27
Where to
begin?
After consulting the
partial list of cities BioNet listed in its search for seizure
activity, Gwen typed in her private password of the day. She was
looking for any kind of geographical pattern to seizures reported
as part of the AE forms. The problem was that populations were
ever-changing and mobile, and people were still exiting urban areas
for the ’burbs. The seizure events, if there was a pattern, could
well have spread beyond a neat, well-defined geographic
area.
There were a few
cases in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann Arbor was near Detroit, so Gwen
summoned up AE files from the Motor City.
“Crap,” Gwen
mumbled. More than a thousand AE files recorded seizure activity as
part of the patient’s history. Those patients had taken dozens of
different drugs in all sorts of combinations.
What would Fitz do
in such a situation?
Pick a drug and a
year and start reading.
She examined
Pfizer’s trials for medications to treat arthritis and ulcers.
Zilch. No reports of seizures were included on any of the hundreds
of forms she scanned. After three hours of tedious reading,
however, she began browsing adverse events stemming from trials of
various birth control methods, including pills, injections, and
skin patches. The patients in a test for a skin patch had all been
young, sexually active women. While it wasn’t clear whether the
women were aggressive professionals like Marci, the company
reported that three of the women had seizures resulting in one
fatality and two hospitalizations. Box number seven on the
reporting form indicated that all three had been smokers, but
otherwise had enjoyed reasonably good health.
Gwen leaned back and
carefully studied the computer screen. Three women out of one
hundred. That was highly anomalous. Birth control meds didn’t lower
the seizure threshold the way other drugs did, such as SSRIs like
Prozac. While they increased the chance for stroke or heart attack,
especially if the woman was a smoker, seizure was not a normal
precursor to such events.
As in Marci’s case,
she heard her dad whisper.
Three women out of
ten thousand? Maybe. Three women out of one hundred? Much less
likely.
Gwen checked the
dates of the seizures in the trial against the dates Jan had
provided from the Detroit BioNet scan.
They matched
perfectly.
Could the
birth-control skin patch have been responsible? The thought
warranted further investigation, but if Gwen saw similar trends in
other cities associated with other drugs, the skin patch would
become increasingly unlikely as a suspect.
Next stop:
Chicago.
Gwen keyed on a
cluster of reports submitted in association with a new antibiotic.
She discovered that seven patients in a trial of 500 subjects had
died from seizure episodes in Chicago during the five weeks that
BioNet reported a seizure spike for the area. One of the
fatalities, a forty-one-year-old man, had a history of angina. The
others, including a twenty-six-year-old woman, had no prior medical
history worth noting. All were smokers.
“Damn,” said Gwen.
“This is too bizarre.”
This is
old-fashioned detective work, Fitz’s voice reminded her, and it’s
paying off.
“One more time,” the
intrepid Dr. Maulder declared, summoning up new files. This time,
she went straight to reports for the timeframe BioNet had specified
for seizures in Trenton, New Jersey. Unbelievably, nine people out
of five hundred in a test for a long-acting acid reflux pill had
experienced seizures. One had died, a thirty-two-year-old woman
previously treated for depression and anxiety. All of the patients
were under forty. Three were smokers.
“Smoking has to be
the common thread,” Gwen said aloud, “but if that’s the case, then
why not four out of four?”
Maybe the other
smoked and didn’t report it, either by accident or because some
people aren’t always honest. Gwen had amassed an amazing amount of
information in the course of one day’s work. She was willing to bet
that she would find similar trends in other cities where drug
companies tried out their pills and potions. Medwatch was turning
out to be a valuable asset. She fired off a memo to
Jan.
| Subj: | RE: AE files |
| Date: | 7/27/05 9:27 a.m. Eastern Standard Time |
| From: | captainepi323@iprive.com |
| To: | biodoc107@iprive.com |
Seizures reported in drug-testing facilities, not just emergency rooms! Direct correlation between seizure activity in clinical trials and BioNet’s findings as far as time frames and locations are concerned. Can you believe this?! What’s going on down in Atlanta? Is the quantum wizard up and running?
Peter Tippett
entered Jan’s office at the CDC with a plastic visitor’s pass
dangling from his neck. He was at the Center unofficially,
ostensibly visiting a friend he’d met at the PITAC conference and
nothing more.
Sitting at her desk,
Jan looked up, saw him, and let out a sigh. “Thank God you’re here.
