Forever and Ever
Page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 Dan A. Baker
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-9787841-1-1
ISBN-13: 9780978784119
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-61550-099-4
A copy of this title’s Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request from the Library of Congress.
Encounter by Czeslaw Milosz © 1936,
translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillan Vallee.
Reprinted with the permission of the Wylie Agency, Inc.
About the Cover
The graphic is a computer generated image of the crystal structure of the p53 DNA binding domain.
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Praise for
FOREVER AND EVER…
“FOREVER AND EVER is very highly recommended to science fiction enthusiasts.” MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW (Oregon, WI USA)
Author Dan A. Baker has written a ripping good science fiction story that is well buttressed by a solidly impressive foundation of molecular biology that is never permitted to get in the way of good storytelling. Thoroughly entertaining, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, “Forever And Ever” is very highly recommended to science fiction enthusiasts.
“Faster & Funnier than Crichton.” MARK BRUNELLE (Alameda, CA)
The smartest boomers in the world are getting old and they don’t like it. They’re also rich and just as fed up with rules and regulations as they were in the 60’s. Everyone wants to live forever (even you!) What we hear in the news about longevity is a mix of skepticism and credibility stretching infomercials, but Baker’s characters spring from the minds of today’s most imaginative biotech scientists who can see what’s really possible - if we’d get out of our own way. Their brain- power mixes in this novel with a dynamic movement and attitude that only a generation who lived with both Woodstock and the first Moon landing could conceive.
Forever and Ever is a thrilling adventure where the brass ring is nothing less than immortal life. Detours through ethics, scientific potential, global impact and the corruption of governments and wealth remind you that we live in a hardball world. In one sense, we’re seeing a coming of age story where 60 year olds face a life just beginning instead of facing death. In another, there’s a clash between altruism and self interest that reminds us of what’s at stake when money loses its conscience. The main characters take back their own creativity from the crush of legal considerations and enter a lively world where the source of money and technology comes with a simple “don’t ask” instead of a restrictive grant. Nobody looks back.
Baker’s style is faster, funnier, and more thought provoking than any Michael Crichton novel I’ve read in years.
What the world needs now! STANLEY SHOSTAK (Author—Becoming Immortal Pittsburgh, PA)
From my point of view, the most important feature of the novel is that Baker “got the science right!” He understands genomics, bio-informatics, networks and modeling, systems biology and stem cell therapy. “Self-regulated gene cascades” slide off the page as easily as tender love scenes. He does NOT make the science plodding and impenetrable. He doesn’t make the mistake of trying to teach the reader science. Rather, the science tacks and sails smoothly through the narrative. He has whipped up a storm of controversy among my small group of bio-gerontologists, gerontologists, geriatricians, and pediatricians concerned with progeria. It’s as though he has told our secret: we probably already know how to reverse aging, but are we ready for it?
I imagine the novel will be provocative for the masses of baby-boomers interested in anti-aging and regenerative medicine. The point is, inevitably, that the larger community must tell scientists what it wants them to accomplish and be willing to pay for success in all the ways that success demands. FOREVER AND EVER is right there with questions, answers, with realistic prescriptions, and a healthy dose of pragmatism about what eternal youthfulness and immortality will take. Dan Baker’s book lays all that out for aging, longevity, and immortality. The issues have never been clearer!
The ride of your (immortal) life. PAUL REFFELL
(Marshall, CA)
In Forever and Ever, Dan Baker transports us into the fascinating world of biotechnology, from the dog-eat-dog corporate environment to the renegade underground, where geniuses build homemade supercomputers in shipping containers. This is a fast-paced thriller that does not blind us with its science. Thanks to Baker’s easy colloquial style, we can understand almost intuitively the esoteric banter of the gene jockeys who work at the far boundaries of human knowledge. Yet the science is all there, logical, convincing and perhaps prescient.
Doctors Earl and Jasmine Metcalf are genetic researchers driven by their desire to help victims of progeria, which accelerates physical aging to the point where eight-year-old children die of old age. When they run up against conservative anti-science regulations, they enlist the help of the übergeeks at the fringes of society, working unobtrusively to advance their research. They realize they hold the key to Eternal Youth. They also realize that they are being watched by powerful men who are willing to kill for a cure for death.
