Tainted blood

The science of denail

In windowless basements beneath the universities,

machines hummed like obedient lies.

Test tubes clinked softly,

each containing a story too small to be heard.

White-coated figures hovered over microscopes,

searching for clarity inside chaos,

for innocence inside infection.

They found data.

They found patterns.

They found ways to explain away the obvious.

They published papers,

peer-reviewed and footnoted,

that turned human agony into manageable margins.

Graphs rose and fell like heartbeats.

Percentages were crafted carefully—

small enough to calm investors,

large enough to seem concerned.

The language of science became

a fortress of syllables.

Seroconversion.

Vector contamination.

Non-compliant donors.

Each term another layer of distance

between the researcher and the ruined.

A handful of dissenters tried to speak.

They carried slides of blood like lanterns,

saying Look, the truth is right here.

But the institutions closed ranks.

The funding threatened to dry up.

The conference invitations stopped coming.

And truth, without audience,

It's just a whisper in a storm.

So the silence deepened.

Memos were shredded.

Results delayed.

Entire trials reclassified as “inconclusive.”

And somewhere in the corridors of power,

a phrase was born—

acceptable loss.

That was the phrase that justified everything.

The deaths, the denials, the long years of nothing.

The scientists used it like prayer,

a mantra to survive their own reflection.

They convinced themselves that knowledge

would one day redeem the damage.

That was when the cure arrived,

It would wash away the stain of what was done.

But knowledge without conscience

It isn't only arithmetic.

It counts the dead,

but does not mourn them.

It finds new ways to measure decay,

but not to heal it.

And so the laboratories kept their rhythm—

centrifuges spinning,

records sealed,

while outside,

The rain struck the hospital windows

like an endless knocking,

asking to be let in.