said about people not being able to afford it. Look at the statistics. There might well be thirty-five million people with diabetes in this country. It costs something like a hundred and fifty billion dollars a year to treat them. You think insurance companies won’t want to jump on this opportunity? How about state programs that have to carry the cost of these people for decades? Not to mention Medicare, Medicaid. Even far-right politicians are going to find a way around their qualms about stem cells because who won’t want to help get twenty, thirty million Americans healthy? It’s a magic bullet. If it works, it cures people. And once the organ is accepted, it costs
This was worse than Edmund had dared think. He was a salesman; he knew that even if not every diabetic got a new pancreas, the idea of buying diabetics’ life insurance policies in a climate in which people could receive a new organ was suddenly looking very outdated, like investing in steam engines after the Model T Ford was produced.
“This is all laid out in the final report?” Russell asked.
“It will be,” Henry said. “It’s summarized in the report we’ll be giving you today.”
“Of course, this is all confidential.”
“Of course.”
“But it’s all dependent upon the date induced stem cell organs will be available,” Edmund said. “It’s not happening next week. At least I assume it isn’t. What is it-two years? Five years? Have you looked into that?”
“Perhaps Ginny here might speak a few words in that regard,” Henry said. Sitting next to Tom Graham, a tall woman with long black hair nodded to Henry. She shared Tom’s fashion sense and was wearing a T-shirt with a bright image of a robot on the front.
“I read the journals I could find online and tried to figure out some kind of timeline, but the articles in this arena aren’t very speculative. It’s a new technology so there are no statistics to predict such a big leap in something like regenerative medicine,” Ginny said.
Ginny proceeded to talk about the rapid developments already accomplished for stem cell maturation into specific cell lines by researchers around the world. “The next step would be to turn these cells into organs or organ-like apparatuses by a process called organogenesis. This work is going on in Russia, in China, in Germany, but it’s having the most success at Columbia University with Doctors Rothman and Yamamoto. Rumor has it that these two researchers have already formed whole organs, which have been transplanted back into the mice that donated the cells from which the organs were formed. Supposedly in the next month or so there’s going to be an article in
“And when might that happen?” asked Edmund.
“I did talk to one scientist friend last night,” Ginny said. “He told me no one knows, but the best guess is in the next couple of months.”
“As far as the business angle on this, the numbers strongly suggest that partial remedy would be provided in circumstances like this if the party holding the policies were to raise capital immediately as a hedge against this newly raised eventuality.” Henry was taking over in the hope of wrapping up the meeting. Edmund’s fuse was getting shorter by the minute, he could tell. Henry was now practically reading verbatim from a script.
“We already ran revenue models for you based on the idea of securitizing tranches of life insurance policies, and while it’s difficult to build into the models the prospect of degraded assets, in the final report there will be a recommendation that the securitization proceed immediately and that a significant portion of the funds obtained be set aside to satisfy premiums on those policies that will have to be carried longer than expected. As far as additional life settlements, it would make sense to buy only those life settlements involving individuals with clearly terminal illnesses like metastatic cancer . . . ALS . . . things like that.”
The list was a lot longer but Henry’s distaste had finally got the better of him.
Edmund thought that all this meeting had done was to confirm what Gloria Croft had told them less than twenty-four hours earlier. It figured: Gloria was one of the best analysts he ever had. And she knew about this before he did. Edmund was confounded by the fact that his great moneymaking scheme could be jeopardized by two geeks he’d never heard of.
“Let me ask you a question,” he growled at Ginny. “You find this research and you find a scientist to call in the evening who says the FDA is going to green-light this project that could revolutionize medicine or whatever. So why am I not reading about this in
“Because researchers and their universities have become much more sophisticated about patent issues. There used to be a rush to print because they yearned for the notoriety, but they’re much smarter now. There are fortunes to be made in biotech, and this area of organogenesis might be the biggest yet. It will probably overshadow every other technological milestone in the history of medicine. Believe me, when the Rothman work hits
Edmund and Russell rode the elevator in silence. It was the same car that Edmund had assaulted the day before. He’d taken a prescription painkiller from his cache, so he was feeling only a dull throb in his left hand. He looked closely and thought he could make out a slight indentation in the metal elevator door. The trouble was he felt like doing it again.
Only when they reached the street, away from any prying ears, did they speak.
“What do you think?” Russell said.
“I think we paid those idiots too much money. And we will sue them.”
They met their car in front of the building and got in. Edmund thought for a moment. His mind was racing.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. Today. No more diabetics, obviously. Tell the sales force, even if they’re hooked on the line, even if they’re in the boat and you have the billy club in your hand, put ’em back in the water. Any contracts in the works-cancel. Checks being cut-cancel.
“Have someone go back and look at contracts of people who have diabetes and something else. We like the something else now. Get the lawyer to draft a letter in his best incomprehensible legalese to say we’re no longer interested in diabetes and send it to these people. Scrub those people out of the stats. They never had diabetes. And we need new policies. Target smokers. I know they’re the worst because none of them thinks they’re going to get sick and when they do, they die too fast. Find out if we can target smokers or ex-smokers with policies who’ve missed a couple payments. They’re all lying anyway. And offer them twenty-five percent-”
“But the model-” said Russell.
“Fuck the model!” roared Edmund. “Don’t you understand? As of today, there is no model. We don’t have a
“Potentially,” Russell said.
“Right, yes, there’s a chance this research may not get anywhere. But still, we’re up to our necks in this either way. Gloria Croft is already shorting us, and she won’t be shy talking about it. We have to do something. It’s not like we can sell our stock and walk away.”
“Perhaps we should go and see Jerry Trotter,” Russell said, after an awkward pause.
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” said Edmund.
Dr. Jerred L. Trotter, an old friend of both Russell and Edmund, ran a very successful hedge fund. Trotter was a man who enjoyed outthinking people, which meant he wasn’t above a certain amount of sharp practice if he was confident he could get away with it. There were so many areas where the regulatory authorities were lax, or there just weren’t any regulations. It was by using Trotter’s good offices, and through a number of disguises of Trotter’s creation, that Edmund had purchased credit default swaps on his own company while continuing to sell subprime bonds to his corporate clients. It was just the kind of caper that Trotter relished. Especially when his cut was so generous.
Edmund had sounded Trotter out very early in the planning stage of LifeDeals. He sent Russell over on what
