Eleventh Hour s01e03 Episode Script
Agro
Help,please! We're in here! Help,please! It's my mom,my dad and my brother.
I got the kid.
- Seizing.
Diaphoretic.
- I don't know what happened.
Are they going to be okay? What's wrong? Paralysis.
I'll go back for the traction board.
There's no time.
The kid just stopped breathing.
He's cyanotic,we got to tube him.
- You have to help them,please! - Both breathing.
Come on now,son.
We're losing him.
Dr.
Hood.
I'm Wallace Bennett, Chief of the Major Investigations Division.
I'm heading the Go Team on this case.
I put in a call to the FBI director to thank him for sending you over here on such short notice.
My people have been over operations, structures,power plants, systems and human performance, but so far,we've got nothing.
We also did a full battery of chemical testing for explosive residue.
Results negative across the board.
We keep mining the same data,but there's something we're missing here and I over and over.
Over and over.
.
Dr.
Hood,we need something Dr.
Hood? Dr.
Hood? Did you hear a word I just said? Ice cream.
Excuse me? Do you have ice cream? And a hot plate.
Vanilla.
Dr.
Hood,what the hell is this all about? The landing gear on this aircraft is directly adjacent to the engine,right? - That's where they tend to put it.
- So after a long flight,it's going to get very hot.
So you bring my entire investigation to a halt just to tell my people that engines get hot? On the night the plane crashed,the temperature on the ground was minus 20 Celsius.
That is way below freezing.
Thermal shock fracture.
Yup.
We tested the hydraulics in the landing gear for extremes, but not for rapid temperature change.
I don't suppose the NTSB could help me get a new watch? I'll give you my damn Rolex.
Oh,that won't be necessary.
Dr.
Hood's employers at the FBI are perfectly capable of reimbursing him for any expenses and/or personal items damaged during the course of an investigation.
Mr.
Bennett, this is Special Agent Rachel Young,my,um I'm his FBI handler.
And we've got somewhere else to be.
Sir.
A family in San Jose,California ate breakfast - approximately 36 hours ago.
- And? And they've been paralyzed ever since.
EMT has brought them in as a triple case of spinal trauma, but we ruled that out right away.
We did a tox screen for botulism and Lyme disease, spinal taps for meningitis.
Negative on all counts.
It has to be poisoning of some kind.
Wrinkle is the daughter ate the same breakfast as the rest of the family,continues to be asymptomatic.
Are you Jacob Hood with the Bureau? He is.
And you are? I'm Agent Morris,FDA.
This is my colleague Agent Wilson with the CDC.
We both requested you.
Thanks for coming in so quickly.
Heard about your work on the hantavirus case last March.
I'd like to hear about your work here,earlier today.
We screened and catalogued the stomach content on all three victims, plus the asymptomatic daughter.
No toxins or bacteria known to lead to paralysis.
The CDC's primary objective is to keep this thing from spreading, while we at the FDA are mainly concerned with the safety of the food chain.
But frankly We're stumped.
Where's the daughter? Emily Stanner,16 years old.
She's in with the police right now.
They think she did this? Well,they don't know what to think.
But,you know there's a case in New Jersey a couple of years back a teenage kid put antifreeze in his parents' iced tea.
Turned out he was pissed off about being grounded.
Listen,Emily,the truth is, lots of kids get angry at their parents.
Look if your folks are mistreating you or abusing you, mentally,emotionally even physically, it could count in your favor.
Tell me the truth about everything you know, and it could go a long way towards helping you out in court later.
Excuse me,uh,but we're busy here, if you don't mind,huh? I do mind.
You shouldn't be in the same room with this patient, not without adequate protection.
What do you mean," protection" ? She's carrying type 5 C-vector airborne virus.
It's highly contagious,no known cure.
Really,no one mentioned this to you? It's okay, as long as you've had no physical contact, it should be fine.
Don't go anywhere.
I'm going to look into this.
Don't worry there's no such thing as a type 5 c-vector.
I said that to scare them off so I could talk to you in private.
My name's Jacob Hood.
I'm kind of the science guy for the FBI.
My family are they going to be okay? Is the same thing gonna happen to me? I don't know.
That's what I'm here to find out.
The police,they think that I didn't do anything to my mom,my dad or my little brother.
I know.
You do? Yeah.
The forensic pathologists,they've been over your house with a fine-toothed comb to find anything that would've caused your family's paralysis.
So if you're a poisoner,you're a very good one.
And I've seen your high school transcripts, and Chemistry,well,you failed it,twice.
So I don't think you're too much of a threat.
What I want to know is,is there anything you can remember that you did differently from your family yesterday morning? Anything at all? No.
All we did was eat breakfast.
Just breakfast.
We've already got forensics.
Want to tell me again why we're here? Any idea,Rachel,how many seemingly innocuous household ingredients could actually kill you? Air freshener? Smells good.
Key ingredient: formaldehyde.
Could cause headaches, nausea,nosebleeds, dizziness,memory loss Margarine? What's poisonous about margarine? The benzoic acid.
Fatally so,if you're allergic to it.
You know the use of the term " nontoxic" is only for advertising.
It has no regulated governmental definition whatsoever.
Well,nothing in here looks all that dangerous.
Be that as it may,we've got a sample size of four subjects, three who ate breakfast and got sick, and one who ate the same breakfast and didn't get sick.
