Free The Magic Bullet by Harry Stein

too.”
    Caught off guard by Stillman’s aggressive tastelessness, Logan said nothing. What was going on here? If—as he’d allowed himself to believe—the point was to secure their allegiance, Stillman was going about it in a curious way.
    But suddenly the senior man was all business again. “She had an inflammatory carcinoma, a particularly bad disease—the tumor was diffuse, it didn’t form a lump. But the point is, there was something extremely unusual about this patient. I had given up hope on her, and then, to my surprise, some of her tumors—not all, but some—spontaneously disappeared.” He paused meaningfully. “A lesson for you here, gentlemen: Be alert for crazy exceptions to the rule, they’re the ones bearing secrets. It turned out thiswoman was taking a course of drugs and enhanced vitamins for a completely unrelated condition.”
    “May I ask what condition?” interjected Reston.
    Stillman shot him an annoyed glance. “Sure. After I’ve had our work patented.” He resumed his professorial tone—and changed the subject. “There are a number of interesting things we’ve been working on in this lab.”
    From the folder, he withdrew two eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs. “You’ll note this is a photomicrograph of malignant breast cells growing in a culture dish.”
    Sure enough, the cells were arrayed in the familiar chaotic pattern characteristic of breast malignancies. Many were joined together in irregular swirls, like stars in a Van Gogh night sky. Others were of grotesque size and shape. In some places they were heaped together in piles.
    “And this,” he said, displaying the second photograph, “is the same cell growth after a six-week exposure to one of the new chemotherapeutic agents we’ve been developing.” He paused. “I can tell you that it involves a new mycotoxin—one of the ones a field researcher brought back last year from the Amazon.”
    The change was uncanny! More than half the cells were clearly dead or dying, their nuclei shriveled. In whole sections of the photograph, there remained no living cells at all.
    “That’s unbelievable!” exclaimed Reston.
    Stillman nodded crisply. “Yes. It is.” He stood up, signaling the session was over. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
    He ushered Reston into the hall first, then turned back to face Dan. “Of course, we know it can be a long way from a culture dish to successful clinical trials.”
    “Yessir.”
    “You can probably see I’m a difficult personality, Dr. Logan. I don’t give a good goddamn who I offend.”
    Logan, awkward, a silly grin plastered on his face, made no response. None was expected.
    “Just bear this in mind. I’ve got more protocols going at the ACF than anyone. Almost twice as many as Shein.”
    * * *
    Logan hardly had time to be anxious. He was obliged to spend the rest of this second day at the ACF in the computer room, trying to learn a system that beat anything he’d ever imagined for complexity, yet one that he couldn’t leave the room without having mastered: every procedure at the ACF—from ordering antibiotics to tracking patients’ progress—went through this machine.
    When he was finally done, it was after 8:00 P.M . Yet he dragged himself back up to the twelfth floor and made his way to Rochelle Boudin’s room.
    “Sorry I took so long,” he said apologetically. “I’m still pretty new here.”
    “Where’s Dr. Levitt?” replied Roger, clearly not a man big on pleasantries.
    “He’s off service.” Logan paused. “I’m sure you’ll see him from time to time, but you’ll be dealing primarily with me from now on.”
    The Boudins exchanged a glance. “What do you know about my wife’s case?” demanded Roger.
    “I’ll be working under the senior physicians, of course. But, please, I want you to feel comfortable discussing anything at all with me.”
    Rochelle looked him over for the first time. “I’m not sure any doctor can ever understand how we