After the Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

perceived power. Everybody thinks the bigwigs make the decisions at the FDA. Not true. Any lowly reviewer in the trenches could throw a monkey wrench in a drug approval, or could raise a fuss about a food substance, or could initiate a hygiene concern. Pretty much at will. If they were so inclined. Which most weren’t. Most just showed up, followed standard operating procedures, and went home.
    Until now, Jake had been with the majority. Do the job. Go home. But today, he would join the small percentage who got off on using their FDA power to manipulate the outside world. And the outside world under the FDA’s economic influence was vast. The FDA regulates 25 percent of all consumer expenditures in the United States. That’s a lot of money, and that’s a lot of influence for one individual—a seemingly lowly bureaucrat—to parlay.
    Jake would not be using his position to exercise any measure of global power, but only as a means to keep Addie in the United States. Despite pressure from her father, she was determined to stay employed at Replica until she came into that Immunone windfall. Jake would have made her an honest woman by then. The Muslim religion had no problem with divorced men, but they wanted their woman pure and untouched until they were properly married. At least that was Jake’s understanding. He was no expert on Islam, but he supposed he would become oneonce he and Addie were joined in marriage. Would he still be considered an infidel? Even if he converted?
    Jake stuffed the
Post
into his briefcase, opened his door, and gazed out into the hall. His coworkers were pouring in, and he wanted to pick up on the morning chatter: Friday’s Advisory Committee and the Fred Minn hit and run last night. But two overarching problems needed his urgent attention. One, he’d get started today on undercutting Immunone. And two, Karolee. She’d surprised him by taking off from her big-money executive chef gig to go to Miami to visit their first grandchild, a two-week-old baby girl. Hard to imagine his haughty wife as a granny. Jake smirked at the thought. And how was Granny’s visit going? Their son’s wife couldn’t stand Karolee, and the sentiment was mutual. Mark should have moved farther away than Miami.
    Jake was still sitting at his desk when a colleague poked his head in the cubbyhole office and announced, “Jake, get your butt to the conference room. Meeting’s starting now.”
    Jake arranged his papers, grabbed a fresh, lined yellow pad, and made his way down the hall to join the rest of the team from the Office of Drug Evaluation III. He took the last vacant seat at the rectangular conference table as Agency Deputy Director Sid Casey began to address the attendees. His mood seemed even more jovial than usual. “Jake, my man,” he started, nodding his way, “great show last Friday. You guys pulled it off. Even the
New York Times
had kudos for the Agency. Now, how long has it been since that happened?”
    â€œForever,” a voice called out.
    â€œSo now we get down to the real work. Putting the approval package together. Jake, as project manager extraordinaire, you take the lead. That’ll free up the medical reviewers and pharmacologists to finalize their sections. Work with Drug Safety to make sure the adverse event monitoring is tweaked to collect as much new data as possible.”
    â€œWill do.” Jake already knew how he would quash all this optimism. Before coming in, he had requested all the data on thedeaths that had occurred during the Immunone trials. No matter how safe a drug is, patients always die on drug trials. Sometimes they get hit by a truck. Sometimes they take a stray bullet. Some accident occurs that’s obviously not drug related. Other times they rupture an aorta, throw a blood clot, develop pneumonia, commit suicide. Who knows: drug related, or not? These cases are more difficult to decide. Did the drug