Make that a sample size of five.
Looks like they have a dog.
- Hey,Eddie.
- Hey,Mom.
- Hey,son.
- Brought the mail up.
How about a cold one? Don't mind if I do.
You gonna stay for supper? Sounds like a plan.
What's in the mail? Oh,relax,Mom,it's just bills and junk.
We got it,Bob.
All right.
"Notification of full payment.
" We did it,babe.
We sure did.
Eddie,we paid off the farm.
We need to celebrate.
- Huh.
- Forget the beers, we are opening the champagne tonight.
That's an idea.
You know,about a year ago,we were a hair's breath away from losing the place.
Now it's ours,free and clear.
And we have you to thank for that.
Let's go get some champagne.
Come on.
One of the nice things about dogs is that they're omnivores, just like us humans.
So,Trixie probably just had a little bit of everything the Stanners did.
Poor Trixie.
So why aren't the Stanners dead? Because dogs metabolize toxins much faster than we do.
Look.
Single mass going down the digestive tract into the stomach.
Or up out of the stomach, as the case may be.
What is it? Fungus.
Help! Please! I need help! Emily,your family's bodies have been, uh,colonized by a fungal organisms,kind of like a mold, that's growing inside of them.
And normally the doctors would give them an anti-fungal medication that kill the fungus and allow them to get better.
But you tried that,and it didn't work? Well Mmm.
In this case,um, even though we have killed the-the fungus, the paralysis is still progressing.
So we are trying to find out why that is.
I don't have any other family.
You have to fix them.
This is our fungus.
Take a look.
It's beautiful.
Botrytis cinerea.
It's everywhere.
There're probably spores of it in the air we're breathing right now.
Don't worry it only,uh, grows on plants.
That's why it's on the food inside the dog, but not actually on the dog's tissues itself.
So Trixie ate whatever the family ate.
Mm-hmm.
And we know the family ate plant material fruits and vegetables but we don't know which fruits and/or vegetables were contaminated.
There's our conundrum.
In its natural state, botrytis cinerea is completely harmless to humans.
From the looks of that specimen, I'd say it's been genetically modified.
And it's not harmless anymore.
Care to explain why we're hunting a deadly fungus in a wine shop? Because some winemakers use genetically modified fungus in their product.
And Coppertina Vineyards is one of the world's leading makers of botrytized wine.
Once upon a time in Medieval France,there was a nobleman who liked to oversee every aspect of the winemaking in his domain.
Control freak.
Exactly.
Until one summer,he fell in love.
So he took the fair maiden to his bedchamber.
They pretty much stayed there.
They couldn't wait any longer,so in desperation they picked the molding grapes off the vine and made wine out of what was left.
And? And it was delicious.
So they named this fungus, our little fella, botrytis cinerea or "noble rot",after the nobleman whose great love had unwittingly created such ambrosia.
But botrytized wine making is a gamble with nature.
One too many days of rain or sun, and the whole harvest is worthless.
So why would the winemakers take that risk? Why? Because this bottle of Coppertina's botrytized vintage is $1,500.
The only problem with your botrytis theory is that the Stanners didn't have wine for breakfast.
So how did they get sick? A fungus's spores kind of work like,um this little fella.
Any organism that reproduces by spreading itself over the largest area possible, you'd be a fool to think that just 'cause you put it on one crop that's where it's gonna stay.
So the fungus could be anywhere.
What's wrong with his eyes,Hood? Keratomycosis.
It's an infection of the cornea caused by overexposure to a mycological organism.
English,please.
There is a fungus among us.
And I bet it's on these grapes.
Hey! Todo el mundo a trabajar.
Can't you read? This area's for employees only.
We We just wanted to take a picture.
It's our first vacation.
Oh,will you take it for us? No? Okay.
You want to see the fields, you can pay for the tour in the tasting room.
- Intending? - Of course.
- Yes.
- Thank you.
Come on,honey.
Well,good news,bad news.
Botrytis cinerea on the grapes has been genetically altered, but it's not the same strain that paralyzed the Stanner family the nucleotide sequence is wrong.
Which means we're back to square one.
You don't seem particularly bothered by this.
Well,just because the fungus trail's gone cold doesn't mean the money trail isn't still hot.
I called in a favor at Quantico.
We'll have Coppertina's full financial records no later than tomorrow.
Don't you need a subpoena to look into a privately held company's financial records? Gotta love the Patriot Act.
Damn it,Matty.
Hey,Liz,am I in time for dessert? Oh,Matty,you can't leave your toys Oh,my God! Palo Alto lawyer Sam Sheridan returned home hoping to enjoy a family dinner, but found tragedy waiting instead his wife and two children now in critical condition at Maple Valley hospital.
Now authorities have yet to release an official statement on the cause of the incident, but symptoms are said to match those of a local family who became paralyzed early in the week also following a meal.
Thanks for that report,Laura.
We'll let you know of any further developments regarding this very strange case of possible food contamination.
We'll be right back.
Eddie, I wanted some of that.
Oh.
Sorry,Mom.
I thought you guys were done.
This thing is spreading,Hood.
Uh-huh.
Okay,look, we know that it's a fungus.
We know that it has to be on some kind of produce.
So,why not just get the FDA to issue a mass recall on all fruits and vegetables sold in the affected area? 'Cause it's never going to happen.
