The Organ Grinders by Bill Fitzhugh

Author:Bill Fitzhugh [Fitzhugh, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062041883
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1976-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

1980 Biotech firm

Genentech sets Wall

Street record for

fastest stock rise:

from $35 to $89 a

share in 20 minutes.

10

Paul slapped another puppy onto the wall. “How does that look?” he asked.

“Like Walt Disney’s last nightmare,” Georgette said. “You’re putting them too close together.”

Paul looked wounded. “Sorry. I guess I need closer supervision.” He began to spread the puppies around but held out little hope that his supervisor would be much help. Georgette was watching him but Paul knew her mind was elsewhere.

“What about Rene?” she said. “It works for a boy or a girl.”

“So does Moon Unit,” Paul said. “But that’s no reason to choose it.”

“Be serious,” Georgette snapped. “We are talking about our child.”

Paul looked down from his perch on the ladder, amused at the attitude he was getting. “Two weeks ago you were calling this our embryo’s room,” he said, smiling.

“Yeah, well …” Georgette hesitated. “Things change.” No one was more surprised about Georgette’s change of heart than she was—and certainly no one was more embarrassed. There was no intellectual justification for this sudden philosophical U-turn. It was the ideological equivalent of turning the wrong way onto a one-way street and Georgette knew it. She’d be the first to admit she deserved to be shot with a paint ball because, at some point when she wasn’t paying attention, Georgette began feeling mushy about the child thing. She hated herself for it but there was no denying she felt motherly. Georgette didn’t know why it happened but she was ready to blame it on hormones, thereby absolving herself of personal responsibility.

Earlier in the day Paul and Georgette had discussed Paul’s meeting with Jerry Landis. Paul prevailed on Georgette to help him write a letter to the FDA regarding the research going on at Xenotech. She agreed to help only if she was allowed to include examples of Jerry Landis’s prior acts of eco-irresponsibility, a condition to which Paul acceded. And even though she asked nicely, Paul refused to let her fabricate any new ones. Their letter addressed a concern shared by many that xenografting could lead to problems far worse than a shortage of transplantable organs, namely, a plague. The argument was that animal viruses that were benign in their natural hosts might become uncontrollable, primitive, impervious killers when transplanted into a host of a different species. Many believe AIDS originated when an African villager ate a monkey that carried the virus. Catastrophic ebola outbreaks have occurred after people have been scratched or bitten by infected chimpanzees. Just for good measure, Paul and Georgette also included a paragraph on the bovine spongiform encephalopathy–Creutzfeld-Jakob disease controversy. These were all fears the FDA was aware of, but a well-researched letter (especially one that managed to get prior acts of eco-irresponsibility admitted into evidence) was sure to trigger some sort of bureaucratic movement, however glacial that might be. They addressed the letter to the special assistant for investigations at the FDA, and cc’d to a dozen other federal departments, agencies, and offices.

After mailing the letter, Paul and Georgette moved on to the interior decorating portion of their day.

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