Strange things are going on—off-the-chart strange, in fact—and they
just got stranger according to an e-mail from an epidemiologist
friend up in Rockville.”
Tippett covered his
lips with an index finger as if signaling naptime for a room full
of kindergartners. “Not here. Let’s go out for a bite to
eat.”
“Sounds good to me,
Peter. My treat.”
“You’ll get no
argument from me.”
They left and headed
for a café on the other side of town, in the new chic pedestrian
mall.
“If your computer is
compromised, then there could also be electronic bugs no bigger
than a pinhead in your office if someone wanted to listen to our
conversation,” Tippett stated as they drove. “But now that we’re
out on the road, tell me what’s up.”
“What I’m about to
say to you, I never said. Right?”
“Scout’s
honor.”
“Okay, then,” said
Jan, merging into traffic on the interstate. “Our new top-level
security computer for detecting bioterrorist events—”
“That would be
BioNet.”
“You’re not supposed
to know that name, Peter.”
“At my clearance
level, Jan, I know what the president had for breakfast this
morning.”
Jan smiled and
proceeded with her reasons for calling the computer supersleuth.
“BioNet has picked up seizure activity way above the norm in
certain cities during the past year. The spikes last about a month
give or take. The statistical probability for such occurrences is
so remote that ‘coincidence’ isn’t worth discussing.”
“Sounds downright
intriguing, but that’s your department, Jan. What do you need a
computer security specialist for?” Tippett was an American citizen
but had lived in London from the age of five until he graduated
from Cambridge University. He enunciated perfectly, speaking with a
slight English accent that Jan found appealing.
“Because BioNet is
not functioning correctly to begin with. When I called you a few
days ago, it was completely down as far as normal operations were
concerned, although it uploaded the seizure files to a re-mailer in
Iceland. I’d naturally like to know where the ultimate destination
was.”
“What about BioNet’s
current activity?”
“Back to normal, but
something’s not right. I’m the director, and nothing should have
been uploaded without my knowledge and consent. The info we collect
is just too sensitive. And for BioNet to simply stop functioning
and then start again, with no log entries reflecting temporary
downtime—there’s just no way that should have
happened.”
“You suspect the
project has been compromised from the inside.”
“Has to be. Too many
safeguards in place for this to be a breach from the outside. If I
call security, then the possibility of tracking down whatever is
going on is shot to hell.”
“Agreed.”
“So, feel like
snooping around?”
“The larger question
is, how can I snoop around without anyone getting too
curious?”
“Good point. Any
suggestions?”
“I can install a
router in your office and have wireless access to the system from
outside the premises.”
“You have to be
kidding. We have so many microwave towers and wireless
communications systems already in place that you’d be detected in a
heartbeat.”
“Oh ye of little
faith.” Tippett had a childlike grin and a mischievous twinkle in
his eye. “Consider the average wireless laptop. You can grab
someone else’s signal if you’re close enough—a dream for ID
thieves—but I can install thirty-digit passwords for both the
router and the program I’ll use. My own equipment will be similarly
protected. We’ll be completely invisible. Never underestimate a
low-tech approach to gaining access to high-tech systems. It’s a
fundamental mistake made by governments and big
business.”
“What kind of
program can you run?”
“First, I can run a
trace to see where Iceland sent the file. After that, we’ll see if
we can run BioNet and refine the seizure stats at Level II without
anyone else knowing what we’re doing.”
“That’s impossible.
I had to shunt my activities to a sub-directory after running the
seizure stats. The system is designed to keep careful track of
every user and data run. You can hide activity for a while, but all
users are recorded one way or another.”
“And yet, as you
just pointed out, BioNet’s downtime wasn’t logged. I don’t foresee
any problems. Trust me. There’s a simple solution if one knows how
to go about it.”
“Which
is?”
“I’ll never log
in.”
Jan burst into
laughter. “You can do that?”
With a decidedly
British air of surety, Tippett said, “With your help, I most
certainly can. If you provide me with a few passwords, I can bypass
certain directories by using what is called a JDM
patch.”
“What’s
that?”
“JDM stands for
‘Just Dare Me.’ I can literally bypass some of BioNet’s programming
protocols. Think of it as putting a patient to sleep for surgery so
that he’s unaware of what the surgeon is doing. I’m the anesthetist
of the cyber world.”
“Peter, I think this
is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“I was rather hoping
you’d say that.”