WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: LilGuyBlastoise
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Economics of an Alchemist ◈
Chapter 2
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Beep. Beep. Beep.
The steady machine sounds struck Jaeha’s ears.
Breathing in the sharp smell of disinfectant, Jaeha slowly opened his eyes. A white ceiling. The flat light of fluorescent bulbs. His blurred vision gradually came into focus.
Throb. A sharp pain suddenly stabbed through his head, and Jaeha frowned.
Instinctively, he checked his condition first. He tried flexing his fingers and toes. Fortunately, there was no paralysis.
‘What happened?’
Memories from just before he lost consciousness surfaced one by one. A brain that felt as if it were burning, blood sugar crashing, the noise of the chaotic hospital room.
Then one vivid memory overlaid them all. The bright eyes of the white-haired old professor speaking of a new order.
Dreams were like that, but it had been a completely nonsensical dream with no discernible context. Jaeha lightly shook his head and cleared away the stray thoughts.
What mattered now was not some absurd dream, but the reality before him. Shock severe enough to make him lose consciousness. What a serious adverse reaction during a clinical trial meant was clear.
‘The trial will be stopped...’
Just as Jaeha’s expression hardened, the hospital room door slid open and a nurse came in.
“Oh? You’re awake! Doctor! Patient Kim Jaeha has regained consciousness!”
Her urgent cry rang through the corridor, and Professor Park, Jaeha’s attending physician, came rushing in less than a minute later.
A man in a suit entered the room after Professor Park. Jaeha quickly scanned the ID badge pinned to his chest.
‘Genovanta Clinical Strategy Team?’
Professor Park shone a penlight into Jaeha’s eyes and checked his condition.
“Can you hear my voice? Do you know where you are?”
“H University Hospital. The clinical ward.”
Jaeha’s voice came out hoarse, but his answer was clear. Professor Park let out a sigh of relief before speaking.
“The shock was severe. Your BST, that is, your blood glucose level, fell below 30. You nearly suffered brain damage.”
It was enough that he had awakened intact. Jaeha asked the most important question.
“What happens to the trial?”
“I’ll explain that.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Choi Minseok, head of Genovanta Korea’s Clinical Strategy Team.”
Jaeha accepted his business card and studied him. Behind his artificial smile was a familiar look.
The look of someone who underestimated him.
“To get straight to the point, we are leaning toward a ‘conditional continuation’ of your trial, Mr. Kim.”
Jaeha’s brow furrowed.
‘Conditional continuation?’
This had been severe shock, serious enough to threaten his life. By the rules, it should have been reported immediately to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, and the trial put on full hold.
Yet they planned to push ahead with it? No pharmaceutical company in its right mind could play that card. It should not have been possible in the first place...
‘Ah. There was an exception.’
The trial could continue if there was cause to maintain treatment despite potentially fatal side effects.
Jaeha looked at Professor Park. Reading his expression, Professor Park pulled out a photograph tucked into the chart.
“Look at this. This is an MRI taken while you were unconscious. Compared with before the treatment, the tumor has shrunk by a full 30 percent.”
Even to Jaeha, the grotesque mass was noticeably smaller than before.
“Medically speaking, you are a perfect super responder to G-77. In other words, an exceptionally strong responder.”
The drug was working. Miraculously well.
Even as he confirmed that fact, Jaeha’s expression remained as calm as a lake.
There was no relief at having survived, no tears of joy. He coolly ran the numbers.
“Since a life-threatening adverse reaction occurred, stopping immediately is the proper course in principle. However.”
Team Leader Choi lowered his voice, as if trying to make it sound like he was doing Jaeha a favor.
“There is clear data showing that the tumor is entering remission. If you agree to continue the trial, Genovanta plans to provide the best care in a VIP private room, free of charge, for the rest of the trial period.”
He held out a thick bundle of documents. His expression showed that he was certain Jaeha would gratefully sign at once.
[Consent Form for Continued Participation in the Clinical Trial]
Holding the papers in the hand without an IV needle, Jaeha suppressed an inward laugh.
They were dressing up a trial subject’s basic rights, rights that should naturally be guaranteed, as though they were some grand act of generosity. It was a shallow trick: distract with glittering bait and conceal what they truly wanted to hide.
An ordinary patient would have listened to a rough explanation and signed the thick consent form. In the quiet room, only the dry sound of papers turning could be heard.
From the moment Jaeha decided to apply for the trial, he had obsessively dug into every related subject. The same was true during the past two weeks in the hospital.
While other patients groaned in pain from side effects or prayed for a miracle, he read and reread old clinical trial guidelines from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the Bioethics and Safety Act, and precedents from new-drug lawsuits involving pharmaceutical companies in Korea and abroad.
To him, this clinical trial was not merely treatment. It was the biggest business deal of his life, with his only capital, a life with an expiration date, at stake.
Jaeha skimmed past the meaningless clauses. His gaze did not linger on the sweetly worded bait for even a second.
But then...
‘...?’
He felt a strange sense of unease.
It felt as though the hundreds of pages of cases and statutes he had read were tattooed onto every cell in his brain.
If he closed his eyes, he could vividly recall the exact page and line of every phrase in the PDF files, as though he had taken photographs of them.
Thanks to that, finding the poisonous clauses hidden throughout the consent form by a major corporation’s legal team was easy.