Let's be conservative and posit that our fungus is residing on some form of produce within only a 500 mile radius of the Stanner family.
- Okay.
- California agriculture is,what, $32 billion dollar industry.
About 40,000 square miles in the state is farmland.
So, if the FDA were to recall just the produce from our area,that is a loss of $2.
5 billion.
I get that it's a long shot.
But once people figure out that something's wrong Then they'll probably issue some kind of voluntary recall.
They issue warnings and guidelines all the time, but people don't listen anymore.
Like the boy who cried wolf.
The answer has got to be here somewhere.
It's not in there,Hood,it's in here.
It looks as though Coppertina Vineyards transferred $10 million to another company about five years ago.
Do you want to know what happened next? Enlighten me.
Their profits started to skyrocket.
The company they paid was Aeonium Agritech.
Mr.
Cooper,the FBI flagged a transfer of funds between Aeonium and Coppertina Vineyards a couple years back.
Can you tell us what they spent the $10 million on? I'm afraid I can't get into any of that without our legal counsel present.
I understand,Mr.
Cooper,but Well,I'll get into it for you.
It was a botrytis fungus.
It was genetically altered, and now a variant of it is paralyzing people less than 40 miles from here.
You must know,Dr.
Hood,that,uh, anyone involved in fungal biotech uses botrytis as their base organism.
It's common.
It's nontoxic, relatively simple to manipulate.
Uh,any one of our corporate colleagues could have made - what you're looking for.
- I know what you and your corporate colleagues tend to do is you push a little hard, a little bit fast-- you don't really do scientific due diligence,so,uh in the past decade,you've introduced genetically modified product into the market without anything close to the kind of rigorous,long-term testing necessary to guarantee public safety, and now lives are at stake.
So,you think we're moving forward too fast? You want to talk about,uh,lives at stake? See,our products increase yield so that farmers can produce more food for people to eat.
Why don't you ask the millions of people on the verge of starvation in Bangladesh, Niger,Egypt why don't you ask them if we're moving forward too fast? See,you want humanity to keep its food all natural, and that's very poetic, but human beings can't eat poetry.
Without genetic modification, most of the Third World will starve to death within a few months,and the rest of us we won't be far behind.
Your altruism is an example to us all.
Does that apply to the prices you charge the starving nations, or does Aeonium offer some kind of Third World starvation discount? Just curious.
Any more questions,you're gonna need a warrant.
I think we still have those in this country,don't we? You know,if you let me do my job, I could actually help you.
Jason Cooper is everything that is wrong with global agribusiness.
Greed masquerading beneath a thin veneer of lofty idealism.
Which is why you don't confront him head-on.
You stroke him,finesse him,get him to drop his guard,and then you pounce.
Okay,I'm sorry,I apologize.
But we need answers.
This is not the only place we're gonna find them.
I thought this was a public university.
It is.
Welcome to the brave new world of academia,bought and paid for by multi-billion-dollar corporations.
These companies finance the university's labs, and the scientists who work in them, they pay millions of dollars in sponsorship, and in return they get to keep all discoveries the university makes.
So,all of Aeonium's research Is here.
What are they doing? Recording spectra from deep in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, through the visible region, into the near infrared.
No,really,what are they doing? May I? You got the wrong maximum absorbency wavelength.
For pnitrophenol,the machine should be at 410,not 418.
I knew that.
Oh,who's,uh who's been,uh,working with botrytis fungus? Oh,that's,uh that's Professor Altschuler.
Botrytis has been his thing ever since he was an undergrad at Cal Tech.
Looks good-- who's his underwriter? Aeonium.
Well,we're here with the FBI.
And,uh, I'd kind of like to talk to Professor Altschuler.
Yeah.
Sure I mean,if you can find him.
What do you mean? He's MIA.
He hasn't been into work all week, and he's not returning his phone calls,either.
Not gonna get tenure slacking off like that.
No.
Mr.
Cooper,Karl Altschuler is here.
I told him you were busy,but This is why we stopped.
This is what we thought could happen.
I read that.
Calm down,Karl.
I won't calm down! People are dying because you restarted the project against my explicit recommendation.
And I followed your recommendation, and I shut that research down.
My name is all over this research,Jason.
This isn't connected.
It's in the records.
It just can't be.
It is,and you know it.
Be very careful,Karl.
You have a career to think about.
And if you start telling everybody that Aeonium is involved in this,well an accusation is just as good as a guilty verdict in this day and age.
And it's just as dangerous,too.
For you.
For all of us.
For all of us,Karl.
Karl! Altschuler last swiped his credit card here.
Patriot Act again? You're lucky I'm not tempted to abuse my powers.
This should be it.
Professor Altschuler? Professor Altschuler,it's the FBI.
Let's try this.
He's dead.
Drug overdose? I'll call the police.
Fascinating.
That's got the thickened tail of the Androctonus crassicauda,but the size and coloring of the Leiurus quinquestriatus.
But it's a scorpion.
Yeah,it's a scorpion.
But it's no species I've ever seen before.
I expect a geneticist of Altschuler's caliber would be more than able to engineer a hybrid.
So,what are you,a bug expert,too? It's not a bug; it's an arachnid.
And no,I'm no expert.
Someone very close to me was,um,involved in an experimental brain cancer treatment that used scorpion venom.
