The Cure (8 page)

Hugh Raborn had been an executive at Asclepius for a number of years, but claimed not to have been there when the company’s unfortunate name had been chosen, one that didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Asclepius, Raborn had explained to her, was the Greek god of medicine and healing. Somehow, he had never become a household name in the real world, even though he was the son of Apollo and the father of two famous daughters, Hygeia, goddess of health, cleanliness, and sanitation, and Panacea, the goddess of universal remedy.

Erin couldn’t shake the ever-increasing certainty that she was making a fool of herself. You couldn’t just barge in on a busy man’s life unannounced and expect him to drop everything and wine and dine you like it was the night of the high school prom. He might not be in at all, or he could be in high-level meetings that he couldn’t get out of.

On the other hand, this was news he’d been waiting for much of his adult life. She knew how much it meant to him. This should be one of the rare occasions when even the busiest executive could allow himself the luxury of canceling his schedule for the day and celebrating in style. He owed at least this much to her. He had recruited her, after all, and it was she who had taken the lion’s share of the risk while he remained insulated from it.

Erin reflected on her seemingly innocent interview with a local paper three years earlier. It was incredible how dramatically this seemingly minor event had changed the course of her life,
and was still changing it
. There were moments in time at which a seemingly small, unimportant event could be amplified in unforeseeable ways, creating ripples that grew into tidal waves, affecting lives, and even the world, in profound ways.

A chance contamination of a single one of Fleming’s
Staphylococci
culture dishes had led to the world’s first antibiotic, penicillin, marking a revolution in medicine, and saving countless lives. Or, on the more mundane side, how often had Erin heard stories of people meeting their future spouses because of one-in-a-million chance occurrences—like a blown tire on a highway or a random restaurant choice.

Erin’s interview with this small Tucson paper had certainly become one of a few pivotal tipping points in her own personal history, of that there could be no doubt. Not only had it led to her recent removal from her project and difficulty with the dean, but two years earlier it had been the reason Hugh Raborn had first contacted her, changing the course of her research, and the course of her life, in ways she could not have foreseen.

He had called her and introduced himself, and told her he was considering sponsoring her research. She had suggested talking to Apgar, but Raborn had said he wanted to speak with her first.

“What can I do for you?” she had said.

“I’m vice president of Neuroscience Research for Asclepius Pharmaceuticals. We’re a small biotech company in San Diego with about three hundred employees. We do research on cardiovascular and central nervous system diseases like epilepsy.”

As he was speaking, she Googled the company on her laptop, getting the spelling of Asclepius close enough that Google suggested the correct one, which she accepted. The company’s Web page was impressive—very sleek and high end.

She hit the Executive Management link and ten thumbnails came up immediately. Raborn’s picture was the third one down. He was thirty-six. Erin knew this was young for someone so accomplished, but from his picture she would have guessed he was even younger. He had a full head of jet-black hair and appeared to be trim and in excellent shape.

“I came across an online article last week in which you were quoted,” continued Raborn, while she studied his picture.

Erin winced. The interview she had given the year before to the
Tucson Neighborhood Journal
had been placed online, along with considerable other historical content from the publication. The great thing about the Internet, or the worst thing, depending on your perspective, was that an article never died. Forty years from now, the occasional searcher might still stumble over this piece, long after the
Tucson Neighborhood Journal
wasn’t even a memory. Apgar had also seen this interview online ten months earlier and had chewed her out good for speaking publically about such a project, or even considering it. He made it clear that this was
not
something on which she would be working, now or ever.

“Anyway,” said her caller, “I was intrigued by your goal of a psychopath early warning device.”

“Um … thanks,” said Erin uncertainly.

“I had an … unpleasant … run-in with a psychopath about fifteen years ago. I’d prefer not to go into details, but it opened my eyes to the monsters among us. If I would have had one of the gadgets you spoke of, it could have saved…” He paused. “It would have been very good.”

Silence came over the line, and Erin had a sense that this Hugh Raborn was collecting himself.

“Since then,” he continued, “I’ve made myself an expert in the field. I was already a neuroscientist, so I was well equipped to study the problem of psychopathy from a number of angles.”

Erin was intrigued. She had no intention of showing any of her cards, but perhaps Hugh Raborn was a kindred spirit. Each had been the victim of this human plague. Maybe this man would share her dedication and commitment, but with a larger wallet and greater access to key people and resources.

“Go on,” she said evenly.

“While I would, personally, strongly support the development of a device like the one you propose, I think you’ll find you’ll get a huge amount of resistance to the idea.”

Erin suppressed a groan.
Now you tell me
, she thought in amusement. Where had he been when she had agreed to speak with that amateur reporter in the first place? He could have saved her from a very irate thesis advisor.

“While a detector would be very useful,” he continued, “I suspect it would create so many legal and ethical controversies that it would never be used. And my research suggests there aren’t enough differences in the electrical patterns between psychopaths and normals anyway. When they are thinking certain thoughts, perhaps, but you’d miss them ninety-nine percent of the time.” He paused. “So a few years ago, I came up with an even better idea. One with a greater chance for success than the one you’re working on, even though this may seem counterintuitive.”

Erin’s mind jumped ahead and tried to guess where he was going with this, but she drew a blank. Raborn remained silent for several seconds, probably to build the suspense. If so, it was certainly working.

“I’m listening,” said Erin.

“My idea is to treat the condition as a disease,” he said calmly. “And cure it.”

Erin shook her head in disbelief. “Cure it?” she repeated. “
Cure
psychopathy? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Not at all,” said Raborn. “Why not? I’ve read every last paper on the differences in the brain structure of psychopaths and normals, including the one written by your advisor, Dr. Apgar. And if I do say so myself, I’m as good as it gets at molecular biology and pharmacology.”

