An unprecedented medical mystery: how did U.S. President Paul Ralston become infected with the HIV that developed into AIDS? And what, if anything, should the American public be told? National security and political stability are at stake.
Dr. Martin Riker, an expert retired from CDC and the Army, is urgently summoned to the White House to track down the source of the HIV. His main possibilities: enemy plot, medical accident, extramarital sex, and IV drugs.
He discovers startling intimate behaviors, and accesses confidential government and public health information. To locate sexual contacts, he reluctantly finds ways to obtain names and addresses despite rules supposedly protecting the privacy of patient information. Blood tests and viral DNA analyses help exclude some suspects. Some unusual angles take him beyond the bars of Washington, to Maine and Tokyo.
As the list of possible sources shortens, he is confronted with false evidence being planted, a murder, and a suicide. Finally, Riker pieces together the astounding situation which led to the Commander-in-Chief's infection.
The book ends when President Ralston decides whether the country should be informed of his disease and its source.
About the Author: Dr. Leslie Norins brings 50 years of medical research and medical publishing experience to this novel. Early in his career he served as director of the Venereal Disease Research Laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. He has also authored medical research papers, served on committees of the National institutes of Health and the World Health Organization, and was a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America.
Then he began a 35-year second career as a highly successful publisher of medical newsletters (80) for healthcare professionals. Trade publications called him "legendary" and "the Dean of medical newsletters."
One of his early publications was AIDS Alert, the first periodical to provide expert advice to doctors and nurses caring for AIDS patients, as the epidemic emerged.
Norins received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and his M.D. from Duke University Medical School. His Ph.D. is from the University of Melbourne (Australia), where he studied immunology with the Nobel Prize-winner, Sir Macfarlane Burnet.
A native of Baltimore, he lives in Naples, Florida with his wife.
