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CHAPTER SIXTY

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?


Philadelphia, PA—The American Kennel Club announced today that its annual dog show will resume next year on Thanksgiving Day. The beloved event, which had been on hiatus since the onset of the canine epidemic, will include sixteen of the world’s most popular breeds and feature entries from around the world. Dog lovers everywhere celebrated the news.

“This is a dream come true. It really is,” said Katherine Oliver, a two-time category winner who specializes in German shepherds. “I’d just about given up hope.”

The event will be sponsored by Bingham Pharmaceuticals, whose biologic drug canuzimab received approval last month to treat the devastating canine facial tumor disease (CFTD). Hundreds of breeders have already received the drug and permission to administer it under compassionate-use exemptions. The reports thus far have supported an almost complete protective effect when delivered in the first sixty days of a dog’s life. With these encouraging results, breeders have taken their mating pairs out of expensive “clean facility” vivariums and brought them home to encourage, well, rapid production.

“We have a waiting list a mile long,” said one breeder, who declined to give his name.

Meanwhile, conservation agencies have begun delivering canuzimab to the few remaining gray wolf populations that have survived in the wild using specially baited “traps.” Experts caution, however, that the recovery of wild animal populations affected by CFTD will be measured in years, not days.

Recoveries in financial markets, however, have been rapid. Animal supply companies reported their best quarter in three years as investors jumped to capitalize on what is certain to be a booming market. On the other end of the pendulum, stocks of companies in the so-called dog replacement sector continue their sharp decline. Leading them is the Build-A-Dragon Company, a legacy of the late inventor Simon Redwood, whose board voted last week to remove Robert Greaves as CEO. He was replaced by Evelyn Chang, who headed the company’s genetic engineering team.

Dr. Chang admits that demand for some of their production models had diminished. “Even so, there are a number of niche markets where a dragon still holds tremendous appeal,” she said.

The bevy of good news has largely overshadowed a still-unresolved mystery. How did a “record-keeping error” cause one of the country’s leading pharmaceutical companies to misplace critical subjects from their efficacy trial? Where were they kept, and how did this serious mistake come to light? There is much to celebrate, but this reporter would still very much like to know.

Who let the dogs out?



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Framed