The Myosin Factor — Peter Glassman

After 8-years of focused research, Neurologist Dr. Cosmo Patrini finds a protein factor that reverses the weakness and death sentence of Muscular Dystrophy's victims. To test the safety of the drug in humans, he injects himself and finds that he has the strength of 15-men as judged by his holding up the collapsing baggage claim apparatus at Boston's Logan Airport. Three witnesses to the event seek the superhero's secret. Dr. Gerhard Hardt, a German cardiology drug researcher and Dr. Sin woo Boto, a Chinese pharmaceutical company physician, vie for possession of the molecule. The third man is a popular television aerobic exercise celebrity who threatens Patrini's anonymity with exposure unless he endorses his TV program. The Germans and the Chinese infiltrate Patrini's professional and domestic life to wrest the secrets of the drug from his Harvard Medical Center laboratory. German scientists seek Patrini's drug to replace their off-patent heart failure medicine. They select Bostonian victims at random to test the drug on excised human heart tissue. Two men die and a third is scheduled for heart removal as the German scientists finalize their work with the Myosin Factor. The Chinese have need of Patrini's discovery to amass an army of superhumans for a world domination agenda. Dr. Boto directs his team to eliminate all competition for their sole possession of the Myosin Factor which includes the TV aerobic star threatening Patrini with media exposure. A Chinese agent posing as a high school student enters the family structure and saves Patrini's two high-schoolers from injury at the hands of anti-Italian bigots. Boto further directs his Asian spies to protect the Patrini family until the Myosin Factor is his.The U.S. Government is interested in the Myosin Factor's potential and has an agent enrolled as Patrini's graduate student to find out what the Germans and the Chinese are doing. Agent Lazlo Pennypacker works in Patrini's lab with Hardt and uncovers the murderous German agenda on isolated human heart specimens. Pennypacker's boss, Colonel Merlin Sweeney, uses CIA and FBI resources to uncover the faceted plot. Intertwining the intrigue is the naive benevolent goal of Dr. Patrini and his chief researcher, Dr. Jimson Ukker who administer the Myosin Factor illegally to a 12-year-old boy and a 35-year-old man with Muscular Dystrophy as well as a middle-aged patient with Multiple Sclerosis. Unknowingly to Patrini, his family becomes ensnared in the plot to isolate and steal the Myosin Factor's secrets. While Patrini focuses on discouraging his bigoted Irish tormentors, Colonel Sweeney and Pennypacker learn about the German and Chinese actions to obtain the Myosin Factor. Sweeney's agents must confront the Germans and the Chinese with a military operation at the Harvard Medical Center and the Arlington Primate Research Lab.After the gunsmoke clears Patrini is overwhelmed at the potential evil that his discovery had almost unleashed.