It was your wife right? I I know she died of cancer two years ago.
Yeah,it was quite a promising treatment,actually,but,um unfortunately,not quite on time.
I'm sorry,Hood.
This wasn't drug related.
This was an overdose of scorpion venom.
The thing about scorpions is they don't go for humans.
They go for insects.
That's it.
It's a pesticide.
What? Oh,my God,it's brilliant.
Scorpion venom is made to paralyze insects.
If Altschuler could take the botrytis fungus and combine it with the scorpion venom, he would have a totally organic pesticide.
To spray on the produce to kill insects with the venom? And that is what has been paralyzing our victims.
No bite marks or stings.
And nobody's going to be checking for scorpion venom because the only deadly scorpions native to the U.
S.
are in the Arizona desert.
What I don't understand is why the venom was released in our victims when it's only supposed to attack insects.
Or why it affected everyone in the Stanner family except for Emily.
We've got the bullet,but we don't have the trigger.
No but we have something else.
Poor bastard.
He was trying to atone for the mess he made.
But to make enough antibodies to produce a scorpion antivenin, he'd have to endure sting after sting.
Let's just hope the dose that killed him was enough to turn his blood into a cure.
Dr.
Richards has the hospital toxicologist working on synthesizing an antivenin from Altschuler's blood.
We'll just have to wait and see.
You hungry? No,I'm fine.
Hood,you should eat something.
You call that eating? I know,the sweet tooth.
You could've just asked.
This is it; this is the trigger.
My candy? You know what's in this? "Licoricey" goodness? Insects.
Carmine.
It's a red food coloring made from a South American beetle.
I'm suddenly in the mood for some fresh produce.
Have you had breakfast yet,Mr.
Cooper? Strawberries,maybe? Rachel,what did the Stanners have for breakfast? Corn flakes,pancakes,fruit salad grapefruit juice? Pink grapefruit juice made with carmine.
And the fruit salad probably contained fungus from your pesticide.
The Sheridan family.
Oh,the Sheridan family, they ate any number of fruits and vegetables for dinner.
Finished with red velvet cake,carmine red.
It's a synergy effect.
See,the fungus, it attacks the insect proteins.
It doesn't know they've already been eaten by a human.
So the fungus is the loaded gun, and the food coloring containing the insect proteins is the trigger.
Around two years and several million dollars into the project, we decided that the end product wasn't viable anymore.
You see,when we fed our test animals food which was dusted with the,uh,pesticide,see,most of them were fine.
Except for one.
Which was paralyzed.
I mean,we did everything by the book, you know,for a phase three trial.
The test sample sizes, genetic lines,everything.
And I thought it was just some kind of anomaly, but Altschuler,of course,he was obsessed, so he,he did a culture of the dead animal's body, ran all kinds of tests and And that's when he discovered the fatal synergy.
We stopped the project before it went any further.
We sent what was left to a biowaste disposal facility, and that was that.
Until now.
You should have contacted the authorities the minute you suspected something.
If those people die,it's negligent homicide.
No,uh,you got to believe me here.
I have all the paperwork on file, uh,all of our waste goes to a federally licensed disposal facility just east of here.
It's a 45-minute drive.
All right,all right! Nice and easy! Two-three-five- eight- seven-zero-one.
This one checks out.
- Where are the rest? - That's it! Ground radar confirms we got ten tanks of pesticides.
There should be 14.
We're going to have to question all these workers, anyone whose had access to the disposal field in the past 12 months.
Hood,car! Where are the four missing canisters of Aeonium pesticide? People are going to die! - Tell me! - O-Okay Okay! I-I gave them to my dad.
I just wanted to help him out a little, that's all! And it did! Rachel Sir! Put the can down! You get away.
My boy called me and told me to burn the fields.
That's exactly what I'm doing.
People are sick because you put Aeonium pesticides in your crops.
You put the lives of every person who ate produce from your farm at serious risk.
By burning your fields, there's a very good chance you're going to spread whatever organism made those people sick to the neighboring farms.
You see those fields over there? Monsanto.
You see these fields over here? Crops all the way to the base of those mountains? That's Dole.
When my father's father settled this land,it was small family farms for as far as the eye could see.
Now,we're the only ones left.
Drop it,now.
Last year we almost lost this place.
Yeah,when we planted the new crop my boy called me and he said, "Dad," he says,"I got something that we can put on the crops "that'll really make a difference.
" So we put it on there.
We used it,yes,sir.
Now,I knew where it come from.
It worked so good,I didn question it.
Well,maybe you should have.
That's the state police.
It's over,sir.
Well,I'll,uh I'll,I'll go with you.
I'm sorry about what we did.
I'm real sorry.
Mom,Dad,this is Dr.
Hood.
He's the only one that believed I wasn't trying to poison you guys.
Thank you.
Oh,don't mention it.
I'm just glad the scorpion antivenin worked.
But Emily still needs to see a chemistry tutor.
We were lucky.
Fungus tends to mutate really quickly.
Sooner or later,there'd be a hardier strain and way more people would've been at risk.
Guess I'm going to have to look at my food labels more closely from now on.
Uh,natural coloring.
So,you're saying that's just bugs,huh? Maybe,maybe not.
According to the FDA as long as it's "natural" it could be anything.
Green food coloring,on the other hand, is a petroleum derived triphenylmethane.
