The Jericho Deception: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

patient gave the necessary consents to stop her medication. She volunteered to have a seizure so we could conduct the EEG testing.”
    He glanced toward the far corner of the room to Chris Sligh’s desk, bare but for a thick file folder. The grad student conducted preliminary patient interviews and obtained the necessary consents before they began any experiments. Ethan knew how paranoid the university was about liability. Since the cutting-edge but controversial experiments conducted there in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram, the administration was especially sensitive to human psychological testing.
    In a now infamous study, Milgram had devised an experiment to see how far people would go in deference to authority. His subjects were falsely told that the experiment they volunteered for was about the effects of punishment on recall and learning, through the administration of electrical shocks that the subjects would give when a confederate answered a question incorrectly. Although the experiment showed how powerful authority could be in determining behavior, it also created a firestorm of controversy over the intense stress and anxiety the subjects suffered as they went ahead shocking people against their better judgment.
    But that was fifty years ago , Ethan thought. Houston was overly cautious, worried about a past that was no longer relevant.
    “My information is that you withheld medication when the seizure spread, putting the patient in danger of injuring herself.”
    Judith . He’d worried the nurse might be a problem. Neither she nor Houston understood the true nature of his work.
    “If you review the patient’s chart, and you are welcome to watch the video as well, you’ll see the protocols were followed exactly as approved by the institutionalreview board.” Ethan’s colleagues who had reviewed his proposed experiment and then reported to Houston’s committee had been skeptical that the Logos would ever work, but they had approved the research. “We had to allow the seizure to proceed along its natural course to capture all of the relevant EEG data. Liz agreed to this protocol precisely.”
    “I will review everything. ” Houston enunciated each syllable. “We aren’t the Yale of Stanley Milgram anymore. My responsibility”—he stretched his body to its most erect posture—“is to shut down any project that doesn’t smell right. It’s not just the university’s reputation that’s on the line; half-a-billion dollars in federal grants is contingent on us upholding the highest ethical standards.” He leaned in close to Ethan. “From the beginning, this nonsense you and Elijah have concocted hasn’t smelled right to me.”
    Ethan forced a smile. “My grad assistant, Chris, will email you the files in the morning.”
    Houston surveyed the lab, his eyes lingering on the two-foot-square metal box in the center before returning to Ethan. “So, does this machine”—he gestured to the Logos with a dismissive wave of his spectacles—“do anything yet?”
    “Just before you walked in, I may have figured out what was wrong with our programming. You see, I combined the data from Liz’s EEG with—”
    “Doctor,” Houston sighed, “every time I come here to question you or Elijah about this failing project, you’re on the verge of some major new progress, and yet the only thing you seem to do well”—he made a show of looking around the room again—“is take up valuable real estate in one of our larger labs.”
    Ethan felt his face flush as he tried to formulate a response that wouldn’t aggravate his superior, but he wasn’t as smooth as he wished. The perfect comeback always seemed to form in his brain a minute too late to be effective. He had the same problem speaking with women. Feeling his heart rate and breathing increase, he reminded himself that he was experiencing a typical sympathetic nervous system response to stress. He’d discovered during medical school that naming the