Ginny proceeded to talk about the rapid developments already accomplished for stem cell maturation into specific cell lines by researchers around the world. “The next step would be to turn these cells into organs or organ-like apparatuses by a process called organogenesis. This work is going on in Russia, in China, in Germany, but it’s having the most success at Columbia University with Doctors Rothman and Yamamoto. Rumor has it that these two researchers have already formed whole organs, which have been transplanted back into the mice that donated the cells from which the organs were formed. Supposedly in the next month or so there’s going to be an article in Nature about it with all the supporting data. Apparently they have had such success that they’ve already requested clearance from the FDA to do it on a human. They’re waiting for FDA clearance for the next step,” said Ginny.

“And when might that happen?” asked Edmund.

“I did talk to one scientist friend last night,” Ginny said. “He told me no one knows, but the best guess is in the next couple of months.”

“As far as the business angle on this, the numbers strongly suggest that partial remedy would be provided in circumstances like this if the party holding the policies were to raise capital immediately as a hedge against this newly raised eventuality.” Henry was taking over in the hope of wrapping up the meeting. Edmund’s fuse was getting shorter by the minute, he could tell. Henry was now practically reading verbatim from a script.

“We already ran revenue models for you based on the idea of securitizing tranches of life insurance policies, and while it’s difficult to build into the models the prospect of degraded assets, in the final report there will be a recommendation that the securitization proceed immediately and that a significant portion of the funds obtained be set aside to satisfy premiums on those policies that will have to be carried longer than expected. As far as additional life settlements, it would make sense to buy only those life settlements involving individuals with clearly terminal illnesses like metastatic cancer . . . ALS . . . things like that.”

The list was a lot longer but Henry’s distaste had finally got the better of him.

Edmund thought that all this meeting had done was to confirm what Gloria Croft had told them less than twenty-four hours earlier. It figured: Gloria was one of the best analysts he ever had. And she knew about this before he did. Edmund was confounded by the fact that his great moneymaking scheme could be jeopardized by two geeks he’d never heard of.

“Let me ask you a question,” he growled at Ginny. “You find this research and you find a scientist to call in the evening who says the FDA is going to green-light this project that could revolutionize medicine or whatever. So why am I not reading about this in The New York Times?”