Tree of Life--Behind the Scenes
July 28, 2010
Escapism is part of the reason I write. I write what I would want to read. I forgot how I stumbled onto the topic, but I found an article about a drug company (who, upon additional research looks to no longer be in business), who was using a maverick approach to attacking tumors in cancer.
Without making you go COMPLETELY cross eyed at the logistic and physiology of it, the basis of their research and phase IV clinical trials were as such: they discovered an ingredient from a tree that, when manipulated, would attack the unformed "stem cell" blood vessel walls of tumor cells, which would make them collapse and starve them of blood. This would then kill the tumor and reverse the cancer.
I guess, since beginning the outline of this story, their phase IV trials didn't go so well and they never went public.
But, makes for a good story, yes? Hence, The Tree of Life. I know that alone, while very interesting to some, does not generally appeal to a mass market. So I threw in some crazy conflict action and a war-torn landscape.
In doing research on the Congo, the backdrop of the story, the jungle and all its secrets becomes another character in the book. Its beauty, its diversity, its shrouded mystery all has an allure of its own. But in this research, I also discovered horrors. Horrors against mankind and horrors against nature. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in our glass bubbles that we forget that there is a world out there, one that isn't ever discussed in the media--not Sudan or Darfur, or even the raging bloody politics of the Congo, but that under all of that, there is a quiet terror of a third world country. Cut off, without hope and barely hanging on for survival. So remote, and so dense and deep is the Congo there are tribes of people never having contact with the modern world and their world, as much in a bubble as we sometimes are, is threatened. Threatened of dying out without ever passing on their wisdoms of survival.
This is what made me write about the Congo. To intertwine these threads and plant seeds of curiosity while yarning an entertaining story.
Some aspects of the story, the layers, if you will, are based on fact. The Caffrum Tree, its cancer curing contribution, a pharmaceutical company looking to capitalize on a third-world country's vulnerability, and those who would take advantage of some very valuable Americans for leverage--and have.
Without making you go COMPLETELY cross eyed at the logistic and physiology of it, the basis of their research and phase IV clinical trials were as such: they discovered an ingredient from a tree that, when manipulated, would attack the unformed "stem cell" blood vessel walls of tumor cells, which would make them collapse and starve them of blood. This would then kill the tumor and reverse the cancer.
I guess, since beginning the outline of this story, their phase IV trials didn't go so well and they never went public.
But, makes for a good story, yes? Hence, The Tree of Life. I know that alone, while very interesting to some, does not generally appeal to a mass market. So I threw in some crazy conflict action and a war-torn landscape.
In doing research on the Congo, the backdrop of the story, the jungle and all its secrets becomes another character in the book. Its beauty, its diversity, its shrouded mystery all has an allure of its own. But in this research, I also discovered horrors. Horrors against mankind and horrors against nature. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in our glass bubbles that we forget that there is a world out there, one that isn't ever discussed in the media--not Sudan or Darfur, or even the raging bloody politics of the Congo, but that under all of that, there is a quiet terror of a third world country. Cut off, without hope and barely hanging on for survival. So remote, and so dense and deep is the Congo there are tribes of people never having contact with the modern world and their world, as much in a bubble as we sometimes are, is threatened. Threatened of dying out without ever passing on their wisdoms of survival.
This is what made me write about the Congo. To intertwine these threads and plant seeds of curiosity while yarning an entertaining story.
Some aspects of the story, the layers, if you will, are based on fact. The Caffrum Tree, its cancer curing contribution, a pharmaceutical company looking to capitalize on a third-world country's vulnerability, and those who would take advantage of some very valuable Americans for leverage--and have.
Posted by Michelle Smith. Posted In : Behind the Scenes
With much of it unchartered, it is known the Congo holds undiscovered botanical specimens that hold the key to many things. Perhaps the next fountain of youth or the cure for cancer. But at what cost must the forest and its inhabitants suffer for man's survival? A team of scientist in the Congo on a mission for a drug company face these same moral questions, when someone decides to take the team hostage for leverage. Just whose war are they now fighting, other than for their own survival?
Brier and her team of scientists are sent to the Congo for DruCorp with the mission of collecting a needed ingredient for their final clinical trials of a drug that will cure cancer. Aside from the hidden dangers lurking in the jungle, Brier and her fellow scientists begin to doubt the confidence of the pharmaceutical trials when asked to begin searching for an elusive species of Caffrum Tree. The last of its kind, it was thought extinct due to deforestation. However, upon its rediscovery, Brier fights with her inner demons of what the ramifications of harvesting the tree will mean.
She doesn't have long to contemplate as the team is taken hostage by one of the many hostile factions fighting for power in the Congo. Brier has one short window of time to secure a cure for the future of the human race or save her team from certain death.