Nothing natural about it.
Yummy.
I got the kid.
- Seizing.
Diaphoretic.
- I don't know what happened.
Are they going to be okay? What's wrong? Paralysis.
I'll go back for the traction board.
There's no time.
The kid just stopped breathing.
He's cyanotic,we got to tube him.
- You have to help them,please! - Both breathing.
Come on now,son.
We're losing him.
Dr.
Hood.
I'm Wallace Bennett, Chief of the Major Investigations Division.
I'm heading the Go Team on this case.
I put in a call to the FBI director to thank him for sending you over here on such short notice.
My people have been over operations, structures,power plants, systems and human performance, but so far,we've got nothing.
We also did a full battery of chemical testing for explosive residue.
Results negative across the board.
We keep mining the same data,but there's something we're missing here and I over and over.
Over and over.
.
Dr.
Hood,we need something Dr.
Hood? Dr.
Hood? Did you hear a word I just said? Ice cream.
Excuse me? Do you have ice cream? And a hot plate.
Vanilla.
Dr.
Hood,what the hell is this all about? The landing gear on this aircraft is directly adjacent to the engine,right? - That's where they tend to put it.
- So after a long flight,it's going to get very hot.
So you bring my entire investigation to a halt just to tell my people that engines get hot? On the night the plane crashed,the temperature on the ground was minus 20 Celsius.
That is way below freezing.
Thermal shock fracture.
Yup.
We tested the hydraulics in the landing gear for extremes, but not for rapid temperature change.
I don't suppose the NTSB could help me get a new watch? I'll give you my damn Rolex.
Oh,that won't be necessary.
Dr.
Hood's employers at the FBI are perfectly capable of reimbursing him for any expenses and/or personal items damaged during the course of an investigation.
Mr.
Bennett, this is Special Agent Rachel Young,my,um I'm his FBI handler.
And we've got somewhere else to be.
Sir.
A family in San Jose,California ate breakfast - approximately 36 hours ago.
- And? And they've been paralyzed ever since.
EMT has brought them in as a triple case of spinal trauma, but we ruled that out right away.
We did a tox screen for botulism and Lyme disease, spinal taps for meningitis.
Negative on all counts.
It has to be poisoning of some kind.
Wrinkle is the daughter ate the same breakfast as the rest of the family,continues to be asymptomatic.
Are you Jacob Hood with the Bureau? He is.
And you are? I'm Agent Morris,FDA.
This is my colleague Agent Wilson with the CDC.
We both requested you.
Thanks for coming in so quickly.
Heard about your work on the hantavirus case last March.
I'd like to hear about your work here,earlier today.
We screened and catalogued the stomach content on all three victims, plus the asymptomatic daughter.
No toxins or bacteria known to lead to paralysis.
The CDC's primary objective is to keep this thing from spreading, while we at the FDA are mainly concerned with the safety of the food chain.
But frankly We're stumped.
Where's the daughter? Emily Stanner,16 years old.
She's in with the police right now.
They think she did this? Well,they don't know what to think.
But,you know there's a case in New Jersey a couple of years back a teenage kid put antifreeze in his parents' iced tea.
Turned out he was pissed off about being grounded.
Listen,Emily,the truth is, lots of kids get angry at their parents.
Look if your folks are mistreating you or abusing you, mentally,emotionally even physically, it could count in your favor.
Tell me the truth about everything you know, and it could go a long way towards helping you out in court later.
Excuse me,uh,but we're busy here, if you don't mind,huh? I do mind.
You shouldn't be in the same room with this patient, not without adequate protection.
What do you mean," protection" ? She's carrying type 5 C-vector airborne virus.
It's highly contagious,no known cure.
Really,no one mentioned this to you? It's okay, as long as you've had no physical contact, it should be fine.
Don't go anywhere.
I'm going to look into this.
Don't worry there's no such thing as a type 5 c-vector.
I said that to scare them off so I could talk to you in private.
My name's Jacob Hood.
I'm kind of the science guy for the FBI.
My family are they going to be okay? Is the same thing gonna happen to me? I don't know.
That's what I'm here to find out.
The police,they think that I didn't do anything to my mom,my dad or my little brother.
I know.
You do? Yeah.
The forensic pathologists,they've been over your house with a fine-toothed comb to find anything that would've caused your family's paralysis.
So if you're a poisoner,you're a very good one.
And I've seen your high school transcripts, and Chemistry,well,you failed it,twice.
So I don't think you're too much of a threat.
What I want to know is,is there anything you can remember that you did differently from your family yesterday morning? Anything at all? No.
All we did was eat breakfast.
Just breakfast.
We've already got forensics.
Want to tell me again why we're here? Any idea,Rachel,how many seemingly innocuous household ingredients could actually kill you? Air freshener? Smells good.
Key ingredient: formaldehyde.
Could cause headaches, nausea,nosebleeds, dizziness,memory loss Margarine? What's poisonous about margarine? The benzoic acid.
Fatally so,if you're allergic to it.
You know the use of the term " nontoxic" is only for advertising.
It has no regulated governmental definition whatsoever.
Well,nothing in here looks all that dangerous.
Be that as it may,we've got a sample size of four subjects, three who ate breakfast and got sick, and one who ate the same breakfast and didn't get sick.
Make that a sample size of five.
