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“...”

“Both the adopted son, who wants to delay the declaration by a few days on life support and the biological son, who wants to declare his father’s death as fast as possible, could consider a brain-death clinical trial.

“The adopted son would have justification to stop the declaration of death as a clinical trial was going on. On the other hand, the biological son who wants death could use the trial to induce cardiopulmonary arrest.

“Once cardiopulmonary arrest occurs, it’s over; there is no room for doctors to adjust the declaration of death by even a few days. That’s why the patient’s own consent is more important than the consent of their proxy.”

“Ha… What kind of nonsense is that…”

“Something more dramatic than drama happens once in a while. That’s why no matter how much you try to make the law more polished and tight, something always finds a loophole and slips through. Our job is to make laws so that things like that don’t happen, so we try to be as conservative as possible,” Yang Hye-Sook said.

“Then why don’t we just declare brain-dead people as alive and include them in the Clinical Trials Act? Then, it’s easier to protect them, right?” Young-Joon asked.

“If we’re to include them, we have to assume that brain-dead patients are living people, but that’s still in the hypothesis stage, which is what you need to prove with this experiment.”

“Well, then, what can we do? We can’t get consent from brain-dead people, right?”

“So the amended bill will most likely limit the scope to brain-dead patients who have given informed consent in advance to medical experimentation aimed at restoring the function of some central nervous system organs, such as the brainstem, in the brain-dead state,” Yang Hye-Sook said.

“In advance?”

“Organ donation is also advance consent.”

Young-Joon frowned a little.

“But then it would take a long time for the bill to be publicized, there would need to be enough people who consent, and the people would have to be brain-dead without cardiopulmonary damage. Even if we’re able to bring them back, there would be scientists who would argue whether they were really brain-dead in the first place.”

Yang Hye-Sook nodded.

“So, Young-Joon, I’ve been thinking. Instead of pushing for an amendment to the bill, let’s make this a special law.”

“A special law?” Young-Joon asked.

“Yeah. You want to do a clinical trial on Kim Hyun-Taek, who’s been brain-dead for six months, right? If you succeed on him, it will be much easier to argue that brain death is not really death, but a treatable medical condition,” Yang Hye-Sook said.

She was right. Bringing back a patient who became brain-dead two days earlier wasn’t going to make the skepticism go away all at once. The accumulation of many clinical trials would eventually make people believe, but they didn’t have to take the long way around if they could prove it with one case.

Kim Hyun-Taek had been brain-dead for over six months, and countless doctors had already checked his condition. Not many people have been on life support for this long, and since he had been brain-dead for so long, it was proven that his brain stem had permanently lost its function. Otherwise, he would have already shown signs of potential recovery in his electroencephalogram in those six months.

“That’s right,” Young-Joon said. “Given the pace of the research and the likelihood of achieving results, Kim Hyun-Taek is the best choice, and I am confident.”

“Exactly, which is why you’d want to conduct the test on an enemy like Kim Hyun-Taek.”

Even if Young-Joon succeeded, Kim Hyun-Taek was an enemy with a complicated history. If he failed, it was the first crack in the legend of Ryu Young-Joon. It would be better for him to pass the amended law, and conduct the clinical trial on safe brain-dead patients who had consented beforehand.

“If we push for a special law, will we be able to conduct the clinical trial on Kim Hyun-Taek with only his guardian’s consent?” Young-Joon asked.

“A special law is a law that goes beyond general law. It is a limited law that is bound to a specific person, situation, and context. I think it’ll be possible,” Yang Hye-Sook said.

“Here’s what I’m thinking. First, you use the Kim Hyun-Taek Law to conduct clinical trials on designated brain-dead patients, including Kim Hyun-Taek, after obtaining their guardians’ consent. The purpose of the trial is to restore the function of the brainstem in the body of a brain-dead patient. If you succeed on just Kim Hyun-Taek, that’s enough.”

She snapped her fingers.

“If you give me the results of that trial, I’ll use it to target a revision to the Medical Service Act, not the Clinical Trials Act. We can amend the law so that brain-dead people aren’t considered dead at all.”

“So that automatically puts them within the boundaries of the Clinical Trials Act.”

“That’s right. Of course, we’ll have to create an additional law to cover the procedures for conducting clinical trials on brain-dead individuals as a subset of the Clinical Trials Act.”

“Hm…”

Young-Joon nodded.

“That sounds like a good idea. When will that special law be proposed?”

“We can do it anytime. Another advantage of special legislation is that it doesn’t take long to get to the floor and pass like general legislation,” Yang Hye-Sook said. “It can be done in as fast as two weeks.”

“That’s good.”

“But we have to convince the members during the plenary session to make it pass at once,” Yang Hye-Sook said. “You’ll probably have to attend the National Assembly for that.”

“The National Assembly?” Young-Joon asked, surprised.

“Of course. It’s pretty rare for the subject of rights specified by special laws to be a particular business entity or organization,” Yang Hye-Sook said.

