“So, potentially — and in spite of the appalling ineptitude of the FDA — the future is very bright. I emphasize the word potentially—one of the things that causes me so much anguish about the destruction of the rain forest is the possibility that we’re irrevocably losing indigenous plant toxins and venoms that could be used in the development of new and more powerful lethal drugs. But look, even if the FDA approved one of these experimental agents, there’s no guarantee that it would prove any more effective on your father than the drugs we administered today. I suspect that your father’s habitual abuse of angel dust and his hypersensitivity to gamma radiation have somehow conferred an immunity to toxins. Although I have no idea what the precise biochemical mechanisms are here, my hypothesis is that chronic anaphylactic reactions to gamma rays occurring concomitantly with sustained exposure to phencyclidine has actually altered the genetic matrix in each of your father’s cells, rendering him resistant to the lethal drugs presently available to us.”
“Well, why can’t any of these companies develop a drug that will kill gamma-ray-sensitive angel-dust users?” I ask.
“It’s more an issue of economics than scientific or technological capability. How many people in the United States with severe gamma ray sensitivity who habitually abuse phencyclidine do you think commit capital crimes each year?”
“Probably not that many … I don’t know … maybe 50,000 a year?”
“Try 1,500. Compare that to the 600,000 new cases of congenital generalized hypertrichosis each year. [Individuals with this disorder, thought to be transmitted on the X chromosome, have an upper body and face covered with hair and often end up in sideshows as human werewolves.] Or the 1.2 million annual cases of Lipid-Induced Inuit Hyperthermia. [Sufferers of this malady, which primarily affects the Eskimo people of Arctic Canada, maintain exceptionally high body temperatures — about 107°F or above — as a result of heavy consumption of blubber and tallow. Geologists have long been concerned that an LIH epidemic could raise ambient temperatures sufficiently to weaken and finally destroy the ice underpinnings of the West Arctic Ice Sheet. The entire sheet would then slide rapidly into the sea, causing an abrupt and catastrophic rise in global sea levels, and flooding low-lying countries like the Netherlands and Bangladesh.] But even these are considered third-tier markets. In terms of the bottom-line mindset of the pharmaceutical industry, 1,500 cases is a negligible patient base. It’s just not economically feasible for a company to expend the necessary R&D resources on a drug that’s designed to kill only 1,500 people a year. So we’d be talking about an orphan lethal drug. And who do you think awards orphan-drug status? The FDA.”
“It sounds hopeless,” I say.
“It’s not hopeless if we set a national agenda. If we as a country commit ourselves and our resources to developing a drug that can kill gamma-ray-sensitive angel-dust abusers, we can do it — and we can do it by the year 2000. But it has to be a national priority with the full support of the American people. Do you know much about North Korea?”
“Not really. I’d like to, though. In fact, I was going to take Pariah States as my 7th-period elective for next semester, but I decided to take English Punk 1975–1978 instead.”
“Well, you want to talk about setting agendas and making national commitments, these guys could teach us all a thing or two. Their leader, Kim Jong Il, is apparently always developing these little growths on his face and he’s an extremely vain guy, so the government spends about $1.8 billion constructing this fabulous thermonuclear dermatological facility the likes of which have never been seen anywhere. The device works by firing a dazzling light from 192 lasers down a labyrinth of mirrors, focusing a titanic bolt of energy — a thousand times the output of all the power stations in the United States — onto a single tiny pellet of supercold hydrogen fuel placed on Kim Jong Il’s mole, wart, or wen and creating a miniature thermonuclear blast lasting one-billionth of a second, which completely vaporizes the lesion. That’s what a country can do if it puts its mind to it.…”
Frustration with the failed execution, the inaccessibility of more-potent lethal drugs, and the vagaries of the federal bureaucracy; envy for the ruthless fecundity of totalitarian technocrats; and utter physical and emotional fatigue seem to cumulatively crest, as the doctor’s voice trails off and, with a sort of spent serenity, he gazes out the window.
The window affords a view of an emerald green lawn upon which sits a filigreed wrought-iron gazebo completely swathed in concertina wire. In 1996, singer Michael Jackson presented then-governor Christine Todd Whitman with the original gazebo used in The Sound of Music as a gift to the State of New Jersey — the only proviso being that the gazebo be used for the delectation of the state’s penal population. Rotated every two years among New Jersey’s several maximum security institutions, the gazebo — in which Liselle and Rolf serenaded each other with “I Am Sixteen Going on Seventeen”—is used both for conjugal visits and punitive solitary confinement.
During this lull, I become aware of a softly pulsing obbligato — the ch-ch-ch of innumerable inmates engaging in unlubricated sodomy, which, like the ch-ch-ch of stridulating male cicadas, can be heard on summer evenings in villages and towns miles from the prison.
Emerging from his reverie, the doctor turns back to me.
“Do you play any sports? You look like you’re in pretty good shape,” he says.
“Tetherball,” I reply, miming an overhead smash.
“Y’know, when I was your age, the jocks wore pearls … that was the big thing back then … freshwater pearls. You’d be in the locker room after football practice, and there’d be these big hairy naked guys wearing single strands of pearls, snapping towels at each other …”
“No way!” I snort, not bothering to hide my contempt for the fleeting fads of bygone generations.
“It’s funny when you look back … the things you thought were so cool, so tough … Freshwater pearls …” he trails off, returning his gaze out toward the gazebo.