LIFE Expands in Diagnostics Market

Life Technologies Corporation (LIFE) along with Quidel Corporation (QDEL) recently received a 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") to market a new Clostridium (C.) difficile test of Quidel with Life Technologies' Real-Time PCR Instruments. These products will be used together to fight hospital-acquired infections, commonly known as C. difficile bacterial infection (CDI). This approval complements Life Technologies’ ongoing strategy to expand in the growing diagnostics market with innovative clinical assays and molecular testing products.

The life-threatening CDIs are commonly observed among the growing number of elderly population, especially those who are on a prolonged antibiotic regimen and are on extended hospital stays. The recent data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is quite shocking, as it shows that there are as many as 14,000 deaths annually attributed to CDI in the U.S., costing around a billion in excess treatment to the national healthcare system. Thereby, both the companies strongly believe in the need for a speedy and efficient diagnosis and as a result, are optimistic about the prospects of their new venture in this field of development.

Recently, Life Technologies undertook various measures to strengthen its diagnostics franchise. Last September, the company launched Pervenio Lung RS, a lab-developed test distinguishing high-risk from low-risk early stage lung cancer patients. Last month, the company received 510(k) clearance for its 3500 Dx Genetic Analyzers and SeCore HLA typing kits.

According to the company, the Applied Biosystems 3500 Dx/3500xL Dx CS2 Genetic Analyzers, Invitrogen SeCore HLA Sequencing Kits and uTYPE Dx HLA Sequence Analysis Software constitute the first 510(k)-cleared, sequence-based system for HLA typing in the U.S. Moreover, the 3500 Dx is the only 510(k)-cleared Sanger sequencer commercially available for the diagnostics market. Relying on the clearance, Life Technologies expects further development of assays using the 3500 Dx. In addition, the company has plans to submit its next-generation sequencing instrument, the Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (PGM), for 510(k) clearance.
Recently, Life Technologies entered a Master Development Agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb for companion diagnostic projects. The collaboration with Bristol-Myers is in line with the company’s strategy of building partnerships with pharmaceutical majors for companion diagnostic development including the participation in early-phase clinical trials.

Earlier, the company formed a companion diagnostic partnership with GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK) MAGE-A3 cancer immunotherapy and has an assay development partnership with Gen-Probe.

The company also strengthened its diagnostics franchise with three recent tuck-in acquisitions – Compendia Bioscience (Oct 8, 2012), Navigenics (Jul 16, 2012) and Pinpoint Genomics (Jul 25, 2012). Life Technologies expects a compounded annual growth rate ("CAGR") of 15% for its molecular diagnostic franchise through 2016.

Life on Mars! Unless it's E.T., Who Cares?

If a microorganism were found on Mars, would anyone care?

NASA scientists announced on March 12 that the Red Planet could have supported ancient life — though they don't yet have evidence that it did. A sample of rock drilled by the Curiosity rover revealed conditions that could have supported ancient microbes at some point in the distant past.

The news of even potential life made headlines, and there's no doubt the discovery of actual microbial life on Mars would, too. But the impact of finding life on another world might not be as Earth-shattering as one might think, experts say. That's mainly because the life probably wouldn't be asking to be taken to our leader.

"People don't get excited about microorganisms," said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Life on Mars?

For scientists, Mars life would be a big deal, McKay told LiveScience. Even more paradigm-altering would be to find that life on Mars originated independently.

It's plausible that Mars and Earth exchanged material in their early days, and that life found on Mars could have arisen from the same source as life on Earth. Such a discovery would be intriguing, McKay said, but "not as profound as finding that there's life on Mars and finding that it represents a second genesis."

"If we find on Mars evidence for a second genesis, that changes everything," he said. [Photos: Curiosity Finds Habitable Martian Site]

Life evolving twice in the same solar system would suggest that life is common throughout the universe, McKay explained. Such a discovery would be huge for biologists, who would suddenly have an entirely new type of biology to study.

McKay doesn't envision any major shifts in philosophy among the public in response to such a discovery, though. The discovery of microorganisms on another planet wouldn't necessarily spur the need to re-evaluate humanity's place in the universe, for example.

"I would put it along the lines of the discovery of the Higgs boson," McKay said, referring to the particle theorized to explain where other particles get their mass. "It would be that sort of level of event. It would be out in the public and people would be like, 'Oh, wow,' but mostly it would be something that scientists would get into."

Physicists announced last week they had confirmed the newfound particle discovered with experiments in the Large Hadron Collider was indeed a Higgs boson, with other physicists expressing their excitement and exhilaration of the discovery.