Looks like they have a dog.
- Hey,Eddie.
- Hey,Mom.
- Hey,son.
- Brought the mail up.
How about a cold one? Don't mind if I do.
You gonna stay for supper? Sounds like a plan.
What's in the mail? Oh,relax,Mom,it's just bills and junk.
We got it,Bob.
All right.
"Notification of full payment.
" We did it,babe.
We sure did.
Eddie,we paid off the farm.
We need to celebrate.
- Huh.
- Forget the beers, we are opening the champagne tonight.
That's an idea.
You know,about a year ago,we were a hair's breath away from losing the place.
Now it's ours,free and clear.
And we have you to thank for that.
Let's go get some champagne.
Come on.
One of the nice things about dogs is that they're omnivores, just like us humans.
So,Trixie probably just had a little bit of everything the Stanners did.
Poor Trixie.
So why aren't the Stanners dead? Because dogs metabolize toxins much faster than we do.
Look.
Single mass going down the digestive tract into the stomach.
Or up out of the stomach, as the case may be.
What is it? Fungus.
Help! Please! I need help! Emily,your family's bodies have been, uh,colonized by a fungal organisms,kind of like a mold, that's growing inside of them.
And normally the doctors would give them an anti-fungal medication that kill the fungus and allow them to get better.
But you tried that,and it didn't work? Well Mmm.
In this case,um, even though we have killed the-the fungus, the paralysis is still progressing.
So we are trying to find out why that is.
I don't have any other family.
You have to fix them.
This is our fungus.
Take a look.
It's beautiful.
Botrytis cinerea.
It's everywhere.
There're probably spores of it in the air we're breathing right now.
Don't worry it only,uh, grows on plants.
That's why it's on the food inside the dog, but not actually on the dog's tissues itself.
So Trixie ate whatever the family ate.
Mm-hmm.
And we know the family ate plant material fruits and vegetables but we don't know which fruits and/or vegetables were contaminated.
There's our conundrum.
In its natural state, botrytis cinerea is completely harmless to humans.
From the looks of that specimen, I'd say it's been genetically modified.
And it's not harmless anymore.
Care to explain why we're hunting a deadly fungus in a wine shop? Because some winemakers use genetically modified fungus in their product.
And Coppertina Vineyards is one of the world's leading makers of botrytized wine.
Once upon a time in Medieval France,there was a nobleman who liked to oversee every aspect of the winemaking in his domain.
Control freak.
Exactly.
Until one summer,he fell in love.
So he took the fair maiden to his bedchamber.
They pretty much stayed there.
They couldn't wait any longer,so in desperation they picked the molding grapes off the vine and made wine out of what was left.
And? And it was delicious.
So they named this fungus, our little fella, botrytis cinerea or "noble rot",after the nobleman whose great love had unwittingly created such ambrosia.
But botrytized wine making is a gamble with nature.
One too many days of rain or sun, and the whole harvest is worthless.
So why would the winemakers take that risk? Why? Because this bottle of Coppertina's botrytized vintage is $1,500.
The only problem with your botrytis theory is that the Stanners didn't have wine for breakfast.
So how did they get sick? A fungus's spores kind of work like,um this little fella.
Any organism that reproduces by spreading itself over the largest area possible, you'd be a fool to think that just 'cause you put it on one crop that's where it's gonna stay.
So the fungus could be anywhere.
What's wrong with his eyes,Hood? Keratomycosis.
It's an infection of the cornea caused by overexposure to a mycological organism.
English,please.
There is a fungus among us.
And I bet it's on these grapes.
Hey! Todo el mundo a trabajar.
Can't you read? This area's for employees only.
We We just wanted to take a picture.
It's our first vacation.
Oh,will you take it for us? No? Okay.
You want to see the fields, you can pay for the tour in the tasting room.
- Intending? - Of course.
- Yes.
- Thank you.
Come on,honey.
Well,good news,bad news.
Botrytis cinerea on the grapes has been genetically altered, but it's not the same strain that paralyzed the Stanner family the nucleotide sequence is wrong.
Which means we're back to square one.
You don't seem particularly bothered by this.
Well,just because the fungus trail's gone cold doesn't mean the money trail isn't still hot.
I called in a favor at Quantico.
We'll have Coppertina's full financial records no later than tomorrow.
Don't you need a subpoena to look into a privately held company's financial records? Gotta love the Patriot Act.
Damn it,Matty.
Hey,Liz,am I in time for dessert? Oh,Matty,you can't leave your toys Oh,my God! Palo Alto lawyer Sam Sheridan returned home hoping to enjoy a family dinner, but found tragedy waiting instead his wife and two children now in critical condition at Maple Valley hospital.
Now authorities have yet to release an official statement on the cause of the incident, but symptoms are said to match those of a local family who became paralyzed early in the week also following a meal.
Thanks for that report,Laura.
We'll let you know of any further developments regarding this very strange case of possible food contamination.
We'll be right back.
Eddie, I wanted some of that.
Oh.
Sorry,Mom.
I thought you guys were done.
This thing is spreading,Hood.
Uh-huh.
Okay,look, we know that it's a fungus.
We know that it has to be on some kind of produce.
So,why not just get the FDA to issue a mass recall on all fruits and vegetables sold in the affected area? 'Cause it's never going to happen.
