The Last Enemy - A history of the present future - 1934-2084

by Luca Luchesini

That is why I am here.”

  Xavier expression, attentive up until now, opened into a broad smile.

  “Are you telling me that you plan to use L’Oreal labs and resources to turn them into a sorcerer’s cave to try to produce the eternal life potion?”

  “Well, that would definitely be the main goal. Unfortunately, I have to be realistic and admit that most likely I will only end up designing lots of tremendously successful skin cosmetics that will provide L’Oreal with stacks of money and a decent career for myself.”

  Xavier burst into laughter and ringed the bell on his desk to call in his assistant. A few seconds later, a young woman opened the door and before she could even step in the office, Mr. Langlois told her to prepare the paperwork. I was expected to start working the next day.

  “Louis, in retrospect, do you think Mr. Langlois believed your true goals?”

  “Not for the first few years. He kept up with my work and he clearly saw that I was also doing a lot of studies and experiments not directly correlated to product research. On the other side, he was also seeing that this side research sometimes contributed to the main product development, almost always with excellent results. So I believe he just figured that that was just my way of working.

  He would give me the objectives and ask me how much I needed to achieve them, without further questioning. By 1965, I had already developed a drug able to improve the replication efficiency of a set of skin and hair cells, and this was channeled into extremely popular products. My career took off and by 1968, Xavier was seriously thinking about handing me the responsibility of the whole product development of L’Oreal. I balked at the idea. I needed to focus on research, not to be a company executive.

  He was puzzled at my response, so in the early weeks of the summer of 1968, he called me into his office and asked me why I was refusing a promotion. Was I under the influence of all those communists that were rocking the streets of Paris and of half of Europe?

  I stuck to the truth and updated him on everything I was finding in my free time, among which, the discovery of telomeres in skin cells.

  Telomeres are the structures that allow DNA to replicate and form an exact copy of the original cell, except over time they get shorter, until the cell is no longer able to replicate correctly and eventually dies. I had sent some previous results to my old classmates at Cambridge for some additional review and I could simply not leave the job half done.

  Xavier stood up from his desk, and stared at me with a frown. Turns out that I had indeed created my own sorcerer’s cave in search of the eternal life potion. Just like in my first interview, I used the interest of the company to defend my point.

  I was just a few months away from a major breakthrough in the study of the cell aging process and he would risk spoiling this over a promotion? He eventually gave in, and I could keep running my lab under one condition; I update him regularly on my side research.”

  “How did this second phase of your research at L’Oreal go?”

  “Well, there were three major breakthroughs. First, I was able to produce telomerase, the enzyme that preserves telomeres, therefore guaranteeing perfect cell duplication. This happened in the fall of 1970. Second, I was able to design a drug that transferred telomerase into human skin cells to make them effectively immortal. This was the first prototype of Telomerax.

  And third, we started experimenting on human patients. Xavier knew a Swiss doctor named Hans Klettendorf, who was the owner of a fancy beauty clinic called “Le Jardin de Venus” in the Perroy village, off the coast of the lake of Geneva.

  There was an agreement that allowed L’Oreal to use the rich and famous customers of this beauty farm to test its new products. Obviously with their consent, and under the full control of an experienced staff. To my surprise, I saw that these special kind of guinea pigs were very eager to undergo risky experiments in exchange for the privilege of accessing the latest rennovations in aesthetic care.

  No one except Xavier and I knew that the skin cream was also the first Telomerax prototype and since the clinic customers knew they were using experimental cosmetics, they did not mind if from time to time an expert would come for a few checkups.

  The results were absolutely amazing. The skin of the patients treated with the prototype clearly showed a sudden stop in the aging process, to the extent that they were considering reducing the frequency of their other cosmetic treatments. Of course, all the rest of their body was still subject to aging but the results were simply shocking. So I pushed myself to work harder, and Xavier became more and more intrusive on my research, making me feel as if I was suffocating under pressure.

  Then I discovered the reason behind his intrusion. L’Oreal was planning to buy Synthelabo, a French pharmaceutical company that was renowned for its research in dermatology. That was why Xavier needed to know all the points he could bank on before heading into the acquisition. In addition, my research would have had to be combined into the one of Synthelabo. The message was very clear, freedom to complete my research in private was diminishing.”

  “How did you manage to defend your independence?”

  “L’Oreal acquired Synthelabo in 1973, and then all of the usual company integration problems surfaced; redundant research projects, competition among different teams and the like. On my end, more and more time wasted on company turf wars. And then came the death of my father, which reopened my eyes to focus on my actual goal. If you believe in fate, that was a sign. So I made up my mind, and I decided it was high time to switch up my career again.

  I went to Xavier’s office and asked to leave the company. It was time for me to setup my own shop and, with the respectable amount of money I had earned so far, I would ask Hans Klettendorf to become his partner at “Le Jardin de Venus.”

  The explanation I gave Hans for the abrupt change, was that it was time for me to fulfill my entrepreneurial dream. I emphasized the fact that I was bringing a good amount of capital, knowledge, and experience to increase the clinic business and set up its own exclusive cosmetic lab.

