Prologue
My name is Thomas Arnold and I am the vice president of sales at a small biotech company based in Boston. It was almost 5pm when Erick, the head of R&D for our company, called me and asked me to come to his office to discuss a promising new compound that his group had discovered.
As I was already on my way out for the day, I grabbed my bag and headed over to Erick's office figuring that I could listen to the geek for a few minutes and still make it home in time for dinner.
Most of the things that Erick's team comes up with have no market. Shit like a drug that treats a rare disease found only in aboriginal tribes in New Guinea. Great for them, not so great for taking our firm to that billion-dollar valuation we need for our next round of raising capital... and, let's be clear: I'm in this for the money and saving aborigines in New Guinea from going blind, noble as it is, isn't increasing the value of my points in the firm.
So, I walked into Erick's office expecting the usual altruistic nonsense. Little did I know that he was about to show me something that would change my life.
"It's called Latiphytum plethoracantha, Tom."
"That's gonna be hard to sell, Erick." I muttered.
"We think it has a lot of promise as a drug to help people suffering from severe social anxiety. In our tests on lab mice, we found that socialization increased dramatically in the mice treated with the compound."
My ears perked up at this. The biotech community has long been looking for a side effect free treatment for social anxiety. The company that can do it could sell to one of the big pharma companies for billions.
"Any side effects, Erick? You know that side effects have killed every other promising treatment."
"Tom, that's the thing. In all of our testing, the only side effect we've seen is increased sexual arousal."
"What do you mean, Erick?"
"In our tests, when we gave the compound to female mice they were much more inclined to engage in mating behavior with any male mouse that approached them."
"That's not too bad. So where are we on packaging and human testing, Erick?"
Erick shrugged and said "That's where you come in, man."
I chuckled and said "Well, go ahead and set me up with some testing samples. I've got a meeting with the guys over at Phisher in New York next week. Maybe their lab guys can do some additional testing and we can see where it goes."