Chapter 66: The First Product (7)

Luca Taylor was arrested and Schumatix was rapidly deteriorating. Now, their brand value was less than a tenth of what it was during their prime time.

“We apologize. Our board of directors dismissed CEO Luca Taylor.”

The directors of Schumatix stood in front of the reporters and bowed, publicly apologizing. That was broadcast to the entire world, but the people’s anger didn’t seem to subside. It was because the evil acts Schumatix had done in the past were too wicked to say that this was just a deviation from Luca Taylor.

They became an international bastard as the issue about them profiteering on Gleevec came out. Gleevec was a treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia. It was the first new type of treatment for leukemia, which could only be treated by bone marrow transplantation.

—The price for one capsule of Gleevec was one hundred dollars in the United States. If you take one pill per day, that’s three thousand dollars per month. Can you believe it? But there are patients who have to take three or four pills a day.

A professor from MIT said on CNN.

One hundred dollars was equivalent to one hundred thousand won. Three million won per month was the price of staying alive. It was a little cheaper in Korea, but the prices were still murderous. Patients have to spend money equivalent to the salary of a small company employee every month on medicine. That’s why they did whatever they could, including getting loans, because they would die if they couldn’t pay.

Since Schumatix had the lives of patients in their hands and there was no other drug to compete with, they could just choose whatever price they wanted. The Korean government had proposed to lower the domestic price of one capsule, which was twenty-five thousand won, to around eighteen thousand won, but they failed.

—Is this expensive because it is expensive to produce? No, it isn’t. It doesn’t even cost one dollar to produce a capsule.

The professor said.

—Excluding all the shipping costs and things that occur during the distribution process, the manufacturer, Schumatix, takes more than one hundred times the production cost as profit. What kind of industry is this? For patients, it’s the same thing as monopolizing on air or water and selling a day’s worth for one hundred dollars. It’s the same thing as telling the patients to work hard and give them all the money they earned if they want to stay alive.

—It’s a shocking price. Is it because it took a lot of money to develop it?

—Large pharmaceutical companies usually set drugs at a high price for the purpose of getting development costs, but even if it was for that, Schumatix went too far.

The professor said.

—And Schumatix didn’t even put that much money into developing that drug either. It’s because Imatinib, the raw material for Gleevec, was created in university labs. All Schumatix did was just buy the patent and make it into pills, but they monopolized it and sold it at that price.

—Wow. How could they? Did this not get out in the past?

—It did. But Schumatix kept silencing the issue so that it did not get big. But the issue was brought up again.

—I heard that the replicate drug developed in India was a replica of Gleevec.

—That’s right. And Schumatix sued India or countries who imported that replica for infringement of patent rights.

—How shocking. I heard that A-Bio is working on making bone marrow with stem cells. If that technology becomes commercialized, will we live in a world where we won’t need Gleevec?

—Of course. As a fellow scientist in the field, I am hoping that Doctor Ryu Young-Joon will conquer leukemia one day.

Bleep!

Young-Joon turned off the television.

—They are talking about you everywhere.

Rosaline said to him.

“Well, it was a big fight.”

—The natural destruction of stem cells was something I taught you before, right

“Yeah. I just changed the differentiation target from spinal cells to optic nerves.”

—You can do it on your own now. I didn't know you would apply that technology like this.

“Are you complimenting me?”

Young-Joon chuckled.

—Yes. But I still want to insist on putting all the board members in a coma. Don’t bother going the long way. Even if we put all of them in beds, it would just be a few thousand people. If we sacrifice that number, you can turn the world into a better place in three years without anything getting in the way.

“I told you I can’t do that.

—Alright. To be honest, the method you chose wasn’t bad either. A-Bio has succeeded in gaining the patient’s trust from this incident. It’s worse than eliminating all the competition and dominating the field, but this is also a gain.

“All you think about is gains and losses, isn’t it?”

—Is anything else necessary? The power that advanced humanity was selfish motives. From a genetic perspective, selfless acts are all inherently due to selfish motives.

Rosaline asked.

“Are you talking about the Selfish Gene theory?”