  The key advantage of teaming up with me, for Hans, was that he would secure a solid future for his business, at seventy-two years old. This implied that his two sons - neither showing interest to follow in their father’s footsteps - could continue to benefit from the profits, while devoting themselves to their favorite hobbies. Only Xavier knew the real reason for my leave, and kept this as the focus during our last meeting.

  “Louis,” he said, “I admire your commitment but have you ever considered all the consequences? I mean, it could go wrong.”

  “You mean, what if I do not end up with solid results? Well, you know, people will move on from where I left…”

  “No, Louis, what if you succeed and you find your potion of eternal life? You are either ignoring the implications, or simply pretending there are none.

  Do you think you can sort it out by publishing an article in Nature magazine, like your heroes Francis and Crick did, and then wait for the Nobel Prize and that’s it?”

  “Of course not, Xavier. It will be incomparably larger than Penicillin; a revolution.”

  “Far more than a revolution. Think about it. Everything is based on this very simple and undeniable truth, that we are mortals. Life is just a brief journey, then you go to Hell, or Heaven, or nowhere, but you make room for somebody else. Everything is programmed around this. And if you succeed, the whole system collapses. There is maybe far more to lose than to gain, from a human standpoint, of course.”

  “Well, I agree it won’t be easy to adapt to, but this is the ultimate goal for me and I believe for all of us. Plus, we are almost there. I feel it. The criminal act, or rather the inhumane one, would be to give up for fear, Xavier. And honestly, I am quite surprised that this objection comes from an enlightened and rational person like yourself.”

  “I know I can’t stop you, Louis. This is your passion. But please think. And watch out. It could become very dangerous for you, and those around you. An
d do not hesitate to come back if you need help.”

  We never got in touch again. The next time I would see Xavier, would be at his funeral in 1985. He died in a car crash, and by that time I had already been testing the first versions of Telomerax on myself for a few years.

  I find it quite ironic how I arrived at the ceremony as the first immortal being on Earth, being proven against by the unpreventable death of my friend. Yet Xavier had made a good point. From that moment on, I was no longer under the protection of a company. I was at high seas, with a powerful treasure that had to be defended from a multitude of threats, by any means necessary. The first mission was to keep it a secret.

  Chapter 3

  “The Swiss period, if we can call it that, started in 1973 with your arrival at the Klettendorf clinic and lasted more than forty years until you were forced to leave the country in 2017. How would you describe it, looking back?”

  “We can roughly divide it into three main parts. In the first fifteen years, I was mainly focused on completing the development of Telomerax and consolidating the clinic research activity.

  Then, from the late eighties to around 2010, most of my attention went into creating the network that was necessary to protect the Telomerax secret. The last years were all about fighting off the effects of information leakage that made me, my family, and my friends, subjective to of all kinds of attention from big governments, big corporations, and big crime from all over the world. This eventually endangered our security and survival.

  It was a period of increasing anxiety and fear. Without a doubt, the first ten years were the best ones. The clinic had a very competent staff, and performing my duties as lab director was a satisfying job that left me plenty of time to experiment.

  I had brought along with me a lot of machinery from L’Oreal and I purposely organized the research activity in a way that doctors and technicians working with me, could not get the full picture. At times, I was sending some of the experiment results to Rodney Gilmore, a research associate who I had met in Cambridge back in the sixties and who had become a professor of biochemistry.

  By 1977, I had modified the Telomerax prototype so that it was now possible to employ telomerase not only in skin cells but in a number of other tissues like muscles, kidneys, the nervous system, and liver. But at the same time this information was becoming more and more public. In 1978, Elizabeth Blackburn and her Yale colleagues published the analysis about telomeres that would win them the Nobel Prize in 2009.

  After reading the article I immediately called Rodney and asked him if my correspondence with him had any part of this. He thought I was angry because my work was not mentioned at all in the bibliography and that I was looking to get part of the credit, so he immediately became defensive.

  “Well, Louis, you know, I did not quite understand what you were saying in your correspondence and this Australian girl we have here, at Darwin College, is really bright. I just thought she might have a look at it. She could get some insight for her own research, too. You know, I am a professor. You have your clinic, I did not think it would be a big issue if your name did not appear in the bibliography. And anyway, it was private correspondence…”

  “I am not looking for any damn glory, Rodney! If I had been, I would not have left Cavendish lab back in 1962. The fact is, I am working for Dr. Klettendorf and I have sworn to secrecy since this is part of our cosmetic research. This article could end my career. Just please do me a favor and keep my name out of the references and please trash all of our correspondence. I cannot afford to put my job at risk. Is that clear, Rodney?”

  “I am sorry, I did not mean to put you in trouble. Elizabeth has been working here at Cambridge since 1975. I have never seen someone as gifted as her in biochemistry so when I went through your last letter I asked her to go over your key points, especially in those paragraphs where you describe the way to synthesize the new enzyme. I simply had no idea how to build the verification experiment, so I just asked for a little advice.”

