It was because he'd known her father that he'd come to her small office the previous Wednesday afternoon. It was nearly three years since she'd seen him, since her father's funeral in fact. He'd arrived unannounced at her small office on Birch Street in Stone Bridge, and told her that, just like her father, his father was undergoing chemotherapy, not for the lung cancer that had killed her father, but for Stage 4 colon cancer. In the middle of it all, he'd been told by his oncologist that the supply of Culovort had been drastically cut. Dr. Kender didn't know what she could do to help him, but he'd been trying to pressure Schiffer Hartwin Pharmaceutical to start up full production of Culovort again.

"Culovort isn't a cancer drug, but it's used in conjunction with other chemo drugs for a wide range of cancers," he'd explained to her. "The kicker is that Culovort is critical in treating colon cancer. It's used along with another cancer drug, Fluorouracil, or 5-FU, as it's commonly called. Think of 5-FU as a grenade that masquerades as a component of DNA and explodes inside the cancer cells. Culovort is an accomplice that helps it get past the guards. Without the Culovort, you've got all the toxic poison of 5-FU, but fewer cancer cells getting killed."

He steepled his long thin fingers together, and looked over them as he spoke. "The problem is, Culovort is off patent and therefore it's cheap."

Erin said, "That's a problem? Oh, I see."

Edward Kender nodded. "Schiffer Hartwin Pharmaceutical makes only a negligible profit off it. Without it, the people suffering from colon cancer are the biggest losers, like my father. With no Culovort, they'll be forced to use the new oral drug-Eloxium. Some believe the oral drug is better-but the thing is, Eloxium can cost twenty thousand dollars for the treatment course.