Let's be conservative and posit that our fungus is residing on some form of produce within only a 500 mile radius of the Stanner family.
- Okay.
- California agriculture is,what, $32 billion dollar industry.
About 40,000 square miles in the state is farmland.
So, if the FDA were to recall just the produce from our area,that is a loss of $2.
5 billion.
I get that it's a long shot.
But once people figure out that something's wrong Then they'll probably issue some kind of voluntary recall.
They issue warnings and guidelines all the time, but people don't listen anymore.
Like the boy who cried wolf.
The answer has got to be here somewhere.
It's not in there,Hood,it's in here.
It looks as though Coppertina Vineyards transferred $10 million to another company about five years ago.
Do you want to know what happened next? Enlighten me.
Their profits started to skyrocket.
The company they paid was Aeonium Agritech.
Mr.
Cooper,the FBI flagged a transfer of funds between Aeonium and Coppertina Vineyards a couple years back.
Can you tell us what they spent the $10 million on? I'm afraid I can't get into any of that without our legal counsel present.
I understand,Mr.
Cooper,but Well,I'll get into it for you.
It was a botrytis fungus.
It was genetically altered, and now a variant of it is paralyzing people less than 40 miles from here.
You must know,Dr.
Hood,that,uh, anyone involved in fungal biotech uses botrytis as their base organism.
It's common.
It's nontoxic, relatively simple to manipulate.
Uh,any one of our corporate colleagues could have made - what you're looking for.
- I know what you and your corporate colleagues tend to do is you push a little hard, a little bit fast-- you don't really do scientific due diligence,so,uh in the past decade,you've introduced genetically modified product into the market without anything close to the kind of rigorous,long-term testing necessary to guarantee public safety, and now lives are at stake.
So,you think we're moving forward too fast? You want to talk about,uh,lives at stake? See,our products increase yield so that farmers can produce more food for people to eat.
Why don't you ask the millions of people on the verge of starvation in Bangladesh, Niger,Egypt why don't you ask them if we're moving forward too fast? See,you want humanity to keep its food all natural, and that's very poetic, but human beings can't eat poetry.
Without genetic modification, most of the Third World will starve to death within a few months,and the rest of us we won't be far behind.
Your altruism is an example to us all.
Does that apply to the prices you charge the starving nations, or does Aeonium offer some kind of Third World starvation discount? Just curious.
Any more questions,you're gonna need a warrant.
I think we still have those in this country,don't we? You know,if you let me do my job, I could actually help you.
Jason Cooper is everything that is wrong with global agribusiness.
Greed masquerading beneath a thin veneer of lofty idealism.
Which is why you don't confront him head-on.
You stroke him,finesse him,get him to drop his guard,and then you pounce.
Okay,I'm sorry,I apologize.
But we need answers.
This is not the only place we're gonna find them.
I thought this was a public university.
It is.
Welcome to the brave new world of academia,bought and paid for by multi-billion-dollar corporations.
These companies finance the university's labs, and the scientists who work in them, they pay millions of dollars in sponsorship, and in return they get to keep all discoveries the university makes.
So,all of Aeonium's research Is here.
What are they doing? Recording spectra from deep in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, through the visible region, into the near infrared.
No,really,what are they doing? May I? You got the wrong maximum absorbency wavelength.
For pnitrophenol,the machine should be at 410,not 418.
I knew that.
Oh,who's,uh who's been,uh,working with botrytis fungus? Oh,that's,uh that's Professor Altschuler.
Botrytis has been his thing ever since he was an undergrad at Cal Tech.
Looks good-- who's his underwriter? Aeonium.
Well,we're here with the FBI.
And,uh, I'd kind of like to talk to Professor Altschuler.
Yeah.
Sure I mean,if you can find him.
What do you mean? He's MIA.
He hasn't been into work all week, and he's not returning his phone calls,either.
Not gonna get tenure slacking off like that.
No.
Mr.
Cooper,Karl Altschuler is here.
I told him you were busy,but This is why we stopped.
This is what we thought could happen.
I read that.
Calm down,Karl.
I won't calm down! People are dying because you restarted the project against my explicit recommendation.
And I followed your recommendation, and I shut that research down.
My name is all over this research,Jason.
This isn't connected.
It's in the records.
It just can't be.
It is,and you know it.
Be very careful,Karl.
You have a career to think about.
And if you start telling everybody that Aeonium is involved in this,well an accusation is just as good as a guilty verdict in this day and age.
And it's just as dangerous,too.
For you.
For all of us.
For all of us,Karl.
Karl! Altschuler last swiped his credit card here.
Patriot Act again? You're lucky I'm not tempted to abuse my powers.
This should be it.
Professor Altschuler? Professor Altschuler,it's the FBI.
Let's try this.
He's dead.
Drug overdose? I'll call the police.
Fascinating.
That's got the thickened tail of the Androctonus crassicauda,but the size and coloring of the Leiurus quinquestriatus.
But it's a scorpion.
Yeah,it's a scorpion.
But it's no species I've ever seen before.
I expect a geneticist of Altschuler's caliber would be more than able to engineer a hybrid.
So,what are you,a bug expert,too? It's not a bug; it's an arachnid.
And no,I'm no expert.
Someone very close to me was,um,involved in an experimental brain cancer treatment that used scorpion venom.
It was your wife right? I I know she died of cancer two years ago.