Baker skillfully combines science, humor and fascinating characters to build a riveting story of research done in the name of humanity, which could spell the end of the human race, as we know it. When eternal life can be bought and sold, who will be the new Immortals? Is there a point beyond which science should not be allowed to go? Is there any way to put the genie back in the bottle? How close is science to the scenario of Forever and Ever? Kudos to Dan Baker for creating such an enjoyable and stimulating story and opening the eyes and minds of his readers to the awesome possibilities and dangers of this very possible future.
For Pat Brodehl, a wonderful ally and true believer in the magic of writing.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
Praise for FOREVER AND EVER…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
; CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing about a world as advanced as the American biotech industry mandates access to career professionals for “insider” glimpses into an industry that has gone from its first garage startups to major multi-national corporations in less than twenty years. The research and writing of this project took place during a bizarre time in America; a time of vitriolic right wing politics, unprecedented religious political power, and multi-layered legality in the biotech industry.
For these reasons, scientists in the biotech world were forced to be very circumspect about what they said, and whom they said it to. Nevertheless, many scientists and biotech experts chose to help me with this story and provided a detailed view of their fascinating world. It is a world where science runs into vast mysteries and highly trained intellects are still humbled by the almost unimaginable complexity of cellular life.
I would very much like to thank them all by name, but as a group they have asked to remain unnamed. However, one person chose to share this world with me, and provided the day-to-day detail that brings any story alive, and I want to extend my deepest appreciation, and thanks. May the bright pennant of the grand fleet always fly.
Joan B. Sanger, of the Consulting Editor’s Alliance provided valuable and much needed developmental editing.jsanger@consulting-editors.com
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This story is about the impact of a major breakthrough in one of the most advanced scientific arenas in the world today, biotechnology. The incredible complexity and technical difficulty of the work involved in this field gave rise to an entire language and a constellation of jargon and terms that if left out of character dialogue, or explained at each use would dilute the believability of the story, and disrupt the “insider” nature of the discourse.
I ask the reader to scan the glossary first and familiarize with the terms and jargon used in the story. Quick trips to the Internet to explore the meaning of terms may also be helpful. The following is a brief primer on the new and largely unknown field of molecular therapeutics in human aging.
“Why are babies born young? Why are babies fathered by an old man born the same age as babies fathered by a young man?” This question was asked in antiquity, and the deduction was made that part of the body related to reproduction must be immune to the aging process.
This deduction ultimately led scientists to discover telomerase. Telomerase is a bizarre and unique RNA enzyme that confers virtual immortality to a select group of human cells. Cells involved with the genesis of human sperm and eggs, and sadly, cancer cells express telomerase. This magical substance automatically restores the ends of the chromosomes, and prevents the process of aging in the cell. These cells never age, and they can replicate indefinitely.
Most other human cells stop dividing at about 100 divisions of a natural limit placed on DNA replication. The ends of the X shaped chromosomes, the telomeres, shorten with each replication, and provide the long sought “clock” that controls maximum lifespan.
This shortening of the telomeres, during cell division, was described in a landmark paper, by Calvin B. Harley in 1990. Cal later became the Chief Scientific Officer of Geron, the first biotech company founded to pursue molecular therapeutics for aging. Geron is a public biotech company operating today, and holds several important patents in telomerase and stem cell biology. Geron received a landmark first ever FDA approval for human clinical trials of embryonic stem cell therapy in 2009.
The expression of telomerase is tightly controlled in the human body. However, modern molecular techniques could be employed to redirect expression throughout the body. The impossible suddenly became possible.
“What if?” Dr. Woody E. Wright and Dr. Jerry W. Shay, researchers at Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, asked themselves in 1995. What if these genes were turned on in human skin cells from a 90 year-old man; cells that had stopped dividing, and had been in senescence for a very long time. What would happen? Would the cells become young again, or would they become cancerous? Expanding on the work of Cal Harley, and others, they set up an experiment that reverberates to this day.