Life versus life

Indeed, some data suggests that even the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrials wouldn't shake human society beyond its ability to cope. One survey of more than 1,300 religious individuals released in 2011 found that believers were extremely confident that the discovery of intelligent aliens wouldn't shake their faith. [7 Theories on the Origin of Life]

"Theologians and religious leaders who have looked at this, it's surprising to me that they have so little to say — almost as if it's not interesting," said Ted Peters, a theologian at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, Calif., who led the study.

Mars microbial life would be unlikely to have much of a theological impact, Peters told LiveScience. Most religious traditions hold that life is the creation of God, but don't commit to an exact explanation of how God did it. Life's origin could happen through chemistry multiple times throughout the solar system and not conflict with these worldviews, Peters said.

The discovery of intelligent life somewhere in the universe would be far more theologically significant, Peters said. Such a discovery could throw open fundamentally spiritual questions, he said: Are the aliens spiritual? Do they have a sense of morality, empathy or love?

Intelligent aliens could also provide answers about the evolution of religious belief, Peters said. Some scientists hold that religion is a primitive way of explaining the world, and that science will replace it, he said. If super-intelligent aliens were to both embrace science and God, it might disprove that evolutionary theory.

Discovering intelligent life would also be scientifically valuable, above and beyond any discovery that microbes evolved on Mars, McKay said. There are three big steps that get you to a species like humans: The origin of life, the evolution of complex life such as plants and animals, and, finally, the development of intelligence.

"We don't have any expectation that, on Mars, life did the other two steps," beyond possibly originating, McKay said. "Communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence takes us to the end of that comparison, so we immediately know that all three steps occurred."

Mars Could Once Have Supported Life: What You Need to Know

Mars was capable of supporting microbial life in the distant past, scientists announced today (March 12).

They reached this conclusion after studying the latest observations from NASA's Curiosity rover, which just analyzed the first-ever sample collected from the interior of a Red Planet rock.

Here are answers to a few basic questions about Curiosity's discovery, and what it means about the Red Planet's past and the rover's future.

What exactly did Curiosity find?
Last month, Curiosity drilled 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) into a rock on a Martian outcrop that mission scientists have dubbed "John Klein."

The rover's onboard Chemistry & Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments found some of the chemical ingredients for life in the collected powder, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. The mix of compounds also suggests that the area may have contained chemical energy sources for potential Red Planet microbes, researchers said.

In addition, the sample contains clay minerals, indicating that the rock was exposed to a benign aqueous environment — such as a neutral-pH lake, for example — billions of years ago.

To be clear, Curiosity found no evidence that life has ever existed on the Red Planet. But its results suggest that the John Klein site could have supported microbes long ago, if they ever evolved on Mars or were transported there.

So what? Didn't we already know that ancient Mars was wet?
Scientists have known for years that water flowed or pooled on the surface of Mars in the ancient past. But there's more to habitability than the mere existence of liquid water.

For primitive microbial life to survive, a site must also have the right chemical makeup and a potential energy source, researchers say. And all of these ingredients were apparently present at John Klein.
Doesn't the right chemical makeup include organic compounds? Did Curiosity find any of those?

The SAM instrument can detect complex organics — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — and Curiosity is looking for these molecules on Mars, but it hasn't found anything conclusive yet.
The rover did detect two simple chlorinated organics at John Klein, as it did in a scoop of soil at another site called Rocknest late last year. There's no sign of complicated, long-chain organics such as amino acids yet, however.

But such molecules are not necessary for life to thrive, Curiosity scientists said. Here on Earth, many microbes do just fine by incorporating inorganic carbon — such as that contained in carbon dioxide — into their metabolic processes. And SAM did detect carbon dioxide in the John Klein sample.
"That's what we're real excited about," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told reporters Tuesday.

How sure is the Curiosity team about all of this?
Pretty sure. Scientists typically are careful people loath to go out on a limb about their findings (with good reason, as their colleagues will quickly snap that limb in two if it's not sturdy enough). But there was no hemming and hawing about John Klein's long-ago habitability.

"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably — if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," Grotzinger said.
Does this mean life could survive on Mars today?

Curiosity's new results don't really speak to this issue, instead shedding light on Mars as it existed three billion years ago or so.

The Red Planet is much drier and colder today, making it considerably less hospitable to life as we know it. However, some researchers think Mars may still be capable of supporting microbial life, perhaps in damp, protected pockets underground.

Is Curiosity's mission over now? Hasn't it done what it set out to do?
Curiosity's main goal was to determine if the area around its landing site — Mars' huge Gale Crater — has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. And the 1-ton rover has indeed checked that box, just seven months after touching down.

