The Plasma Cell Report

A Novel

Joel Geiderman

“Whatever Can Go Forward Can Go Backward.”

In May 1987, a scientific discovery that threatened to destroy society became a dire crisis. The Presidential Commission on the Plasma Cell Project examined the circumstances surrounding this matter and presents its findings to the American people.

When a woman who appears to be in her late twenties yet claims to be sixty-three-years-old is admitted to a Cincinnati hospital, Dr. Philip Insbrook is convinced she is suffering from some form of mental illness. However, as he spends more time with the mysterious and beautiful patient and investigates her background, not only does he find himself falling in love, but he is also forced to accept an undeniable truth: Katie Shepard is inexplicably reverse aging. Insbrook, a brilliant physician, forms ideas as to the cause of Katie’s condition and races to find a solution.

Katie and Insbrook attract the attention of several powerful government agencies, most notably the White House and the National Security Agency (NSA), which begin considering the potential ramifications of exploiting Katie’s condition to induce reverse aging at a population level—a top-secret program the White House designates the Plasma Cell Project. While ethical and practical questions about the global impact of a population that never ages arise, the paranoid and politically faltering president becomes drawn to the possibilities, but unbeknownst to him, the NSA has different ideas.

The Plasma Cell Report is a fast-paced, thought-provoking novel about a not-so-distant scientific breakthrough that could forever change life as we know it.

Joel Geiderman has been practicing medicine for more than forty years. He has been the co-chair of Emergency Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for thirty years. He is a professor at both Cedars-Sinai and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Geiderman was also formerly the vice chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, appointed by President George W. Bush. He has authored more than one hundred peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. This is his first novel. Dr. Geiderman lives in Beverly Hills with two of his four children and his dog, affectionately named Reagan.