“Impossible,” said Erin. “Who knows how many genes contribute to a psychopath’s aberrant brain structure? We’re finding more differences every year. You’d have to find all the genes, and then modulate them in just the right way to remodel the brain.”

“Very good,” said Raborn approvingly. “You’re up on your molecular pharmacology. Turns out I
have
found them all. All eight.”

“I find that very hard to believe. Genes that contribute to this type of brain physiology don’t just advertise themselves. Even finding a single one is a needle-in-a-haystack exercise. I don’t care how good you are.”

“This is true. But along with my considerable expertise, I spent a lot of my personal fortune to attack the problem. I obtained DNA samples from psychopaths and normals and had the entire genomes sequenced.”

Erin considered. When the genome was first sequenced, it was an accomplishment akin to sending a man to the moon, a worldwide effort to decipher the more than three billion base pairs in the human genome, which would fill thousands of volumes the size of encyclopedias if actually printed out. The effort had cost billions of dollars and had taken a decade. And this was just to get to a rough draft, which had been accomplished at the turn of the millennia. Only twelve years later, the entire sequence of a human genome, taken from a psychopath or a saint, could be deciphered for under ten thousand dollars in a matter of weeks. And presently, after additional years of further progress, it was far faster and less expensive even than this. This increase in speed and reduction in cost was even more profound than that seen in the computer industry, and was nothing short of miraculous.

“The goal, of course, was to compare them,” continued Raborn. “Find all key differences between the genome of a normal and the genome of a psychopath. I paid a team of mathematicians a small fortune to devise algorithms I could use to sort through the billions of bytes of data and possible permutations. The program eventually identified eight genes that differed, each contributing to the condition.”

“
If
that’s true,” said Erin, making sure her emphasis on the word,
if,
was unmistakable
,
“you’ve done an amazing piece of science. It’s a great first step. But it’s still a first step—up Mount Everest.”

“Allow me to continue,” said Raborn. “I was able to devise a gene-therapy cocktail that makes use of genetic engineering techniques to replace the abnormal sections of these genes.”

“All eight of them?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re suggesting you’ve succeeded? That you’ve found a cure for psychopathy?”

“That’s what I’m saying. It took dedication, a new approach, and a stroke of genius. And I won’t lie to you—a tremendous amount of luck. But I think I’ve done it.”

Erin considered hanging up, but decided he would just call back. She needed the conversation to reach its logical conclusion. “If true, this would be breakthrough work. So why hasn’t this been published in a peer-reviewed journal?” she asked, knowing the answer already. Because the snake oil Raborn was selling would never make it past the level of scrutiny required to make it into a prestigious journal.

“I’m keeping this my own little secret for now. I’ve been working on this—in secret—every spare second I could get for the past few years, and hiring others to help with certain pieces of the puzzle. Without telling them the true nature of the project. Not yet.”

“Look, no one would be more excited than me if you could truly find a way to reverse this condition. But for the sake of argument, even if you could replace these eight genes with normal versions, that doesn’t mean you’ll have a cure. Who knows what will happen? And you can’t even test it in animals, because there aren’t any animal models of psychopathy.”

“Well, there is one. Nothing that approximates the full syndrome. But I’m sure you know that rodents with septo-hippocampal lesions share some psychopathic behaviors. I used this model in the early going. But I also sequenced the mouse genome, and found mouse analogs for all eight genes. Sure enough, if you knock these genes out, mice show the same aberrant behaviors as those with septo-hippocampal lesions. And more.”

“So you created psychopathic mice?”

“Right. The same abnormal genes and the same behaviors, at least as far as can be identified in an animal of this limited intelligence. Then I corrected these genes. When I did, I corrected the condition as well. The mouse brains were restored to normality. It took hundreds of experiments, but I was able to reverse their psychopathy.”

There was a very long silence. “I don’t want to seem rude,” said Erin, “but I should probably come right to the point. I don’t believe you.”

Raborn laughed. “I don’t blame you. Shows you’re sane. It wasn’t easy, even after I corrected the genes. What I found is that the normal versions of these genes all work in concert to create the normal condition. And there is a delicate interplay between all of their gene products. So it’s a two-step process. Just replacing the genes isn’t enough. Because even if you have normal genes, if you don’t make sure they are activated in just the right way, that they are all being expressed—dosed, if you will—at the precisely correct levels, you still get the psychopathic condition. In fact, if normal genes aren’t expressed correctly, you could make the condition worse than if you hadn’t fixed them at all. So the trick is to not only fix the genes, but determine the levels needed, and modulate their expression accordingly.”

Erin shook her head. If she hadn’t believed this was possible before, Raborn certainly hadn’t helped his case by explaining it was even more difficult than she had thought. She wasn’t a molecular biologist, but cells had numerous complex mechanisms for controlling genes. There was a lot going on at the molecular level, and trying to understand such a complex interaction, let alone measure it, had to be fantastically difficult. “And you were able to determine the precise levels needed for all eight genes?” she asked skeptically.

“Unfortunately, no. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but this proved to be an intractable problem. Even with mice. I ended up having to arrive at the answer through trial and error. As far as I can tell, there is no other way. It took many hundreds of attempts to get it right. Much as you might have to try hundreds or even thousands of combinations to stumble on the one that would open a padlock.” He paused. “For the modulation of these genes, theory doesn’t help. It has to be determined empirically.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“I know my call is out of left field, and what I’m telling you sounds utterly fantastic. But I urge you to look up my credentials and read some of my work, which is quite rigorous. And I’d be happy to send you all of the data I’ve generated so far. I think you’ll find it quite eye-opening.”

Erin considered. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that you send me your data and it’s everything you claim it to be. So if it is, why haven’t you initiated clinical trials in man to try to get this cure of yours approved?”