It did not take long to filter out the garbage and pinpoint the key traps. Jaeha’s eyes paused only at the cleverly concealed toxic clauses.
Jaeha looked up from the documents and spoke.
“A VIP private room and free medication for life. It sounds sweet, but isn’t that simply an extension of the obligation to provide post-trial benefits specified in the Declaration of Helsinki?”
Team Leader Choi’s eyes widened.
He looked as though he had been struck hard on the back of the head.
According to the pre-screening, Kim Jaeha had finished only high school and worked as a day laborer. He had never imagined that someone living at the bottom of society would bring up the Declaration of Helsinki, the core ethical guideline for medical research involving human subjects.
“I’ll overlook the way you dressed up a subject’s basic rights, rights that should naturally be guaranteed, as some great favor...”
Jaeha pointed to a section of the document packed with tiny print.
“I felt this when I signed the original consent form, too, but this part here. It is truly vicious that all rights to research findings and commercial profits from donated human-derived materials belong to the pharmaceutical company.”
When he first applied for the trial, Jaeha had been a terminal patient at the edge of a cliff. Whether a major corporation’s terms were unfair or not, he was not in a position to be picky, so he signed without complaint.
‘Things are different now.’
He had become the super responder holding the leash of G-77, the new drug project Genovanta had poured tens or hundreds of billions of won into.
Team Leader Choi’s eyes darted about. He had underestimated Jaeha and received a proper counterpunch.
Jaeha was no ordinary man.
His complexion hardening, Choi turned to Professor Park, who stood nearby.
“Professor. From here on, I believe we need to discuss the private corporate support we can provide to the patient. Would you mind stepping out for a moment?”
Professor Park, who had already been uncomfortable staying, readily nodded.
The medical staff filed out, and when the door closed, Team Leader Choi spoke. His voice was lower and more confidential now.
“Now that no one is watching, let me speak frankly. Genovanta intends to offer the utmost sincerity we can within our compensation policy for your recovery. Internally, we are also considering a consolation payment that could help with your immediate living expenses...”
Jaeha cut him off.
“Do you know the John Moore case?”
Team Leader Choi’s eyebrow twitched. As the head of a team at the global pharmaceutical company Genovanta, there was no way he could not know that name.
It was a case in which researchers at a university hospital established a cell line using cells obtained during a patient’s treatment and earned enormous patent profits. When John Moore learned of it later, it led to a massive lawsuit that shook the medical and biotech industries.
“It seems you do. If you intended to make me a second John Moore and get my data for a pittance, you have the wrong person.”
“...Under the Bioethics and Safety Act, human-derived materials cannot be the subject of financial transactions.”
Jaeha gave a short laugh.
“They cannot be the subject of transactions? Then isn’t this strange?”
Jaeha found the section titled “Data Ownership” in the documents he held and tapped it with a finger.
“If they cannot be bought or sold and cannot be recognized as property in the first place, why so carefully hide a clause saying that commercial profits and rights arising from human-derived materials are transferred to Genovanta?”
“Th-that is a comprehensive consent procedure to ensure the smooth progress of research...”
“Isn’t it because, if I do not stamp my approval on a consent form for continued participation that includes this clause, the pharmaceutical company cannot claim exclusive rights to a patent worth trillions of won, even if it creates one using my genes?”
“That is a leap! Cases in which research using a super responder’s genes produces meaningful results are extremely rare.”
“I know. But if that rare outcome does hit, the pharmaceutical company’s profits will be astronomical.”
In a dry voice, Jaeha spoke while tapping the IV needle in his arm.
“The first stage of the dose-escalation trial. Of the five people given the lowest dose, four have already dropped out. If I leave as well because of a serious adverse reaction, Genovanta’s new drug project will be in a position where no one could blame it for being thrown in the trash.”
Team Leader Choi was speechless. The business smile had long vanished from his face.
“You need my signature on the consent form for ‘voluntary continuation of the trial’ just to keep Genovanta’s new drug business alive. Isn’t that right?”
Team Leader Choi pulled over a chair and sat down.
“That’s right. It is true that we would be in a difficult position. But Mr. Kim, don’t you desperately want this trial as well? If the trial falls through, you will be removed from the treatment list starting tomorrow. Are you all right with that?”
“Team Leader Choi, did I say I would quit the clinical trial?”
“...What?”
“I intend to continue the trial. I am merely saying that, under the patient rights guaranteed by the Bioethics and Safety Act, I can refuse consent only to the section on the secondary use of human-derived materials and the transfer of commercial data.”
Jaeha looked directly at Team Leader Choi with cold eyes.
“If Genovanta holds my life hostage by saying it will stop the drug unless the data transfer goes through, that would constitute a clear bioethics violation. Neither the IRB, the Institutional Review Board, nor the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety could be blamed if they suspended approval for all of Genovanta’s future clinical trials.”
“...!”
Team Leader Choi’s face turned bright red, and he bit down hard on his lower lip.
‘There is no denying that Kim Jaeha holds the leash on this trial.’
If he could not obtain Jaeha’s signature, he would become one of the scapegoats burdened with a failure worth hundreds of billions of won.
“...Haah.”
With a suppressed sigh, Team Leader Choi loosened his tie knot slightly. Wearing the face of a businessman forced completely onto the defensive, he asked,
“So how much do you want, Mr. Kim?”
It was, in effect, a declaration of surrender.
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