Prizes Read Free Page B

this period Raven married Morgenstern’s daughter Judy. The union produced a girl—and a divorce. Dr. Raven is adamantly silent about both.
    At the age of thirty-two, he was offered a full professorship at Cal Tech in Pasadena, where he began to assemble a team for his new area of research—the fight against aging.
    Raven was not the first gladiator in this arena. In recent years, geneticists the world over have been making hitherto undreamed-of strides in what is arguably the greatest—and most difficult—challenge ever to face mankind.
    Unlike certain diseases that can be pinpointed to specific places on a particular chromosome, the aging process is controlled from at least a hundred different sites on the human genome—the sum total of genes in a person’s body.
    Several important discoveries served as point of departure for Raven’s own work. At the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Dr. Carl Barrett located an area that determines longevity onChromosome One. Doctors James Smith and Olivia Pereira-Smith of Baylor have traced another to Chromosome Four.
    Raven’s first major breakthrough came when he identified a group of genes that caused degeneration in skin cells. In various trials he succeeded in reversing it, at least temporarily. But he entered a domain entirely his own when he succeeded in “immortalizing” some of the genetic components of skin rejuvenation.
    This “Ponce de Leon” discovery—a media coinage that makes the scientist cringe—has turned Sandy Raven into a kind of folk hero. The press has touted him as the creator of the ultimate Hollywood dream: a chemical that holds out the promise of eternal youth.
    Though he announced his discovery in a highly technical article in the academic journal
Experimental Gerontology,
his biochemical magic was quickly translated into headlines for laymen and disseminated by the wire services of the world.
    The reaction was electrifying. Calls flooded the university switchboard. Mail came to his lab literally by the sackful. Curiously, this proved a disheartening experience for Raven.
    “Instead of feeling proud, I felt guilty that I had not done enough. I mean these were not just women wanting to lose their wrinkles. Most of the messages were desperate cries from people who wrongly presumed that I was already capable of reversing
any
soft tissue damage. They pleaded with me to save their loved ones’ lives, and I was left with a feeling of terrible frustration and—yes—failure.”
    Both the sensitivity and humility characterize the man.
    And yet, despite Raven’s disconsolate air, he has in fact prepared the way for the development of genetic procedures to conquer many killer pathologies.
    Raven remains a reluctant hero, still quixotically determined to avoid the limelight. He wryly dismisses his new celebrity status with typical self-effacing good humor:
    “Let’s face it, I have the charisma of a soggy bagel. If I can make the cover of
Time,
the nerds are conquering the world.”
    Other major figures in the field have a more respectful attitude.
    “Sandy’s achievement was probably the most important breakthrough of the decade in the battle against cancer,” says his admirer and former father-in-law, Gregory Morgenstern of MIT. “It dwarfs anything I’ve ever done. He deserves all the honor and glory—and money—that I’m sure he’s going to get.”
    “Jesus, Dad. Did you see how they ended the article?” Sandy fumed.
    “Yes, sonny boy,” the older man muttered uncomfortably. “But it’s only natural for a cover story that they would trace your career and go back and speak to the people who knew you along the way. After all, Morgenstern did win the Big One. How the hell are they supposed to know the skeletons in his closet? Actually, this would have been the chance for you to tell them.”
    “What good would that have been? Besides, I somehow thought they would dig it up on their own. But I guess there are limits