“And this is a monumental experiment that may turn the Medical Service Act upside down, and it’s deeply intertwined with bioethics. There will definitely be public hearings, and a lot of experts will be invited to discuss it. You’ll definitely need someone who represents your company to attend and explain the need for this bill and destroy arguments against it.”

“Alright,” Young-Joon replied. “Please let me know when the date is finalized. I’ll be there.”

“Good.”

Yang Hye-Sook looked at him with a satisfied smile.

“I’m so happy to see you all grown up like this,” she said.

“I was a little surprised to hear that you became a congresswoman, but now I think it’s a relief that you did.”

“A relief.”

“Because I don’t think it would have been possible to do it in this way without you.”

Yang Hye-Sook took a sip of her wine.m

“The way I see it, scientists should do politics in the twenty-first century.”

“You think so?”

“They should be trained in hard science at the very least. The reason why our politics is so bad is because they don’t know science. It’s like this because they don’t base their policies on statistics, logic, practicality, and empirical evidence,” Yang Hye-Sook said. “Science has been playing in a league of its own for far too long. It’s been relegated to a group of nerds that society doesn’t understand, but it shouldn’t be that way.”

“...”

“Science shouldn’t just be building blocks for the elite. It should be more politically engaged and serve as a gateway for ordinary citizens to understand the world. Middle-aged women who work at restaurants or elderly people who pick up scrap paper should be able to recite the Central Dogma of biology or the periodic table.”

“Isn’t that a little far-fetched?”

“But think about it: a world where citizens can run a T-Test to test the credibility of a crazy statistic from an article. Imagine how well a society would function if it had politicians who specialized in scientific thinking.”

“Hm, I don’t know. Isn’t science considered boring unless they’re geeks like us?”

“Haha, you’ll see. I think we’ll see a world where science becomes democratized, thanks to my genius student. And I’ll work harder to push for it in the National Assembly,” said Yang Hye-Sook. “Anyway, keep up the good work until then. Do a good job at the public hearing in the National Assembly.”

* * *

The legal team at A-GenBio drafted a collaborative research agreement with Cellijenner. All resources for the research would be provided by A-GenBio. In return, they would receive a larger share of the patent rights and profits from commercialization. Cellular-level experiments would be conducted independently in each company’s labs, and they would discuss them during weekly meetings.

However, all animal testing was to be done at Lab Seven in A-GenBio. While Cellijenner had grown rapidly and now had fairly large laboratories, they were not yet comparable to A-GenBio in terms of scale and sophistication of the equipment. Because the experiments were unimaginably difficult, they were in desperate need of advanced equipment and research support systems.

“The lights are still on?”

Young-Joon, who came to visit Lab Seven late at night after meeting Yang Hye-Sook, stepped onto the elevator. Someone was sitting and reading an academic article in a lab on the third floor. It was Song Ji-Hyun.

“Are you not going home?” Young-Joon asked as he stepped inside.

“Oh, hello.”

Song Ji-Hyun put down the paper.

“People are going to think you work for A-GenBio. Staying here until this hour.”

“I’m going to study for a little longer.”

“What’s the paper about?” Young-Joon asked, approaching her.

“It’s a paper that was published by Yale last year, where they isolated the brains of slaughtered pigs and managed to reactivate some of the neurons with drugs.”

“I think I’ve read it before,” Young-Joon said. “But we need to restore tissue that can fully perform the function of the brainstem, not just some cells.”

“That’s right. That’s why we’re all working hard, but it’s not easy.”

Song Ji-Hyun smiled bitterly.

“What’s the problem?” Young-Joon asked.

“The preclinical study. We injected stem cells into the subventricular zone next to the brainstem in rats and beagles, then injected dopamine and epinephrine with a microsyringe, but recovery isn’t easy.”

“Are you experimenting right now?” Young-Joon asked.

“Yes. I think we’ll have to sacrifice the two beagles we used today.”[1]

“Let’s take a look.”

Young-Joon took Song Ji-Hyun and began walking.

“Oh, okay!”

Song Ji-Hyun quickly followed him, although she was surprised at how enthusiastic he seemed.

Young-Joon went to the animal lab on the floor below. Two large beagles were lying there, and they were attached to restraints and monitoring equipment.

“We removed a portion of the beagle’s skull at the back of the head and injected drugs to shut down brain function,” she said.

“I see.”

Young-Joon could see stickers stuck all over the beagle’s head, and they were connected to some wires. They were beeping, but the signal on the monitor was silent.

“It’s an electroencephalogram. It usually shows alpha and delta waves, but there aren’t any signals right now because we made it brain-dead,” Song Ji-Hyun explained.

“I see.”

Young-Joon pulled a syringe out of a drawer and a brown vial from the refrigerator.

[ATP]

“That’s… Ah!”

Surprised, Song Ji-Hyun let out a scream.

After sucking three milliliters of the drug into the syringe, Young-Joon pierced it into the back of the beagle’s head.

1. Sacrifice refers to stopping treatment/experimentation and dissecting them to check the efficacy of the drug. ☜