themonasnovels Chapter 249: Cold Chain (1)
Chapter 249: Cold Chain (1)
“So he walked to the police station himself?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked.
“Yeah.”
Young-Joon nodded.
“What a strange life,” Park Joo-Hyuk said. “He was doing all kinds of bad things as a big pharma executive and was living his best life. Then one day, some monster appears out of nowhere and beats the crap out of him. He collapses and becomes brain dead, but gets treated and comes back to life.”
“It’s all over now.”
“But no one knows why Kim Hyun-Taek collapsed like that, right?”
“...”
Young-Joon flinched.
“I remember the news talking about it being divine punishment because there were no signs of infection,” Park Joo-Hyuk said.
“Yeah, but it’s not divine punishment or anything.”
“Do you know something?”
“No, not really.”
The reason why Kim Hyun-Taek collapsed was that he had absorbed a fragment of Rosaline’s DNA during his visit to the Life Creation Department’s lab. However, he avoided answering Park Joo-Hyuk because it was too difficult to explain convincingly.
“Now that I think of it, it’s kind of weird,” Park Joo-Hyuk said.
“What is?”
“No one really cares about what caused Kim Hyun-Taek’s brain death, right? I haven’t seen much news about it.”
“It just wasn’t on the news. There was a lot of debate about it in the medical community.”
“Really?”
“There were a bunch of reports analyzing how his heart, lungs, and brain became extremely damaged in a short period of time and later collapsed after he stopped by Lab Six.”
“And still no one knows about it?”
“Yeah...”
“Hm, well, biology is super mysterious. It’s fascinating that there are still diseases that remain elusive, even in the age of reviving the brain-dead.”
“That’s why we do so much research.”
Young-Joon shrugged.
“Are you still working on research these days?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked.
“Of course.”
“There’s a rumor that you brought some kid here to play.”
“Uh...”
“Do you have a hidden daughter or something? Be honest.”
“It’s nothing like that. She was a relative, but she went back.”Findd new stories at novelhall.com
“You have a relative I don’t know about?”
“I do, man.”
Park Joo-Hyuk glanced at Young-Joon with a doubtful expression.
“By the way, what happened with hiring a professional CEO to run the company so you can focus on research? Do you want me to look into some for you?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked.
“It’s okay. I’m thinking of asking Director Kim Young-Hoon to do it.”
“Director Kim?”
“Actually, he’s already running a pretty big portion of the company pretty well. He did a great job when I went to China, striking a deal with Tanya Manker and everything. He’s in Africa right now, and...”
Ring!
Young-Joon’s phone rang. It was Kim Young-Hoon.
Felus looked quite exhausted. Then, he let out a long sigh.
“Do you have any idea what kind of attention would be drawn to him if he was my officially adopted son when I became the prime minister?”
“That’s why you don’t have a child on paper.”
“I wanted to raise my son independent of all the problems on this land, so I hid him in Afula[1]instead of Jerusalem, and he grew up there.”
“I understand why you’re sensitive about revealing his identity. Now, let’s move on to the medical part: how did he end up brain-dead?” Kim Young-Hoon asked.
“It was a disease called progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML),” Felus replied.
“That’s a difficult name.”
“I’ve never heard about it either, and I never thought I’d memorize it.”
Felus smiled bitterly.
“PML is caused by a virus called polyomavirus. It is hard to treat, but it is still possible. There are good treatments for the symptoms, and recently, a drug that stops the infection itself was developed.”
“But how did it get to brain death?”
“The treatments couldn’t be shipped to Afula,” Felus said.
“They couldn’t be shipped?” Kim Young-Hoon replied.
“Yes.”
Felus nodded.
“PML is a relatively rare disease. And because the treatment had just been developed by Colson & Conson, the hospital didn’t have any in stock, so we had to buy it directly from the company. However, the drug was pretty unstable, so it had to be stored at or below minus seventy degrees before use. If the temperature goes up, it denatures.”
“Minus seventy degrees Celsius...”
“They said it would be too big of a loss for the manufacturer to transport drugs for one person from the U.S. to Afula while maintaining that temperature. The shipping costs would be too high,” Felus said.
He added, “If it was shipped in bulk, we could have adjusted the unit price to some extent since the proportion of the drug costs compared to shipping fees would increase, but this was difficult because the disease was rare. We were searching for a way to import it by sandwiching it among other drugs stored at ultra-low temperatures, but we lost too much time.”
*
Young-Joon visited Jungyoon University for the scholarship and research grant agreement. Kim Young-Hoon was working on this project with Yang Hye-Sook and Ban Du-Il. A-GenBio was going to fund scholarships and research grants to train biological technicians and scientists who could work with stem cells.
“Nice to see you again,” Young-Joon said, happily greeting Ban Du-Il.
“I heard that Congresswoman Yang Hye-Sook is pushing for an amendment to exclude brain death from the criteria for death, thanks to you,” Ban Du-Il said.
“That’s great, since now we have a way to revive the brain-dead.”
“But it’s not easy to commercialize such a difficult procedure that involves sticking a fine needle up the nose like you did with Kim Hyun-Taek. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
Even Miguel, who was arguably the best doctor in the field of neuroscience, had problems with some of the stem cells regurgitating during the procedure. Obviously, they needed a more stable and easier method for commercialization.
“I can develop that technology further. But even though we keep hiring scientists and doctors who can create artificial organs, and induce stem cell dedifferentiation and neuronal differentiation, there are never enough. The Next Generation Hospital is facing a labor shortage as artificial organs are becoming commercialized,” Young-Joon said.
“It will stabilize in a few years because a lot of students are going in that direction.”
Ban Du-Il walked with Young-Joon to the front of the engineering building. There was a huge banner hanging there.
“What’s that?”
Young-Joon glanced.
“It looks like the electrical department is having some kind of seminar today.”
Ban Du-Il shrugged.
“I don’t know the details,” he added.
Young-Joon read the banner.
[Alternative Power Seminar: Focusing on Solar Energy]
1. a city in Israel ☜