The Selfish Gene theory posited that people’s selfless acts all came from the selfish motive to spread their own genes. For example, a mother running in front of a car to save their child was not acting in selflessness for their child, but they acted that way because that child had half of their DNA. As she would ultimately be preserving and spreading her own genes to the world if she and her child all lived no matter how severe their injuries were, it was a gamble in terms of genetics that was motivated by selfishness.

—It was just a theory to Doctor Dawkins, but it is a definite truth to me. From billions of years ago when the human animal wasn't human yet, all organisms on this Earth have acted with selfish motives.

“Maybe they did.” Young-Joon nodded. “But there is something about humans that can’t be explained by that. People don’t just act with selfish motives, although it’s probably hard for you to understand.”

—How very interesting. Can you teach me?

“I don’t know if you will be able to understand it even if I explain it…”

—When you met Son Soo-Young, the first glaucoma trial patient, her family, and her newborn’s doctor at your company, I felt your body release a lot of serotonin. I couldn’t understand that phenomenon either. You don’t gain anything from the fact that Son Soo-Young came to see you, but you were very happy.

Young-Joon remained silent.

—Is this what you were talking about? Is something like emotional gains instead of actual gains the motive for the actions you are talking about?

“Well, it’s similar.”

—Very fascinating. I want to feel that emotion too.

Knock knock.

Someone knocked on his door.

“Come in.”

“Why are you in the office on a weekend?” Park Joo-Hyuk asked as he opened the door and came in.

“Why are you?” Young-Joon asked.

“A touching surprise visit,” Park Joo-Hyuk said as he spread his arm wide open.

“Wow, how moving.” Young-Joon replied dryly.

“I actually went to your house and you weren’t there, so I came here.”

“Why did you go to my house?”

“Do you know that there’s a Ryu Young-Joon fan club?”

Young-Joon squinted.

“There’s a what?”

“You have a fan clu… Pfft!”

Park Joo-Hyuk burst into laughter at the end like he also found it funny. He sat on the edge of the couch and said, “Actually, it’s been around for a while. But the number of subscribers is exploding these days. I signed up for it, too.”

“Why did you join?”

“I’m curious. It was a Naver cafe before, but it got moved to a Facebook group now. There’s a lot of overseas fans.”

“Holy…”

“I’m a bit of an attention seeker on social media, so I went to your house to take a photo with your house as the background because I wanted to set a record for my Facebook likes. That should get me like ten thousand at least, right?”

“Don’t post anything weird, okay?” Young-Joon said, engulfed in intense anxiety.

“I’m debating between a selfie with your living room or your junior high yearbook as the background. Do you remember when you made a fuss about going to the hair salon to get a good photo, and then you ended up with dog fur for hair?”

“Why do you do this to me, huh?”

“Hehe. I just love teasing you.”

Park Joo-Hyuk tapped Young-Joon’s shoulder.

“I’m kidding. I just went because I had nothing to do for the weekend. Hey, you want to take a look at the fan club?”

Park Joo-Hyuk handed Young-Joon his phone. When he looked at it, it was shocking. The Facebook group was filled with posts that had pictures of Young-Joon that he didn’t even know about. There was even a picture of him barging up to the podium during the year-end seminar.

[This was Schu-fighter’s prime time. It was so funny seeing the lab directors shut up LOL it was so satisfying to see that]

“Who took this picture…? What department? What is Schu-fighter?”

“The person who fights Schumatix.”

“...”

“There’s something called the bas-fighter as a side thing too.”

“What’s that?”

“The bastard fighter.”

As Young-Joon scrolled down, there were pictures of him taken at the Integrative Brain Disorder conference and the IUBMB. There were a lot more comments and posts than he imagined. Among them, there was Son Soo-Young. It was a picture of her holding her daughter in her arms and a caption.

[It’s almost an honor to be the first patient that Doctor Ryu has helped. I am always rooting for you. Please be the light for more patients like me.]

There were parades of people who were certifying their recovery from glaucoma. There were some posts written by the patients from the Alzheimer’s clinical trial.

[I used to take my wife who had Alzheimer’s in my passenger’s seat. Now, my wife is better, and it’s all because of Doctor Ryu Young-Joon.]

