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to make such a joke these days- especially with a man you've known only half a
day? Or are you trying to startle me into admitting I'm a stoolie?"
"I'm not joking and I don't think you're a stoolie," she said calmly. "What I
said was perfectly true-oh, I souped up the way I put it just a little, maybe
because I haven't entirely forgiven you for that bit - of successful
blackmail, and I wanted to see you jump. And for other reasons. But it's
true." -
"But Anne-why?"
"Look, Paige," she said. "It was fifty years ago that we found that if we.
added minute amounts of certain antibiotics, really just traces, to animal
feeds, the addition brought the critters to market months ahead of
normally-fed - animals. For that matter, it even provokes growth spurts in
plants under special conditions; and it works for poultry, baby pigs, calves,
mink cubs, a whole spectrum of animals. It was logical to suspect that it
might work in newborn humans too."
"And you're trying that?" Paige leaned back and poured himself another glass
of Chilean Rhine. "I'd say you souped up your revelation quite a bit, all
right."
"Don't be so ready to accept the obvious, and listen to me. We are nor doing
that. It was - done decades ago, regularly and above the board, by students of
Paul György and half a hundred other nutrition experts. Those people used only
very widely known and tested antibiotics, drugs that had already been used ~n
literally millions of farm animals, dosages worked out to the- milligram of
drug per kilogram of body weight, and so on. But this
particular growth-stimulating effect of antibiotics happens to be a major clue
to whether or -not a given drug has the kind of biological activity we
want-and we have to know whether or not it shows that activity jn human
beings'. S~ we screen new drugs on the kids, -as fast as they're found and
pass certain other tests. We have to." -
"I see," Paige said. "I see." - -
"The children are 'volunteered' by the foundling home, and we could make a
show of legality if it came to a court fight," Anne said. "The precedent was
established in 1952, when Pearl River Labs used children of its own workers to
test its live-virus polio vaccine-which worked, by the way. But it isn't the
legality of it that's important. It's the question of how soon and how
thoroughly we're going to. lick the degenerative diseases."
"You seem to be defending it to me," Paige said slowly, "as though you cared
what I thought about it. So I'll tell you what I think; it seems mighty damned
cold-blooded to me. It's the kind of thing of which ugly myths are made. If
ten years from now there's a pogrom against biologists because people think
they eat babies, I'll know why."
"Nonsense,"- Anne said. "It takes centuries to build up that kind of myth.
You're over-reacting."
"On the contrary. I'm being as honest with you as you were with me. I'm
astonished and somewhat repelled by what you've told me. That's all."
The girl, her lips slightly thinned, dipped and dried her fingertips and began
to draw on her gloves. "Then we'll say no more about it," she said. "I think
we'd better leave now.,'
"Certainly, as soon as I pay the check. Which reminds me: do you have any
interest in Pfitzner, Anne-a personal interest, I mean?"
"No. No more interest than any human being with a moment's understanding of
the implications would have. And I think that's a rather ugly sort of
question."
"I thought you might take it that way, but I really wasn't accusing you of
being a profiteer. I just wondered whether or not you were related to the Dr.
Abbott that Gunn and the rest were waiting for this afternoon."
She got out the compact again and looked carefully into it. "Abbott's a common
enough name."
"Sure. Still, some Abbotts are related. And it seems to make sense." -
"Let's hear you do that. I'd be interested." -
"All right," he said, beginning to become angry himself. "The receptionist at
Pfitzner, ideally, should know exactly what is going on in the plant at all [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]