The results from their earth-shattering experiment astonished even the most conservative biologists, and were featured in the BBC Documentary Living Forever, in 1999. The skin cells did become young again. They did start dividing and assumed normal cell functions, and they did not get cancer. The impossible was possible, or was it?
The work of these scientists and others precipitated one of the great stories in American medical science, the development and funding of the immortality industry of the late 1990’s. An entire industry, complete with rabid venture capitalists, eccentric billionaires, renegade scientists, and of course, wacky cultists literally sprang up to answer the question: Is engineered human immortality possible? A decade and several billion dollars later, the answer is still a definite maybe.
In subsequent years the fields of stem cell therapy, regenerative medicine, synthetic gene production, tissue engineering, and artificial organ printing, have been founded, and matured nearly to the product phase in less than a decade.
Most important medical advances have come about as result of the coalescing of several new technologies. At some point, and in some place, engineered human immortality in a youthful state will be achieved through a coalescing of these and other technologies.
The constellation of unprecedented philosophical, psychological, moral, and personal dilemmas this technology will precipitate fascinated me, and led me to the even more fascinating worlds of behavioral genetics, and evolutionary psychology. At some point in human evolution, the power to defeat aging and design not only human beings, but also their intellects will arrive. That moment is the subject of Forever And Ever.
Dan A. Baker
Dublin, California 2009
CHAPTER ONE
Jasmine could just hear the sound that prompted her to make a full price offer on this house, despite Pacifica’s reputation for fog. The sound was subtle, and wavered so gently it was more like a memory of a sound than a sound, but it was there, and it was beautiful.
The distant roar of the surf on Linda Mar beach ducted into the steep little valleys of Pacifica, and blended with the wind off the ocean to create a natural lullaby. Jasmine listened closely to the sound because it quieted the insidious chatter in her mind. She lay peacefully in a near sleep, grateful to be relieved of the endless fears and overwhelming forces that swirled around her.
This exquisite luxury of not thinking, even for a few minutes, made everything else possible. The leaps of imagination, diligent bench work, and brilliant protein modeling that she represented; but most importantly, these lapses into the natural world opened an unfelt connection to something else. To some distant, mysterious and immensely powerful force that always lay just beyond comprehension, but now seemed closer than ever.
The little game started like the tickling of a mischievous child; move the hand now, move it right now… Just as her alarm clock struck, Jasmine pressed the brass plunger. It was five o’ clock, more or less. The endlessly refreshing sound of the surf slowly washed out by the gathering traffic on Highway I, and the first jets from San Francisco International would be overhead soon.
Far more importantly, the immensely powerful minds in the Bay Area, this bowl of geniuses, as she called it, were awake, thinking, emanating, searching and wondering. Together, these acutely focused minds made a roaring sound. You could not hear this roar, but you could feel it in your temples, and through the ground. It felt like an urgent unspoken rumor, and today it was very loud. Many of these powerful minds wanted something.
Jasmi
ne slid the glass door to the deck open while holding her finger in front of her lips. Ritzy was such a lady. She never jumped up, or barged in, but her tail banged the chairs and smeared the door with mud. Ritzy was small for a Lab, with a beautiful black coat. Just the ends of her whiskers were white, and her hips were still a little bony.
“Good morning to you too, Ritzy,” Jasmine said, surprised to hear the stress in her voice.
Jasmine looked at Ritzy carefully, stroking her shiny fur and kneading her firm muscles. She held Ritzy’s head in her hand for a moment, looking at her clear brown eyes, feeling the exuberance of the life in this wonderful old dog.
Jasmine Metcalf was a “short tall person,” with the angular jaw line and prominent teeth of the great New England families. Her blond hair was cut in a carefully evolved style that fit her head perfectly, never betraying the subtle shift of color from blond to brown.
Jasmine liked to sit in the kitchen on one of the big wooden stools and wait for the latte machine to warm up. She left the lights off, and watched the waves of rain blow through the orange glow of the streetlights. The fog had settled in at the bottom of the hill, and the rain came out of the fog in dancing, glistening waves. Her aloneness felt like a heavy coat now, and required her to summon all her strength to stand up. Stand up to surrender.