Experimental Ethics

** Chapter One: Meeting the Makers **

Doctor Denise Moore nodded to Drs. Navarre and Amanpour as they entered the lab together. "Ready to do it?" she rushed on from the ambiguous question, too excited to wait for an answer. "William, um...Mr. Cromwell, should be calling us in any minute now. We'd better get ready to head up there!" Her voice betrayed her eagerness.

Victor Navarre grinned as he gathered files and video tapes. Neda Amanpour, catching his eye, smiled back at him, mischief making her dark eyes sparkle. Both knew they wouldn't be showing all the footage, in fact, they wouldn't be showing their best evidence. The human phase of testing wasn't yet approved, so showing the 60+ hours of tape they'd shot of dozens of people having increasingly fevered sexual encounters would have been career suicide at minimum--and that was if they were lucky.

But, ethical hair-splitting be damned--all three scientists were hot on the trail of true power, control over sexual pleasure, and none of them could ultimately resist the path of temptation, not after all they'd seen in and around the lab during development. That kind of success is its own aphrodisiac, its own temptation to chase secret knowledge, and one that the team couldn't resist. Dreams don't come true very often.

Cromwell's deep voice floated out from a wall intercom. "Alright, my Dream Team. We're ready for you in the boardroom." In a muted voice he added, "Knock 'em dead, kiddos," making the trio groan with his attempt at a joke; he was only 33--only six years older than Neda, the youngest of the core team. Science, after all, is increasingly pioneered by the young. With the accelerating pace of technological innovation and change, the median age for top-flight Research & Development teams had been dropping for decades.

"We're on our way!" Denise replied eagerly. Releasing the 'talk' button, she added, "Dork." Neda and Victor snickered as the three doctors headed for the elevator.

#

Denise was giddy. Her research team was having a very good day; after years of work, it appeared her brainchild--a drug to stimulate female arousal, long sought by doctors and patients alike--was ready for the FDA's human-trials phase. As long as the big-wigs gave the green light to trials, Stimulex would be on its way to market within the year. She knew, though the board almost certainly didn't, that the human trials were a formality. Her team already knew beyond doubt that it worked, and far better than anyone could have hoped.

The meeting was also a formality, of course; the public, and therefore the pharmaceutical companies with their vast wealth & lobbying power, had been waiting for something like this for years. A safe, effective cure for frigidity was a dream-come-true for many people, and if all went according to the team's projections, thousands (if not millions) of women would be able to experience arousal and even orgasm like never before. No more inadequate feelings or feigned enjoyment. This was real medical progress, Moore told herself. And about time they got approval already, she thought, wrapped snugly in the smugness common to true genius and the truly delusional.

Dr. Denise Moore had fielded many offers during her last year of Post-Doctoral research; her work with the Gallo Institute's team raised the bar for experimental pharmacology, and she knew it. She had her pick of the top options: government, chemical companies, even some international conglomerates made her excellent offers--for a new kid on the block. But she wanted full control; at 29, she might be young to head a development lab, but she knew her own potential. She should, she'd spent years working to prove it. Being young and beautiful was a disadvantage in the old boys' clubs; from the time she'd entered Johns Hopkins, she found she had to be faster, smarter, and more adaptable than most of her counterparts. Some old ways die hard.

So, she'd taken her time considering the ramifications before accepting the project, and the long-term contract, at all. There was enough feminist in her, built largely on the bitterness she felt every time a professor or interviewer stared at her legs longer than he spent reviewing her qualifications and work, to be suspicious of the motivations behind marketing a drug with the potential to produce a thriving black market. She didn't want to be responsible for creating a thrill drug her employers would sell by the billions, without regard for consequences to the user.

But, she'd reasoned, someone was going to create an equivalent to Viagra for women--the search for a reliable and regulable female aphrodisiac was literally centuries old, and medical science was right on the verge of truly decoding sexual response triggers in women. Gynecology was running decades, if not centuries, behind most other fields of medicine, but the birth control pill seemed to have opened the floodgates; when premarital sex took off, so did research into women's biology. Fancy that.

Since she'd seen what happened while she was in grad school during the mid-90's pharmaceutical boom, she wanted to be doubly sure that anything she put her name on was physically safe at the very least, because she knew it would be handed out like breath mints. That wasn't cynicism, it was just reality. Moore could practically smell the eagerness around the corporate offices; she was given practically anything she could ever want as a researcher--generous budget; extensive facilities; a hand-picked team of psychiatrists, chemists, neurologists and other highly specialized developmental scientists; and all the equipment, test animals and experimental autonomy she could reasonably desire.

It was, in short, a lucrative and glamorous gig--one that could make her name as a scientist and ensure her future financially. Ultimately, she rationalized her decision to take the job by telling herself she'd do it right; she'd find a way to make a drug that wouldn't harm anyone when it (inevitably) became a part of the street trade in recreational drugs. One that wouldn't exploit anyone, but would actually benefit them, by bringing more pleasure into sex. Lofty ideals perhaps, and deep down Denise was faintly embarrassed at her own egotism and hubris; part of her knew she was begging the comparison to Icharus, and there was a significant chance that she'd get burned just as badly. But, she used her own insecurity to push herself and her team harder, demanding more of them all than any had ever given to a project.

