SWDnovel Chapter 200: Moratorium (5)
Chapter 200: Moratorium (5)
Chapter 200: Moratorium (5)
“I told you to lay low, didn’t I?” said Xin Mao, the minister of the State Administration for Market Regulation.
He was visiting the Public Security Bureau to see He Jiankui, who had been detained.
“What’s going to happen to me now?” He Jiankui asked.
“It’s worse than you think. It’s all your fault, so who can you blame? Genetic modification alone is enough to get you in trouble, but you also blatantly disregarded clinical trial regulations, and you didn’t give the victims an explanation. Plus, the baby you created is about to die.”
Xin Mao clicked his tongue.
“The issue is genetically modified babies. You said it yourself at the GSC conference that it’s the dawn of a new era, didn’t you? What can you do when there’s a background like this behind a case that the entire world is watching?”
“I heard there was talk of the death penalty... Is it true?” He Jiankui asked in horror. Foolloow new stories at novelhall.com
“It’s true. Nature is investigating and reviewing the case of organ transplants from executed prisoners. What do you think will happen if that blows up?” Xin Mao said. “Do you know what people are going to say? Their country sells the organs of executed prisoners and who knows what other unimaginably unethical things are going on? They are going to say that’s why a GSC scientist can violate clinical trial regulations and conduct a genetic modification study on their own citizens without any real preclinical data. ‘Look at our country; look at our dictator government that treats their people like lab rats. That’s why...’”
Xin Mao clenched his jaw out of frustration.
“...’that’s why they won’t even punish He Jiankui properly.’”
“...”
“That’s what people are going to say. I’m saying we will be internationally condemned. Now do you understand why your punishment has to be severe?”
“It still... won’t be the death penalty, is it?”
“I’m trying to prevent that, but the deputy minister has disliked you for a long time because you act like you’re above the law and do any research you want.”
“Science shouldn’t be so tangled up in the law! All I did was take a bold risk for the betterment of humanity!”
“Doctor Ryu developed a filter that captures micro-dust from the air. They created a technology to put filters on cars and recycle it as fertilizer.”
“What?”
“I guess you haven’t heard. Well, you won’t get newspapers in here, so... Anyway, apparently Doctor Ryu just gave that away to a small company called Cellijenner.”
“...”
“At least what’s a challenge to you is routine or child’s play to him.”
“That’s because...”
“We tried to recruit Doctor Ryu once, but it didn’t work. It was partly because his research base is all in Korea, but it was partly because of the closed-off research environment in China,” Xin Mao said.
“Maybe that restrictiveness was the real problem. And that’s where monsters like you are born.”
“...”
“All these years I’ve been cleaning up after you, thinking it was my patriotic duty, for the betterment of this country, but now I feel differently.”
“Mr. Minister!”
“I’ve approved your crazy research plans without asking, but that undisciplined system and the lack of transparency in the process is what ultimately prevented us from recruiting Doctor Ryu,” Xin Mao said. “And it’s also what allowed an arrogant genius like you to rise.”
“...”
“It’s probably going to be more than a life sentence, so be prepared. There’s nothing I can do anymore.”
* * *
“Sir,” Jacob said to Young-Joon. “Did you hear about the micro-dust thing? Korea is going crazy right now.”
“Attorney Park let me know yesterday,” Young-Joon replied bluntly.
“How are you going to determine the number, duration, and the concentration of doses, let alone validate the efficacy of the drug itself?
—Three times a week.
Rosaline intervened.
—The amount of Cas9 and the RNA complex is equal to 3.2 times the baby’s weight. The units are milligrams, and it should be dissolved in five hundred microliters of distilled water for injection. The following solutions should be dissolved in order to match the conditions in the blood and to prevent structural modification of Cas9.
—Procaine hydrochloride 10 mg
—Sodium citrate 2 mg
—-Sodium hydroxide 3 mg
...
As he read the messages in front of him, Young-Joon said, “In a situation where we can’t do a proper preclinical study, we have to go with our gut feeling and rely on in silico data and calculations.”
In silico referred to virtual experiments that combined biology and computer simulations.
“How is the baby doing?” Jacob asked.
“The hospital said she has a week at most. We really don’t have much more time now. Let’s check the purity for all the drugs we made today, and we’ll administer them tomorrow. I communicated this to the medical staff as well,” Young-Joon said.
“Who’s doing the administration?”
“Professor Dong Weimin is doing it.”
“Dong Weimin?”
“This treatment is done via injection. It’s a very difficult procedure that involves piercing the lymph nodes and bone marrow.”
“Hm...”
“It was very difficult to recruit him.”
* * *
Young-Joon was also a little uneasy about the lack of preclinical data. He was a scientist as well, and he naturally felt more confident in the experimental data in front of him than what Rosaline had taught him.
Mimi’s treatment was administered while her mother, Zhi Xuan, Young-Joon, Jacob, and other scientists watched from outside the sterile operating room. Zhang Haoyu, Mimi’s doctor, assisted Dong Weimin, one of China’s most respected doctors, in administering the treatment.
He was one of the leading experts on lymph node injection treatments. It was a technology called a sentinel node biopsy, which was usually used to treat breast cancer that had metastasized. But it was also Dong Weimin’s first time piercing a needle into such a tiny lymph node on a newborn baby.
‘I might fail.’
At first, he had declined because of the pressure, but he had eventually agreed after the persistent arguments of Young-Joon and the minister of the State Administration for Market Regulations.
Dong Weimin was determined. The patient was so small, there were more lymph nodes than normal, and they were in different positions. Although he was extremely concentrated on this, he was still nervous. The nape of his neck was damp with cold sweat. His fingertips trembled slightly. At that moment...
—Sir, it’s a little bit above where your needle is right now.
Dong Weimin heard Young-Joon’s voice from the speaker attached to his surgical gown.
“... I see.”
He had almost made a mistake.
Dong Weimin gulped. As he adjusted the position of the needle, he was confused about how Young-Joon could know something like that.
However, they had no idea that there was a shiny young girl in the operating room, besides the medical staff, guiding the needle of the old professor. Young-Joon was in Synchronization Mode, trying to match Rosaline’s position with Dong Weimin’s procedure.
1. In vivo is a term for procedures performed on whole living organisms ☜