The teams spent the entire weekend and Monday testing, retesting, and testing again. Nick loved watching them work. The progress was stunning. Rodents with tumors double the size of the animals themselves had been turned back to normal. The creatures shook before their goggle-enclosed eyes as the vaccine attacked the tumors. Shelly had been driven to tears as she watched in amazement the power of the vaccine. She was saddened, though, when she realized human testing could take years, and people like Mary didn’t have that kind of time. On Tuesday, Shelly posed the question about human testing to the entire team as they broke for lunch.
“At the rate we’re going,” said Dr. Shoo, “I would say we ask legal to start the filing process.”
“Filing process?” Nick asked.
“Nick, we have covered this before.” Shelly, touched his wrist.
“It takes years before we can test on humans.” “C’mon, there must be some way to fast-track it.”
“You could talk to our legal department and see if they can do anything,” said Dr. Shoo. “We have no say with the FDA, unless something goes wrong, of course. Then it’s all our fault.”
“It seems we have found this magic formula,” Nick said, “yet we can’t help people now?”
“No, we can’t,” Dr. Shoo replied.