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“Hell, Kurt, at first ere no ourselves for the Nobel Prize in Medicine After the initial euphoric thrill, we realized that ere about to open Pandora’s box”

“You wouldn’t get any love letters from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries,” Austin said “But, in the long teret a healthier world”

“It’s that long terive this boon to the world, no strings attached An easily accessible cure-all goes into production The average life span increases stratospherically Instead of six billion souls on the planet, we’d have ten or twelve billion Picture the pressure that would put on land, water, food, and energy resources”

“You could have riots, wars, governments toppled, and starvation”

Kane spread his hands apart as if to say Voila!

“Now iine ould happen if we kept the discovery secret”

“Nothing is secret forever Word would leak out Those who didn’t have access to the medicine would resent those who did People with life-threatening diseases would be pounding down the doors of city hall Chaos again”

“The scientific board reache

d the same conclusion,” Kane said “We were in a quandary So we coovernment Then fate intervened An epidemic broke out in China, an influenza-type virus with the potential to set off a ide pandeuess what? Our crazy little lab held the key to the cure”

“Blue medusa?”

“Yup”

“Is that what you meant when you said your research could impact everyone on the planet?”

Kane nodded

“Turns out our research held the only hope to fight this thing,” he continued “The government took over the lab, locked the doors, and worked with the Chinese government to keep the research under wraps until we could come up with a synthesized for that the new virus was simply an outbreak of SARS and thus controllable Which it isn’t It’s a mutated strain that’s even more virulent than the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic In one year, that virus killed millions”

Austin let out a lohistle