The Last Prescription

Learn more

  • Chapter One: Early Promise and Tragic Failures

    I was lucky enough to grow up in a South Shore Long Island town whose public school system was, by the standards of the time, excellent — and unusually so in two respects: it drew from an ethnically diverse student body, and it took scientific inquiry seriously. Living close enough to New York City, our community was home to a number of working researchers (including both parents of my closest friend), and their influence reached even into the elementary grades. I still remember, in fourth grade, watching a cancer researcher dissect a laboratory rat to remove its tumors — a…

  • Prologue: KJ’s Journey with CPS1 Deficiency

    Many who have witnessed or participated in the birth of a child consider it akin to a miracle. There is a singular quality of hope (or if you are of a religious bent, prophecy) that hits you when you peer into a baby’s eyes — quieter than optimism, deeper than expectation — as though new life arrives already carrying within it the full weight of human possibility. What we don’t always allow ourselves to remember, in those first luminous hours, is that possibility and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin, written in the same biological language. When KJ…