  “Did you give her a copy of my paper, Rodney? This could cost me my position and more. I do not want to restart at age forty-four.”

  “What the hell, Louis, of course not. I understand the difference between private letters and open research.”

  “All right, then. Let’s close it here. But please tell me before sharing anything next time. I need to know what’s going on.”

  Apparently I was convincing enough, because no reference to my name or research ever appeared in any official scientific journal. But just as a precaution, I stopped all scientific exchanges with Rodney and other scholars and over time, even the personal ones, slowly but surely severing all ties with my past.

  In 1980, I reached the final breakthrough. The drug could now cover all human tissue and my cooperative guinea pigs would take it by applying the occasional skin cream treatment commonly used at every beauty clinic. Once Telomerax was absorbed into the skin, it slowly diffused into the rest of the body, effectively stopping the aging process.

  The next step was to run extensive clinical experiments to test if there were side effects after applying the cream. This took place between 1980 and 1984. I would start taking Telomerax myself, toward the end of 1983. Only after the first round of experiments showed no major drawbacks.”

  “Yet in your research journal you describe some nasty collateral effects, like the results that confirmed existing tumors develop much faster after treatment with Telomerax.”

  “Indeed. Tumors are to some extent the precursors of immortality. They are made up of cells that keep replicating uncontrollably fast, without aging, making them unstoppable. In addition, they have much higher levels of telomerase. Eleven of my patients, which is roughly two percent of everyone involved in the clinical trials, already had some form of cancer which they were unaware of before being exposed to the treatment.

  After leaving the clinic, their tumors developed much faster than expected, establishing a strong connection between Telomerax and cancer progress. As a result, I modified the drug so that you were required to take it regularly in small doses and then eventually I transformed it into a pill. This made it so much easier to use, without the extensive process of bathing in a tub full of cream.

  Finally, allow me to comment on the expenses. My initial Telomerax prototypes costed me about $1500 per treatment, for every one of my patients. This was equivalent to what we charged for a day at the clinic, including accommodation. By 1990, I had been able to slash that cost by fifty percent. Immortality was getting cheap.”

  “Don’t you feel guilty for those eleven people whose lives were actually shortened by the Telomerax experimentation?”

  “Not really, honestly. There are many other things I feel more guilty about, looking at how the story unfolded. Remember, these people were all aware we were testing experimental cosmetics on them. It is true they did not know my true intentions, but it may as well have been a simple skin care treatment that could have increased their likelihood to get cancer.

  On top of that, the precautions I took in developing Telomerax were much more serious than those I used for ordinary products. Of course, I do regret not having understood the connection between Telomerax and cancer before, so that I could have saved some of them….but I did not give up on my main goal, to give my patients an extended lifetime in exchange for some unpredictable and unavoidable experimental risks.”

  “Then with new discoveries, came the need for further discretion.”

  “Secrecy meant many things. First, I had to protect the work from my partner, Mr. Klettendorf, which was easy. He could not understand the work behind my research, and because of my responsibility, it was relatively easy to bury the costs of the Telomerax development into the overall cosmetics lab costs. Things became a bit more complicated during the clinic test phase, when Telomerax production required almost three million dollars over four years and accounted for nearly ten percent of the overall clinic costs.

  Fortunately Hans was well in
to his eighties and his sons did not get involved with the clinic, so with just minor tweaks, I was able to keep it under the surface. Then Hans passed away in 1988 and I took over all executive and financial responsibility of the business. This basically secured me from any inside risk, because it would be impossible for anyone to spot what was really going on by just looking at the records.

  The real issue was protecting the secret of the formula. On the day of the burial of Xavier, I thought about how he was right to have feared my success.

  Luckily, I was living in a country that has made protecting secrets and their bearers, a national mission. My private banker came up with a strategic plan. I stored all of my key research documents and synthesis process in an armored safe with a coded lock. I then let my bank pick a notary, whose name they did not disclose to me, to keep the safe in custody. I then brought the code and a sealed envelope, enclosing the name of the notary to a different bank. That bank chose another notary, also unknown to me, to guard the code.

  If I did not check back with the banks, by phone, on a monthly basis and in person at least twice a year, they would tell their respective notaries to recover the safe and have the codes sent in to open it. Together with the scientific documentation, there were clear instructions to send copies to all the major European newspapers and research institutions. Repeat that process ten times, and by 1987 I had ten copies of my research under the custody of ten notaries, that had the content but no easy way to access it and another ten who had the codes but no easy access to the content.

  If anything bad happened to me, the result was that Telomerax would become public domain. As I did not know who the notaries were, there was no danger of anyone threatening or torturing me to reveal my secret.”

  “And how about the manufacturing facility at the clinic? Could anyone interested in the secret just break into the lab, steal the pills, and find the drug formula?”

  “After more than twenty years of work I knew the production process by heart and I did not need anything unordinary to run it. All that the occasional men in black might have found, would be just basic components common at any pharmaceutical lab.