BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

imprint”—like a bird to the wrong parent—the wrong type of response to infection. Papers were written and there was fringe talk at conferences. But nobody paid serious attention.

“Nonsense. That’s all hypothetical. We’ve never seen any case of a vaccine doing that kind of harm.”

“No?”

“Well, a respiratory syncytial virus vaccine had an issue once. Dengue, possibly. And an early measles effort. But they were all very different circumstances.”

“Doctorjee says that. He agrees with you there.”

“And that’s what he’s saying about this?”

“He’s saying we don’t know enough. Not by a long shot. He says possibly it’s something to do with macrophages, whatever they are. But I’ve gotta tell you that that’s his best guess, as of today.”

“What, he’s saying the vaccine did that to Helen Glinski? Some type of enhanced disease progression? That’s what he’s saying? I don’t believe it.”

“Says we can’t be sure. But possibly. Probably. I don’t know. Wilson says Helen Glinski’s immune system dropped out of whack soon after she became HIV-positive. She’d gotten her first WernerVac. So, we’re talking the vaccine first, the virus infection second. The two things together. One–two. Wilson figures she probably got infected by the husband. One of his boyfriends got tested at the General, and Wilson says his virus strain was sequenced and more or less exactly matched.”

“I don’t believe you. Even if that’s all true—and I doubt it—you’re saying she got sick that fast? Never heard of such a thing. I don’t believe a word of this.”

“Look, none of us loves Wilson. Meanest man this side of the big river. But he’s got the experience, and he says he’s never seen anything like it. Other things point the same way. Long and short of it is that, from the day Helen Glinski got HIV, she did worse—and we’re talking bad—for having gotten the vaccine beforehand.”

Trudy felt dizzy, breathless, suffocating. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t believe it. I’ve seen her records. You’re saying she had her second inoculation in June, and she died in November. It’s not biologically plausible.”

“Didn’t get the second shot. Wilson switched her to placebo after the first.”

“That’s impossible. How could he? The trial was double-blind. That’s impossible.”

“Not at all. Company knows who’s on what. All that blind trial shit’s the biggest myth since the virgin birth. Half the volunteers correctly guess what they’ve gotten. We know from manufacturing at Athens which vials have what in them. We know from bloodwork analysis. We know from listening to the data safety monitoring board meetings.”

“You listen to the DSMB?”

“We do what we do.”

She needed a bathroom. But she needed answers more. Now they’d started, she wanted it all. “So, you’re saying she got one shot of vaccine, was then exposed to HIV, and was dead in less than a year?”

“That’s about the size of it. Doctorjee figured it best you didn’t know, what with your condition. He was thinking of you. He’s a considerate man in some ways.”

“No, no, no. No. We never saw anything like this in the data. There was nothing. Something like this would show. And surely there would be others. Are you saying there’s others?”

“No, there aren’t others… Well, in point of fact there is one other. In Boston. He’s not doing bad though. He’ll be okay… Oh, and there’s another guy in Florida with something extremely minor, of a related nature. On an enrollment of nearly twenty-seven thousand.”

“So, there are three? And what about treatment? Why didn’t she receive anti-retroviral therapy? And, even if it’s true what he’s saying, no enhanced progression would have killed her in that way. Not that fast, in any possibility. Her sister said nothing about any pathognomonic symptoms, like pneumonia or Kaposi’s sarcoma. And nothing like this could lead to cardiomyopathy and heart failure.”

Now she heard a ferocious rubbing in the back. “That right? I see. I don’t have all the details. Only got most of this last night and today. Still trying to take it in myself. I don’t know why he put that on the certificate. There were concerns to protect your vaccine, I know that.”

Trudy fumbled with the door lever but moved too late. She felt a warm sensation between her legs.

Hoffman slapped the driver’s seat. “Ben, why not go sit in my car for ten minutes? And make sure your phone stays off.”

Forty

HE GRIPPED the wheel of the Chevy Camaro and stared, barely focusing, at the Bottle Shop. In the last forty-eight hours, he’d hardly slept three continuously. And those were stewed in beer or cocaine. His brain felt numb: trampled by buffalo. His shoulders felt set in wet sand.

What the fuck was going down here? “Enhanced progression?” Helen Glinski got sick because of the vaccine? The Marketing Department had no brochure on this. No video panel flashed from module B.

In the Sentra, to his right, Doc Mayr rubbed her eyes and pressed a cigarette to her lips.

At least he’d found a discrete location. After a woman pulled away in an Acura ILX, the lot was only compromised by a dented Plymouth Breeze parked five bays over to his left. Then a bearded guy appeared, loaded it with shopping bags, backed up, and drove off toward the freeway.

The coupe’s interior was new-car empty, with that sickly new-car smell. Only a remote transmitter fob, resting in the cupholder, a rental agreement, protruding from a sun visor, and a pair of gold-framed Randolph Aviator sunglasses betrayed it had left the dealer. Odometer reading: 916. Fuel gauge: closing on E.

He touched a switch, a window slid down, and he shouted at the sedan. “Hey, sir.”

A Sentra door opened and Hoffman shouted back. “What you want? What is it? We’re talking.”

“You’re out of gas here, you know? Running on empty. You want I should go fill her up?”

“Sure, go ahead. Thanks. But don’t you be long. And don’t you forget, no phone.”

He hit the ignition, and the Camaro’s six-liter V-8 purred. Headlamps blazed back from the storefront. He reversed from the curb, spun a semicircle, and waited for an RV