It was an environmental disaster. But by the time folks realized what was going on, no one seemed to care.
The project started innocently enough. A quarterly planning meeting at Enozyme Pharmaceuticals. Product managers had been asked to bring a one page proposal for their best new drug idea. The board of directors said that there was enough money in the budget to fund one, and only one, of the new drug concepts.
Mary Jo Bumgarter had been married for 3 years. She was losing interest in sex -- her husband couldn't make her cum anymore. They'd fuck several times a week, and she felt it was a command performance -- blow jobs and fake orgasms. It was getting old. When Mary Jo talked to her girlfriends, she found it was a very common problem, and a bit of research on the web told her that nearly 40% of married women in the 18-40 age group couldn't cum and weren't particularly interested in sex.
Just four months earlier, Mary Jo got the help of a Stanford bioengineering PhD, Praya Bharadwajana. Unlike Mary Jo, Praya had the opposite problem; she was horny. All the time. Loved to fuck. Multiple orgasms. Didn't understand why Mary Jo couldn't cum.
So they brought blood samples to the lab, and asked for a complete workup of all the hormones present and the concentrations of each one. They found one big difference: CS4. Praya's blood levels of CS4 were off the charts; Mary Jo's were almost nonexistent. And this formed the basis for Mary Jo's new drug proposal.
Mary Jo was the fourth product manager to make a pitch at the meeting. She had two minutes. She followed 3 others that proposed expensive treatments for rare cancers. Boring.
Mary Jo stood up, and passed out her one page proposal.
"Many women age 18-40 suffer from frigidity. Studies show that up to 40% of women in this age group have difficulty achieving an orgasm during normal sexual encounters. Praya and I propose that Enozyme develop a new drug to increase women's sex drive and enable them to more easily achieve an orgasm."
"We have done extensive blood work on a limited number of patients, comparing hormone levels of frigid women to that of women with extraordinarily high sex drives. We found a large discrepancy in the level of one hormone in particular: CS4. We think that CS4 may be an effective treatment for female frigidity. If approved, this project would:
1) Confirm these findings with blood testing on a larger number of subjects;
2) synthesize CS4 and learn how it is produced in the body;
3) conduct animal trials to test the efficacy of CS4 supplements in treating the condition.
The project should be initially funded with $5m to pay for blood testing, drug synthesis, and animal trials."
"Questions?"
The room exploded with noise. Mary Jo had 2 minutes for her pitch; she had only used 30 seconds.
"Do you know it will work?"
"No. But we think it should be explored."
"How did you discover this?"
"As I said, we did a blood workup on women and compared the results. All of the differences were small except this one."
"Anyone know what CS4 is supposed to do?"
"No. It is one of those hormones that have been studied very little."
Michael Spray, nominally in charge of the meeting, intervened. "We have to cut this off, I am afraid. There are 5 more proposals to review."
So Mary Jo sat down and listened to the other new drug ideas. After an hour, the meeting adjourned, and Michael Spray promised that he would bring the proposals to the Executive Council and let everyone know.
The following Friday, Michael Spray sat down for a half an hour with the Executive Council. He passed out the one page project summaries, and provided a recommendation.
"It's an easy decision. There is no effective treatment for female frigidity. The market is enormous, and we would have a monopoly. To patent the drug, we'd have to modify CS4 slightly so its molecular structure differs from the naturally occurring hormone. It is a straightforward exercise, one we've done before."
"So, gentlemen, I recommend funding the female frigidity project."
All the heads nodded in agreement. The CEO looked around the room.
"I don't see any objections, Michael. You've got your five million. Good luck!"
Michael thanked everyone and left. When he reached his office, he called Praya and Mary Jo in and delivered the good news: $5m was put in a new cost center, they were being transferred immediately, would get with a 20% raise, and report to Michael as co-project leads.
Chapter 2
The following Monday, Mary Jo and Praya divided up their responsibilities. Mary Jo would find test subjects, gather the blood samples and confirm their earlier findings. Praya would assemble a team to synthesize CS4 and determine how it worked. Could CS4 really treat female frigidity?
Praya's job, while interesting, isn't very much fun to read about. Endless work in the lab, studying CS4's molecular structure, synthesizing it and testing how it worked in rats. Develop a sample. Inject rats. Record how much they fuck. Modify the sample. Repeat.
Mary Jo, on the other hand, had the more understandable task. She needed to find some test subjects. She wanted a group of 100 single women 18-40yrs old, of mixed economic and racial backgrounds. Hopefully, about 40 of the women would be frigid and perhaps 10 or so would be exceptionally horny.
She needed to get blood samples before and after sexual arousal. She wanted to compare after sex samples, with or without an orgasm. If they got as far as experimental trials, she hoped to give some of the frigid women the synthesized CS4, and give a placebo to the others to see if it made a difference.
Where to get the test subjects? She turned to Craig's List, and placed two ads:
Wanted: single women, age 18-40, to participate
in a study of sexual drive. Must be
available for 6 evenings during next 12
weeks, no STDs, in good physical
condition. Participants will be
compensated. To apply, complete
questionnaire at
http://www.ffp.com/femaleapp.
Wanted: single men, age 25-35, to participate in
a study of female sexual appetite. Must
be available 3 nights per week for next