Stimulex, their product, had become a consuming obsession for the group as the months passed and their second experimental compound started getting measurable results in lab chimps. Despite the team's sense of urgency--all were proud enough to be in silent agreement that they must be first to market--they carefully examined the primates and monitored their health for more than a year in total, testing the effects of different dosages and frequent or extended use. Moore credited her desire to preempt potential dangers for her insistence that they test on male subjects also, but in truth she was also following a hunch. If the drug worked as Victor, the neurologist, suggested then it would be equally safe for males as for females; however, none of them knew what effect it would have. The trials were uneven, but there hadn't been a single casualty--not even when Denise's core crew did lengthy threshold tests, injecting exponentially increasing quantities for many hours.

In fact, the most fascinating and time consuming aspect of the process turned out to be exploring the drug's effects, as they seemed unable to find a dosage high enough to nullify the effects, or reveal any significant negative side effects or lasting damage to the drugged animals. At low levels, the females showed slightly elevated pulse rates, increased blood flow to the genitalia, slowed reflexes, and mild hyperactivity--all signs of primate arousal. With time, they realized that males required slightly higher doses to see effects, but it did increase sexual excitability; for most, this meant reduced prolapse. Instead of being satisfied by sexual encounters, drugged males would almost instantly develop a new erection and seek further contact; if denied sex, some of the more dominant chimps were prone to violent outbursts, which Denise noted with some concern. But, it was a small snag; overall, things were progressing swimmingly.

The upside was that at higher doses, the effects in both sexes intensified to the point that the test subjects became single minded in pursuit of sexual stimulation. Even a dose of 100 times the original quantity administered seemed biologically safe; in fact, at such elevated levels of exposure, the subject's combined serotonin and endorphin levels seemed to induce spontaneous and nearly continual orgasm, which only released more biotic stimulants, creating a vicious cycle of arousal which would only stop when the subject lost consciousness due to exhaustion, or when the drug's effects wore off hours later.

Preliminary data impressed everyone, but it had also raised the stakes--they had the biggest and baddest aphrodisiac in the world on their hands, and most of the company's staff seemed to know it. Industrial espionage had become a very real threat, so Denise had to limit access to the lab, allowing only three people besides herself full access to their process notes and the formula itself: Victor Navarre, a brilliant and uncomfortably handsome neurologist she'd known since grad school; Neda Amanpour, a young and ambitious psychobiologist; and William Cromwell, hot-shot chemist turned VP of Development for Synth-Et, Inc. This was the core group Dr. Moore prepared to take upstairs to the sound-proofed confines of the executive board room; today they'd unveil their secret to the bosses William had been warming up for them. They'd almost certainly fail to appreciate the miraculous good fortune they were being handed, but they knew enough to recognize the money they stood to make by getting Stimulex to market pronto.

#

Shaking herself out of her reverie, Dr. Denise (as her crew called her) tried to mentally prepare for the meeting; in truth, she was nervous despite their overwhelming success. She might be pretty, with her bronze skin, unusual height, and striking Slavic features--but she was a scientist, not a spokesmodel. Meeting with the Board meant putting her game face on; her lithe figure was draped in soft burgundy silk, her hair twisted into an imitation Grace Kelly, her makeup feminine and subtle. Three inches of dyed-to-match heel made her walk swing a little more in the seat, pushed her hips forward, and emphasized the smooth line of her long legs.

She looked good, but she felt like an imposter; in her preferred reality, she'd usually be wearing a lab coat and blue jeans right about now. William had encouraged her to dress for a date more than a business meeting, but she hadn't argued with his suggestions; this was a game she knew all too well, playing to a room full of much older men. Despite her eagerness and excitement, she realized part of her dreaded the meeting; no wonder she'd been woolgathering. Suddenly very aware of her lengthy silence, she nodded at the eager faces of Navarre and Amanpour as they reentered her work space, arms loaded with files. "Got it all?" she asked them.

"Not yet, but soon." Victor grinned through his words, a happy tomcat with a muzzle full of canary.

Even the typically subdued Neda smiled toothily, tipping an uncharacteristically flirtatious wink at Denise. "After you, boss lady."

#

The entire board of directors sat in rapt fascination, entranced by the footage of a female chimpanzee being mounted by a series of males; over a four hour period, they were told, she'd had sex more than twenty times, and still she aggressively sought the next partner.

"Question, Dr. Moore." Denise couldn't tell one suit from the next; the room was darkened for video-viewing, and she'd never been very interested in the business side of her work, so the room was a sea of blank faces in identical Armani. She had no idea who'd spoken.

"Yes?" She replied, addressing the table in general.

"How many of the test subjects show signs of addiction?" It was a surprisingly astute and concerned question, more than she'd really expected from them, and she was caught flat-footed.

"None, at least physically. The potential for psychological dependence will be one of the key components of human trials." Victor fielded the question, as it was the one he'd been waiting for, unlike Denise; she was brilliant alright, but sometimes shockingly naive. He could almost see the wheels turning in all those corporate brains; ah yes, human trials. Must get this into final stages ASAP, money to be made here; that's what they thought, and Victor knew it, even if Denise and Neda didn't. Any twinges of reservations had been stilled when they saw Lula on the vid-screen; a chimpanzee with 10 doses in her bloodstream, frantically humping a specially rigged sex simulator machine only ten minutes after ingestion was a surprisingly powerful persuasive tool.

"Well, I think their data speaks for itself," Cromwell said, full of sly good humor.

"Indeed so, Mr. Cromwell." The chairman's voice echoed through the fortress-like room. "And may I say, well done, team." There was a round of applause; the three scientists were torn between pride and chagrin, but the executives were all smiles, especially William. But, that was it; they had the green light for human testing.