"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

тАЬItтАЩs a goddamned artifact.тАЭ

Marta and Brian sat there staring at the printouts. Marta had killed a couple hundred of the Jackson
labsтАЩ finest mice in the course of confirming this theory of LeoтАЩs, and now she was looking more
murderous than ever. You didnтАЩt want to mess with Marta on the days when she had to sacrifice some
mice, nor even talk to her.

Brian sighed.

Leo said, тАЬIt only works if you pump the mice full of the stuff til they just about explode. I mean look at
them. They look like hamsters. Or guinea pigs. Their little eyes are about to pop out of their heads.тАЭ

тАЬNo wonder,тАЭ Brian said. тАЬThereтАЩs only two milliliters of blood in a mouse, and weтАЩre injecting them
with one.тАЭ

Leo shook his head. тАЬHow the hell did they get away with that?тАЭ

тАЬThe CBAs are kind of round and furry.тАЭ

тАЬWhat are you saying, theyтАЩre bred to hide artifacts?тАЭ

тАЬNo.тАЭ

тАЬItтАЩs an artifact!тАЭ

тАЬWell, itтАЩs useless, anyway.тАЭ

An artifact was what they called an experimental result that was specific to the methodology of the
experiment, but not illustrating anything beyond that. A kind of accident or false result, and in a few
celebrated cases, part of a deliberate hoax.
 So Brian was trying to be careful using the word. It was possible that it was no worse than a real result
that happened to be generated in a way that made it useless for their particular purposes. Trying to turn
things that people have learned about biological processes into medicines led to that sort of result. It
happened all the time, and all those experimental results were not necessarily artifacts. They just werenтАЩt
useful facts.

Not yet, anyway. ThatтАЩs why there were so many experiments, and so many stages to the human trials
that had to be so carefully conducted; so many double blind studies, held with as many patients as
possible, to get good statistical data. Hundreds of Swedish nurses, all with the same habits, studied for
half a centuryтАФbut these kinds of powerful long-term studies were very rarely possible. Never, when the
substances being tested were brand-newтАФliterally, in the sense that they were still under patent and had
brand names different from their scientific appellations.

So all the little baby biotechs, and all the start-up pharmaceuticals, paid for the best stage-one studies
they could afford. They scoured the literature, and ran experiments on computers and lab samples, and
then on mice or other lab animals, hunting for data that could be put through a reliable analysis that would
tell them something about how a potential new medicine worked in people. Then the human trials.

It was usually a matter of two to ten years of work, costing anywhere up to five hundred million dollars,