Roads paved to Hell with good intentions

A woman to die for.

I was shocked and saddened when I received the Solicitors Letter. It told me that I was the sole named heir of the late Jenny Grantley. I had been left a sizeable sum of money and all of her Scientific Papers.

Jenny and I first met at Medical School and we were an item. She was brilliant and I a plodder. My role in the relationship was to be the Doctor Watson to her Sherlock Holmes. She went on to become an Emeritus Professor and I ended up a Country GP. However we kept in contact by letter. She’d never married though she’d had a constant stream of lovers. Her letters often mentioned the latest flame.

So I was surprised when I got an invitation from her to attend the launching of her new initiative into the treatment of deep seated infection. The worlds’ leading specialists and “authorities” were to be there. This was about seven years ago. I’ve still got the receipt for the suit I bought.

When I arrived at the Albert Hall, demand for tickets had been enormous, I was disappointed to find that I was not allowed to go “back of house” and so I never got to meet her one to one.

Jenny was usually modest when she revealed her findings. But not today, she told the world, that she would reveal a new technique to revolutionise the treatment of Wound Infection. She was as ever, fastidious in her presentation which took over two hours.

She asked for questions. Everyone was enthusiastic except me. I said nothing, but God how I wish I had asked the question that had run round my head. So much Human suffering would have been avoided.

I should have stood up and said: So, let’s re-cap.

You have found a Bacterium that only attacks diseased tissues.

You've identified the organic chemical produced by Healthy tissue that kills the Bacterium.

You have bred a mutation of this Bacterium which is hyper-sensitive to that chemical.

Laboratory tests on volunteer patients have confirmed that only diseased tissue is killed.

My question is What would happen if it, of its own accord, mutated and developed a tolerance to this Chemical.

Well four years ago the Medical Establishment admitted to itself that Jenny’s Bacterium had mutated and was devouring healthy flesh. The chance of survival once exposed was limited. It was a death sentence to the very young, the very old and the very ill.

Jenny had quietly resigned her Chair in Proactive Medicine on the alleged grounds of ill health and had gone into a self imposed exile from the Medical World. I’d not heard from her since then.



It was with a very heavy heart that I kept my appointment at the solicitors. I was given a cheque, a copy of her estate's audited account and a locked document case. I said that I thought she had left me her papers. I was informed that this was all there was. I couldn’t get out quick enough and back to the station to take the train home.

When settled in my compartment, I broke open the box; the solicitor had not been left a key; there were sheathes of paper but there was also an envelope addressed to me. I quickly opened it and read the letter it contained.

"John,

I felt that after MRSA that I ought to do something to balance the disaster I had caused. The world’s biggest problem is hunger. Just suppose we could metabolise our foods more efficiently. What if we humans could digest Cellulose?

So I went interfering with nature yet again and found a micro-organism that could form a symbiotic union with humans and perform this task.

It was first tested on terminally ill Anorexic patients and it was a fantastic success but it mutated and started to build fats up from the bodys’ CO2, water, urea and other wastes. The patients became bloated and obese.

One of my research assistants smuggled out some cultures and sold them to a food manufacturer. So it got into the food chain. Ironically any creature that was either cold blooded or could digest cellulose was immune, otherwise it attacked all other life forms.

In time the Human race and many mammals will become extinct as their bodies outgrow their cardio-vascular capacity. I’m now 23 stone and grotesque. So I’ve covered myself in my first Bacterium and am leaving them to fight it out,

Jenny."

A few days later I noticed that I was putting weight on, the letter or and the interior of the box must have been contaminated.

I always thought her a woman to die for and now I am.