2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [70]
“What is it?”
“We did it!”
Mueller knew what he was talking about. It was what everyone was working on all around the world and, if true, it would be the next big thing.
“Are you sure?”
“Come down here and look at the goddamn mice.”
When he got to the complex his heart was racing. One problem that remained with older people were their bones. There were many medicines to take as a preventative for bone decay, but they did very little in the long run. As more people were living into their nineties and beyond, a simple fall in the shower always resulted in a broken something. Science had tried to find a way of regenerating bone and had succeeded somewhat, but it had always concentrated on speeding up the healing process once the bone was broken.
Immunicate was working on something different: regenerating undamaged bone tissue. Bones that were simply weakened by age. By working with genes and new classes of stem cells, Immunicate finally showed that old bone could turn into new, replacing itself gradually, until a ninety-year-old’s leg was exactly the same as when he was forty.
The trouble it kept running into was that the process did not stay in the bones alone, but spread to the other organs, causing them to try to regenerate, which resulted in failure. But it looked as if Immunicate had finally solved the problem. Stern showed Mueller very old mice that were running on a wheel at top speed. “There is no spillage. It’s staying in the bone tissue.”
Sam Mueller had learned over the years not to get excited too soon, but he couldn’t help himself. He and his company needed this.
“If this works,” Mueller said, “we’ll have one-hundred-year-old people entering the Olympics! If the mice are fine, let’s go to the dogs.”
“Do you think I would have called you so excited if we hadn’t done that already?”
“You did?” Mueller was shocked. There was an earlier time when that step would never have been taken without his knowledge, but those days were gone. The company was so big and diverse he wasn’t in the loop on every single thing anymore. “And?”
“Same,” Stern said. “Same fucking thing! Great bones, no spillage!”
“My God! How long does it take?”
“Substantial regrowth in three months, complete repair in half a year.” Mueller thought he was going to faint. This wasn’t as good as curing cancer, and it may not have been his discovery directly, but the company he founded was about to let old people run and play like kids.
“So when do we start trials?”
“We’ll submit everything, hopefully in two months.”
“I think we should blast it out to the world. Let everyone know that you don’t fuck with Immunicate. Make it clear that humans haven’t tried it, but also make it clear that these animal studies are a first, and you mark my words, every big drug company on the planet is going to be jealous. I love it!” The news made headlines all over the world:
IMMUNICATE HOPEFUL OLD BONES WILL TURN INTO NEW
When Max Leonard saw that he went apoplectic. “Do you know what this means?” he said to Kathy. “This means the olds just got another twenty years of life, minimum. And if they find a way to regenerate the bones, all of the organs are next. These fuckers are going to live to be two hundred. They’re never going to leave.”
“Well, they haven’t tried it on humans,” Kathy said. “Maybe it won’t work.”
“It doesn’t matter. It just shows you where their priorities are. And as that Mueller gets older, all he’s going to do is try to fix up his own age group. Shit. This has to be stopped.”
“How?”
“Let’s have one more big meeting. We’ll know what to do after that.”
* * *
Brad Miller read the bone news, but he had mixed feelings. His bones were okay, and if he had still had his life and his home and his money, he would have been very happy, but what did he need better bones for? For the tent? He’d had enough of the tent. As much as he didn’t want