Kang Hyuk-Soo, the taxi driver, added a photo of himself in the taxi.

[My wife took this photo for me. Thank you.]

On the passenger’s seat, there was a picture of them standing with Young-Joon.

Young-Joon was touched.

—Serotonin is being released again.

Rosalien said as if it was fascinating.

Young-Joon ignored her and kept scrolling down. Of course, the most popular video among the vast amount of posts was the press conference video where he quickly responded to Schumatix’s sabotage. There were also a lot of foreigners writing comments as well. From English to Arabic, the comments were filled with languages from a lot of different countries.

—Hyung! Destroy them! Good luck!

There was one comment that had the most likes. When Young-Joon saw it and went into the person’s profile, it was someone he knew.

[Yang Dong-Wook]

—Majoring in Biology at Jungyoon University.

“This is Ji-Won’s friend,” Young-Joon said.

“He’s famous in your fan club. He basically worships you like a religion, but you know this guy?”

“He came to help me when I was helping Ji-Won move out of her dorm room.”

“Go do a lecture at the school or something. He’ll probably cry if you go.

* * *

Young-Joon had some tea with Park Joo-Hyuk in his office. It had been a while. They had been busy for quite a while and jumped over a huge obstacle recently, so they needed time to rest mentally. There was no better way to do that than chat about useless things with an old friend. Park Joo-Hyuk, who was reminiscing about the third grade for about an hour, suddenly brought up an issue.

“Is the U.S. asking for anything?”

“Asking for what?”

“The White House stood on your side and destroyed Schumatix, even using the CIA. They fully showed that they were on Team Ryu, so I imagine there was some kind of favor.”

“I’m going to launch a cancer research lab as an affiliate of A-Bio later, and it’s going to be partnered with the National Cancer Institute.”

“That’s what it was?”

“It was just a verbal conversation I had with the director of the Office of Science and Technology when I went to the United States. He said the U.S. would support us a lot.”

“When are you starting?”

“The sooner the better.”

“Then leave this place to me and go there. The Schumatix incident is wrapping up anyway.”

“It’s not done yet. I have things left to do,” Young-Joon said.

“Like what? Park Joo-Hyuk asked.

“I have to cure Ardip.”

“Who’s that?”

“How can you not know? It’s the Indian patient Schumatix sabotaged.”

Ardip was a pitiful man who was born in a prostitution hole and lived in poverty and hardship. After becoming Schumatix’s target and having his face broadcast to the entire world with a tumor in his eye, he was now the main character in A-Bio’s legendary stem cell story. He was a famous star, but none of it was because he wanted it. The only thing he signed up for was the glaucoma treatment because they said it was free.

“Everyone is focused on that person, but no one cares about his health,” Young-Joon said. “Everyone is just watching whether the thing in Ardip’s eye is a tumor or just cell aggregation. They are watching whether Schumatix or A-Bio wins, as if this was some boxing match.”

“...”

“But Ardip went to Schumatix India to treat his glaucoma. And he hasn’t been treated for that yet.”

“Wow… Amazing. That was bugging you while you were fighting with Schuamtix?”

“Ardip’s treatment is as important to me as punishing Luca Taylor,” Young-Joon said. “Whether Luca Taylor retires, whether it was a safety mechanism or tumor, no matter all those things, Ardip has to be cured. Whatever the process was, he was treated with my technology.”

“So, it’s a problem of pride as the creator of the treatment?”

“Yeah. True medicine is to take responsibility for the patient who you started to treat.”

“You’re going to go to heaven,” Park Joo-Hyuk said. “If you don’t go, the only people in heaven will be Jesus and Buddha.”

Young-Joon frowned. “I’m not being nice or anything. This is the norm and the normal thing to do,” he said. “The people who don’t do this are abandoning their responsibilities. Anyway, I’m going to dispatch a trustworthy scientist to India, where Ardip is right now, or bring him here and treat him at our next-generation hospital.”

“This hasn’t been publicly announced yet, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then can I make a spoiler in your fan club? I think the like count will explode and say that you’re amazing for taking responsibility.”

“No.”