Yeah,it was quite a promising treatment,actually,but,um unfortunately,not quite on time.
I'm sorry,Hood.
This wasn't drug related.
This was an overdose of scorpion venom.
The thing about scorpions is they don't go for humans.
They go for insects.
That's it.
It's a pesticide.
What? Oh,my God,it's brilliant.
Scorpion venom is made to paralyze insects.
If Altschuler could take the botrytis fungus and combine it with the scorpion venom, he would have a totally organic pesticide.
To spray on the produce to kill insects with the venom? And that is what has been paralyzing our victims.
No bite marks or stings.
And nobody's going to be checking for scorpion venom because the only deadly scorpions native to the U.
S.
are in the Arizona desert.
What I don't understand is why the venom was released in our victims when it's only supposed to attack insects.
Or why it affected everyone in the Stanner family except for Emily.
We've got the bullet,but we don't have the trigger.
No but we have something else.
Poor bastard.
He was trying to atone for the mess he made.
But to make enough antibodies to produce a scorpion antivenin, he'd have to endure sting after sting.
Let's just hope the dose that killed him was enough to turn his blood into a cure.
Dr.
Richards has the hospital toxicologist working on synthesizing an antivenin from Altschuler's blood.
We'll just have to wait and see.
You hungry? No,I'm fine.
Hood,you should eat something.
You call that eating? I know,the sweet tooth.
You could've just asked.
This is it; this is the trigger.
My candy? You know what's in this? "Licoricey" goodness? Insects.
Carmine.
It's a red food coloring made from a South American beetle.
I'm suddenly in the mood for some fresh produce.
Have you had breakfast yet,Mr.
Cooper? Strawberries,maybe? Rachel,what did the Stanners have for breakfast? Corn flakes,pancakes,fruit salad grapefruit juice? Pink grapefruit juice made with carmine.
And the fruit salad probably contained fungus from your pesticide.
The Sheridan family.
Oh,the Sheridan family, they ate any number of fruits and vegetables for dinner.
Finished with red velvet cake,carmine red.
It's a synergy effect.
See,the fungus, it attacks the insect proteins.
It doesn't know they've already been eaten by a human.
So the fungus is the loaded gun, and the food coloring containing the insect proteins is the trigger.
Around two years and several million dollars into the project, we decided that the end product wasn't viable anymore.
You see,when we fed our test animals food which was dusted with the,uh,pesticide,see,most of them were fine.
Except for one.
Which was paralyzed.
I mean,we did everything by the book, you know,for a phase three trial.
The test sample sizes, genetic lines,everything.
And I thought it was just some kind of anomaly, but Altschuler,of course,he was obsessed, so he,he did a culture of the dead animal's body, ran all kinds of tests and And that's when he discovered the fatal synergy.
We stopped the project before it went any further.
We sent what was left to a biowaste disposal facility, and that was that.
Until now.
You should have contacted the authorities the minute you suspected something.
If those people die,it's negligent homicide.
No,uh,you got to believe me here.
I have all the paperwork on file, uh,all of our waste goes to a federally licensed disposal facility just east of here.
It's a 45-minute drive.
All right,all right! Nice and easy! Two-three-five- eight- seven-zero-one.
This one checks out.
- Where are the rest? - That's it! Ground radar confirms we got ten tanks of pesticides.
There should be 14.
We're going to have to question all these workers, anyone whose had access to the disposal field in the past 12 months.
Hood,car! Where are the four missing canisters of Aeonium pesticide? People are going to die! - Tell me! - O-Okay Okay! I-I gave them to my dad.
I just wanted to help him out a little, that's all! And it did! Rachel Sir! Put the can down! You get away.
My boy called me and told me to burn the fields.
That's exactly what I'm doing.
People are sick because you put Aeonium pesticides in your crops.
You put the lives of every person who ate produce from your farm at serious risk.
By burning your fields, there's a very good chance you're going to spread whatever organism made those people sick to the neighboring farms.
You see those fields over there? Monsanto.
You see these fields over here? Crops all the way to the base of those mountains? That's Dole.
When my father's father settled this land,it was small family farms for as far as the eye could see.
Now,we're the only ones left.
Drop it,now.
Last year we almost lost this place.
Yeah,when we planted the new crop my boy called me and he said, "Dad," he says,"I got something that we can put on the crops "that'll really make a difference.
" So we put it on there.
We used it,yes,sir.
Now,I knew where it come from.
It worked so good,I didn question it.
Well,maybe you should have.
That's the state police.
It's over,sir.
Well,I'll,uh I'll,I'll go with you.
I'm sorry about what we did.
I'm real sorry.
Mom,Dad,this is Dr.
Hood.
He's the only one that believed I wasn't trying to poison you guys.
Thank you.
Oh,don't mention it.
I'm just glad the scorpion antivenin worked.
But Emily still needs to see a chemistry tutor.
We were lucky.
Fungus tends to mutate really quickly.
Sooner or later,there'd be a hardier strain and way more people would've been at risk.
Guess I'm going to have to look at my food labels more closely from now on.
Uh,natural coloring.
So,you're saying that's just bugs,huh? Maybe,maybe not.
According to the FDA as long as it's "natural" it could be anything.
Green food coloring,on the other hand, is a petroleum derived triphenylmethane.
Nothing natural about it.
Yummy.