotted spending.
    Galen claimed he had been cheated. With the genome mapped, he was ready to translate the sequence information into potential health benefits. But to do so he needed money. And lots of it.
    Rather than take his case to the NIH, however, Galen did the unthinkable: he hit the talk-show circuit, slandering the NIH and blaming it for all the medical maladies Galen believed would be cured should he be granted the proper resources and funding. What he said about the presidential administration and those in Congress responsible for allocating the NIH’s funding was no less scathing.
    It was professional suicide. Galen was thereafter ignored in all scientific circles. The NHGRI sent him packing and stripped him of all standing. Even universities, which had always extended an inviting hand, now turned a blind eye.
Time
magazine even ran a front cover article entitled “Fallen from Grace.” After that, Galen slipped from the public radar.
    That was seven or eight years ago.
    “Galen is a Healer?” asked Frank.
    “So it seems,” said Riggs.
    “I suppose that makes sense,” said Frank. “If you’re going to attempt to make a gene-therapy virus, and do what modern medicine has not yet achieved, you’re going to need the talents of someone like George Galen.”
    “Yes,” Riggs agreed.
    “What about the guy in all the illustrations?” said Frank. “The guy with the tie.”
    Riggs shrugged. “Not sure. But whoever he is, Galen and the Healers consider him their prophet.”
    “And the Council of the Prophets? These men that look like five versions of the same guy. What about them?”
    “Like I said, your guess is as good as ours. The book raised more questions than it answered. But it did help in one respect.”
    “And that is?”
    Riggs gestured for the book, and Frank handed it to him.
    “Here in the back.” He flipped to the end of the book. “We found a list.”
    Frank looked. There, handwritten on the page, was a list of names andaddresses. Some of the addresses were burned away or only partially legible, but some remained unscathed. Beside each name was written a genetic disease.
    “Who are these people?” Frank asked.
    “Patients,” Riggs said. “People whom the Healers have treated with the virus.”
    Frank felt his stomach tighten. “What do you mean ‘treated’? They were
given
the virus?”
    “After we found the book—and remember this was all in the last forty-eight hours—we went to one of these addresses to talk to this person.” He pointed to the first name on the list. “Patrick Caneer. Sickle-cell anemia.”
    “And?”
    “And we found him, in bed, with an IV in his arm and with several large sheets of plastic hanging from the ceiling in a circle around his bed. Like the boy in the bubble.”
    “A containment curtain?”
    “A do-it-yourself containment curtain,” Riggs said. “Healers had hung the plastic, given him the virus, and then told him to stay in bed for three days while the virus ran its course and cured his sickle-cell anemia.”
    Frank was momentarily dumbfounded. The audacity of a homemade curtain, the idea that a little tarp and some duct tape could keep a virus like VI6 in check, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Compared to all the many doors and precautions that existed in Biosafety Level 4, a few sheets of plastic was practically nothing.
    “And when you found him, how was he?” Frank said.
    “Scared out of his mind,” said Riggs, “not because of the virus, but because he thought we were going to arrest him. Decent kid. In his early twenties.”
    “He wasn’t harmed by the virus?”
    “Remember, the virus can be engineered for a specific