every hour (every 61 minutes). The incidence rate has tripled in the last twenty years. When nature, in her ultimate act of irony, strikes Richard Powell, a cancer specialist, with malignant melanoma, a highly aggressive form of cancer, his wife, Terri devotes her life to curing the disease that ultimately kills her husband. While research laboratories are characterized as noble in search of cures, and proprietary drug companies are caricatured as ruthless and materialistic, too often, the distinctions aren’t so clear. The murder of a drug courier to obtain an experimental and promising treatment for malignant melanoma, unleashes a chain of devastating consequences. People for Alternative Treatment, a company created to find cures for rare diseases, had fallen on hard times and become a subsidiary of Kendall Pharmaceuticals, a company with very different values. Experimentation with a vaccine against tuberculosis is showing surprising effects in controlling malignant melanoma at PAT and UC Medical Center. Kendall is enthralled with the economic potential of such a treatment, while researchers are leery and have many unanswered questions. Kendall’s determination to push the vaccine into clinical trial at all costs is in conflict with Terri and her ethical associates. When clinical trials begin, the vaccine’s effects are miraculous. Soon, however, once again, we see the rule of unintended consequences.

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