The Famine of Men

The Famine of Men

Columns are one thing, but to really understand how science is done needs a story. Writing NIH grant proposals or scientific papers is a limited business. Too much subject, verb, and predicate.  There is no dialogue. Font requirements and margin widths are dictated.  We learn about people from a standard resume form.  Scientific papers can be well or badly written, and that is important. But frankly, all that restraint gets on my nerves.

So, I wrote a novel called The Famine of Men, which has 4.5 stars on Amazon, for what that is worth. It is about a young woman who has just finished her PhD training in virology with a nasty mentor (there are such) and now has her own lab in Boston. The novel is based on people I have known, either in my lab or Ph.D students, scientists, deans, and administrators. In a stroke of luck, our young protagonist finds a new virus—it does not kill lung cells like SARS-CoV-2 or liver cells like the hepatitis viruses. It kills Leydig cells, which make testosterone.  Men become infertile; women are unaffected. Like SARS-CoV-2 the Leydig virus is very infectious. As attempts to make a vaccine fail, there are, shall we say, consequences. I am a biologist, and it would not do to lose the human species. There is a solution, but it is not simple.

A reader put it this way:

I couldn’t put this book down. If such a virus ever appears – and there is no reason that it couldn’t, it would be discovered and studied exactly as Dr. Kessin describes. The consequences and the cool headed way the scientists tackle an unfolding catastrophe makes a superb story. A virus that affects men that can only be studied by women scientists? Who ever imagined that? I loved the characters – even the nasty ones. And I never predicted the end.

The story intertwines scientists, a religious community, the Congress and the military and comes out in a surprising place.

Order FAMINE OF MEN from Author House.