News item: Doctors have injected a modified cold virus featuring designer genes into a patient to regenerate his heart.
After my chest pains developed, I went to see Dr. Splicer Shwitzer, the world’s foremost cardiac specialist. One of his assistants drew blood and a second drew up papers to transfer the equity in my home to The Splicer Shwitzer/Mother Teresa Non-Profit Benevolent Foundation.
The kindly doctor, thumbing through my medical history, said, “You’ve done well in the stock market but you’ve been a bit lax in real estate. However, overall, it’s heartening to see you’ve put aside something for a rainy day.”
“Dr. Shwitzer, I’m terrified of going under the knife but I know you’ve developed gene-splicing techniques that can actually regrow my heart right in my body.”
Bigger and Better Arteries
“That’s how I hooked the Nobel Prize,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I inject genes that instruct your ticker to grow bigger and better arteries. My technique is almost foolproof.”
“Almost?”
“We have to put these special heart genes in a modified common-cold virus. There are occasional side effects. Some of my patients have developed a cold.”
“What percentage of your patients develop colds?” I asked.
“A hundred per cent.”
“A serious cold?” I asked.
“The cold isn’t, but the sneezing can be tricky. For some silly reason, on the second day patients begin to sneeze with enough force to expel their teeth.”
“Good God,” I said. “That’s pretty serious.”
“Nothing we can’t manage. We extract the patient’s teeth on the first day. That’s why this heart therapy can get so expensive. Dental bills have gone through the roof.”
“And on the third day, what happens?” I asked.
Hack and Cough
“That’s when the coughing cuts in,” said the doctor. “Usually by nightfall the coughing level is unacceptable from a patient’s point of view. From a research point of view, it’s certainly within tolerable parameters.
I don’t know how to explain it in layman’s terms. However, let me say that by the third day, the special gene cells have accomplished their work and the heart has totally repaired itself. We’ve examined dozens of third-day hearts under electron microscopes and they’re in splendid shape.
Those tickers are testaments of medical magic.”
“How do you get an electron microscope into the patient?” I asked.
“They’re the size of microwave ovens.”
“We have the best microscopes government grants can obtain here at my clinic,” beamed the distinguished doctor. “Our microscopes are the size of washing machines.”
“So how do you get into the patient to examine the heart?” I asked.
“I’ll be candid. By the end of the third day, the patient has expelled his heart.”
“Expelled?”
“Yes. The coughing, don’t you know? It’s quite severe and by the third day, the patient has coughed his heart out through his mouth. Sometimes his nose.
It’s quite a medical anomaly to observe an entire ward of patients expelling their hearts by simply coughing. They’re doing a paper on it at Harvard.”
A Heart-Stopping Revelation
“Do all your patients die?” I asked.
“Technically, they would be dead, if we were to impose certain criteria on the patient. For example, not breathing.”
I felt my chest pains increase.
“Relax. What I’m offering you—or anyone with Visa or MasterCard—is a perfectly sound heart. If you have a platinum American Express card, I can grow you two or even three hearts,” said the doctor. “We can make them faster than you can cough them up.”
“I just want to live,” I gasped.
“I don’t blame you. After all, we live in an age of miracles. We’ve conquered all the known frontiers of science. There’s only one thing we in medicine can’t do. Actually, we’ve never been able to do it.”
“What?”
“Cure the common cold,” he said. “You better get some clothes on before you catch a chill. Then we’d be in real trouble.”
