Avenge The Children
by
Sue Pacey

 

Dr Jenny Holgate sat at her computer and gazed at the blank screen, not for the first time that day. Closing her eyes, she wondered briefly why she didn’t feel guilty. Maybe it was something to do with the strong pain-killers she had needed, for the headaches that had started these past few months. She felt no sorrow, only relief that at last it was done. Justice had been served.

After all, most of the world had never heard of Progeria. Why the hell should they? It was as rare as hens’ teeth. But to Jenny, and to the one in eight million children who suffered from it, statistics were an insult. When you have something as awful as Progeria, it doesn’t matter how many others have it, only that you have.

Jenny’s first bitter experience of the premature ageing disease would be etched on her memory forever. It had all been far too close for comfort.

The twins had been born to her forty-year-old parents, when she was fifteen: a mistake, an afterthought, a surprise pregnancy. She had not been pleased at the time. It seemed so selfish now. However, the two identical little girls, had found a special place in her affections and quickly became the centre of her universe.

Jenny was very bright and presently went off to Oxford to study Molecular Biochemistry. The first Christmas, she came home for the holiday, not to joy, but to worried, anxious parental faces, fear firmly etched, where laughter lines used to be.

At two years of age, the girls’ growth had slowed. They were noticeably shorter and weighed much less than other children of the same age. Many people had said, ‘Well that’s twins for you.’

But a few months later they started to develop the characteristic appearance of Progeria. There was baldness, aged skin and the pinching around the noses.

There followed, the symptoms typically seen in much older people, joint stiffness, hip dislocations, fractures and severe progressive heart disease.

Two little old women, wasting away before everyone’s horrified eyes. Two little girls aged three years and two months. The twins were to live for a further six months, dying within a week of each other, one from a heart attack, the other from a stroke. Jenny had held them both in her arms and wept, the tiny bodies ravaged by the terrible disease, for which there was no cure.

She didn’t find the more unpleasant details of the disease hard to remember, the way grieving people often do. It was all too real every time she went to bed and closed her eyes. Sleep refused to come and all she was left with were the dreadful details of the little mites’ suffering and she, for all her education, knowledge and desperate love for them had been powerless to help.

Staring at the ceiling again, Jenny was driven by a nightly compulsion to review those last days in minute detail, over and over again.

The skull-like faces framed by snowy linen, surrounded by oxygen equipment pressed gently over blue lips as each tiny child fought her final battle. She had watched with grief nearly impossible to bear as their little lives had ebbed away.

In the middle of yet another sleepless night, Jenny sat staring out at the night sky, a cup of hot milk clasped in her hands, going over and over it all again and wondering if there indeed was a God, then where the hell he stood in all this.

Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome, known as Progeria, from the Greek word ‘Geras’ meaning ‘old age.’

The knowledge gave Jenny no comfort, but at least she knew which direction her life was to take. With her first-class degree, she got a job immediately at the best laboratory in Oxford, specialising in Progeria.

Ten years later, the team, which she now led was almost there; a cure within grasping distance.

She had developed a protein, which would stabilise the cell nucleus, slowing growth. A tiny point mutation in a single gene, known as Lamin A, was responsible for the disease. All tests so far, suggested that this new protein could reverse the ageing process. Just six months more and they could present a cure to a waiting world.

Then the bombshell came. It came silently and unexpectedly in the form of an A4 statement, pinned to the laboratory door, on a rainy Friday afternoon.

The financial sponsors had pulled out. There was to be no more funding, no more research and no impending cure for a few decrepit children.

Jenny was horrified, angry and disbelieving all at the same time.

Worse news was to come.

The laboratory was to be turned over to the demand for beauty by the masses. The production of Botox.

There were big profits to be made after all. A direct contrast to the drain on resources that her team’s efforts had made so far, with, as yet, nothing to show.

Jenny had pleaded and promised impending results. No damn it all! She had begged. She would have willingly walked into hell if it would have made any difference, but they pulled the financial plug anyway.

Jenny’s head fell forward onto her chest and she wept, her life’s work ended, her feelings crushed.

Presently, on the screen in front of her, flashed an icon that signified incoming mail. Wearily, she clicked the mouse and opened it.

‘Did she want the job still?’

Jenny closed her eyes

Oh yes! She wanted the job all right. They could damn well bet on it.

At the other end of the country, another computer screen flickered into life, as Jill Gillespie launched the Internet explorer to connect to the ‘Botox’ website. She was really enjoying this newly-acquired skill, marvelling at the wealth of stuff at her fingertips.

Jill had been an actress since her teens and, at forty, her looks were fading. She supposed it was the combination of make-up, stage fright, which she still suffered regularly and the effects of two kids. The lines on her face were a testament to all those things. Trying not to frown, she settled down to read the screen.

Botox: The brand name for the bacterium Clostridium Botulinum(Botulism.) It is often associated with food poisoning. A major complication of which, is paralysis. She read on and learned that this knowledge could be used to human advantage. Small, diluted amounts could be carefully injected into specific muscles to block the nerve signals, causing wrinkles to relax and soften.

Well, she thought, That is definitely for me. I’m not going any further past my sell-by date, and reaching for her phone, booked an appointment.

Any trepidation she felt was short-lived. The whole procedure was painless and took a mere twenty minutes.

Jill came away feeling elated, anticipating the promised transformation. She hurried home to look at herself closely in the long ‘cheval’ mirror in the bedroom. There didn’t seem to be much of a change apart from the tiny bluish bruises where the fine needles had been inserted at various points around her nose, mouth and eyes.

That was to be expected, she told herself. The Clinic had said that it would take a few days. Jill waited, none too patiently, unable to pass a mirror without looking at herself in it. Then, it happened. Three days later her face was as smooth as silk, with not a trace of wrinkles. She felt twenty-five again and beautiful, as did thousands of women like her around the world at that particular moment in time.

In her lab, Dr Jenny allowed herself a smile for the first time since it began. It had been so simple to alter the DNA in the cell of Clostridium Botulinum, just the tiniest point mutation of a single gene. Oh the bacterium would try to overcome it of course. It would replicate and mutate after a couple of months, from the time of the initial injection, perhaps longer, but it would happen.

First, the skin around the eyes would thicken, the nose would pinch and the corners of the mouth would droop, as paralysis set in. The eyelids would invert, unable to contain the mucus membranes. The lips would draw back as if in a sardonic mad grin. The effects would be permanent and irreversible.

They had taken her laboratory, at the expense of a cure for suffering kids, who no longer mattered, in favour of the vain, rich majority and they must pay.

Jenny knew they would come for her of course, although she had covered her tracks well enough. Until that day, she would enjoy watching as the world panicked, savouring the moment when she knew justice had been done. A ghost of a smile played around the corners of her mouth.

No Jenny, no room for regret, not one ounce of guilt.

© Sue Pacey 2006

 

 

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