Free The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning by Jason Kristopher

it down for me.”
    “So we’ve been looking at this as a two-pronged approach, as you know. Step one, create an artificial antibody that would bind to the abnormal areas of the prion and prevent its propagation. Step two, create a sequential gene-targeting system to alter the gene responsible for the normal protein, effectively making all future generations immune without the need for the antibodies.”
    “With you so far,” Sabrina replied and smiled as Mary moved over to sit beside her.
    Jim gestured to the whiteboard and some results that looked like gobbledygook to Sabrina but she was sure justified his position. “Thanks to the volunteers we’ve had, we’ve all but finalized the antibody. Just another few rounds of tests and we’ll be able to inoculate everyone alive now.”
    “That’s fantastic!” Sabrina said and clapped her hands.
    Jim held up a hand. “But again, that only gets us halfway there. We still need the gene therapy. And we’re having troubles with that. We’re getting close, but it’s just not there yet.”
    “What’s the problem?”
    Mary spoke up and walked over to a monitor, one that showed hundreds of mice in cages somewhere in another lab room. “We’re trying to use the knockout mice to help us induce a polymorphism in the gene responsible for the normal protein, which would essentially render it invisible to the prion.”
    Sabrina couldn’t help but giggle. “Knockout mice, sounds like a cartoon.”
    Mary smiled. “I’ve always thought so too. In any case, we’re having trouble locating the exact gene, even though we know from some prior research that we found that codons 127 and 129 are involved—”
    Sabrina held up a hand. “Straying a bit too technical for me, love.”
    “To put it another way,” Jim said as he picked up the conversation, “we’re close, but we don’t know how close, and we don’t know how long it will take us to know. You know?”
    “There’s still the ethical question too, Jim,” Mary said, and Sabrina could pick up the underlying tension in her words. This was an old argument that somehow had retained its fiery disposition. “Are we even human at that point? Do we have the right to play God like this? Not to mention the things we haven’t thought of, susceptibility to other diseases, unknown and catastrophic side effects…”
    “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
    “Precisely.”
    “But you’ve been working on it, right? With the mice?”
    “We’re ready to start human trials if we get approval from upstairs and volunteers,” Jim said.
    “But I thought—”
    “Jim and I differ in our opinion on this one, Sabrina,” Mary said with a stern look at her partner. “I think it’s too risky, he says we don’t have any choice.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “First off,” Jim said, “the mice are fine. We’ve run through twelve generations of them after the gene therapy, and they are clinically, physiologically, histopathologically, immunologically, and reproductively normal. Brain tissue homogenates are resistant to prion propagation in vitro as assessed by protein misfolding cyclic amplification.”
    Sabrina crooked an eyebrow at her husband, and he cleared his throat.
    “They are functionally and biologically the same as the control group. No difference whatsoever, except that they are immune to the prion. All twelve generations.”
    “Then it works!”
    “No, not yet,” Mary said. “We haven’t tried it on humans, and there’s no way to know what it would do on us until we proceed with the therapy and those subjects have children and then more children and more children… We can’t go experimenting on people like that. There is simply no way of knowing what potential problems might result from these trials.”
    “We don’t have a choice!” Jim slammed his hand down on his desk, knocking his coffee cup to the floor with a crash.
    “We always have a—”
    “No, Mary, we don’t, and you know it.” Jim