Eighteen months after Okafor's breakthrough, Elena stood in a conference room facing a problem no laboratory protocol could solve. The vaccine research was solid. The pathogenic redirection worked consistently in cellular and animal models. But moving to human trials required something considerably more complicated than scientific data.
"We need volunteers," she said flatly to the assembled ethics committee. "People willing to receive a vaccine against a pathogen that doesn't yet exist in any natural form."
The committee members exchanged uncomfortable glances.
"That's essentially asking people to accept risk of exposure to an engineered bioweapon," one member said. "Informed consent becomes extraordinarily difficult when the threat is theoretical."
"The threat isn't theoretical," Elen