However, the Curiosity team has no plans to quit now. They want to keep searching for signs of complex organics and investigate other sites, to gain a better understanding of how the Gale Crater area has changed over time. The John Klein site is not even the rover's final destination; at some point, Curiosity will turn its wheels toward interesting deposits at the base of Mount Sharp, the mysterious 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) mountain that rises from Gale Crater's center.

Scientists continue to stress that Curiosity's mission is discovery-driven, meaning they'll shape their plans around whatever the robot finds as it rolls across the Martian surface.

"Mars has written its autobiography in the rocks of Gale Crater, and we've just started deciphering that story," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Mars Could Once Have Supported Life: What You Need to Know

Mars was capable of supporting microbial life in the distant past, scientists announced today (March 12).

They reached this conclusion after studying the latest observations from NASA's Curiosity rover, which just analyzed the first-ever sample collected from the interior of a Red Planet rock.

Here are answers to a few basic questions about Curiosity's discovery, and what it means about the Red Planet's past and the rover's future.

What exactly did Curiosity find?
Last month, Curiosity drilled 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) into a rock on a Martian outcrop that mission scientists have dubbed "John Klein."

The rover's onboard Chemistry & Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments found some of the chemical ingredients for life in the collected powder, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. The mix of compounds also suggests that the area may have contained chemical energy sources for potential Red Planet microbes, researchers said.

In addition, the sample contains clay minerals, indicating that the rock was exposed to a benign aqueous environment — such as a neutral-pH lake, for example — billions of years ago.
To be clear, Curiosity found no evidence that life has ever existed on the Red Planet. But its results suggest that the John Klein site could have supported microbes long ago, if they ever evolved on Mars or were transported there.

So what? Didn't we already know that ancient Mars was wet?
Scientists have known for years that water flowed or pooled on the surface of Mars in the ancient past. But there's more to habitability than the mere existence of liquid water.

For primitive microbial life to survive, a site must also have the right chemical makeup and a potential energy source, researchers say. And all of these ingredients were apparently present at John Klein.
Doesn't the right chemical makeup include organic compounds? Did Curiosity find any of those?

The SAM instrument can detect complex organics — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — and Curiosity is looking for these molecules on Mars, but it hasn't found anything conclusive yet.
The rover did detect two simple chlorinated organics at John Klein, as it did in a scoop of soil at another site called Rocknest late last year. There's no sign of complicated, long-chain organics such as amino acids yet, however.

But such molecules are not necessary for life to thrive, Curiosity scientists said. Here on Earth, many microbes do just fine by incorporating inorganic carbon — such as that contained in carbon dioxide — into their metabolic processes. And SAM did detect carbon dioxide in the John Klein sample.
"That's what we're real excited about," Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of Caltech in Pasadena, told reporters Tuesday.

How sure is the Curiosity team about all of this?
Pretty sure. Scientists typically are careful people loath to go out on a limb about their findings (with good reason, as their colleagues will quickly snap that limb in two if it's not sturdy enough). But there was no hemming and hawing about John Klein's long-ago habitability.

"We have found a habitable environment that is so benign and supportive of life that probably — if this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it," Grotzinger said.
Does this mean life could survive on Mars today?

Curiosity's new results don't really speak to this issue, instead shedding light on Mars as it existed three billion years ago or so.

The Red Planet is much drier and colder today, making it considerably less hospitable to life as we know it. However, some researchers think Mars may still be capable of supporting microbial life, perhaps in damp, protected pockets underground.

Is Curiosity's mission over now? Hasn't it done what it set out to do?
Curiosity's main goal was to determine if the area around its landing site — Mars' huge Gale Crater — has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. And the 1-ton rover has indeed checked that box, just seven months after touching down.

However, the Curiosity team has no plans to quit now. They want to keep searching for signs of complex organics and investigate other sites, to gain a better understanding of how the Gale Crater area has changed over time. The John Klein site is not even the rover's final destination; at some point, Curiosity will turn its wheels toward interesting deposits at the base of Mount Sharp, the mysterious 3-mile-high (5 kilometers) mountain that rises from Gale Crater's center.

Scientists continue to stress that Curiosity's mission is discovery-driven, meaning they'll shape their plans around whatever the robot finds as it rolls across the Martian surface.

"Mars has written its autobiography in the rocks of Gale Crater, and we've just started deciphering that story," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Sun Life Grows Dental Biz

In an effort to grow its dental business, the life insurer Sun Life Financial Inc. (SLF) has announced it will provide its customer facility on the United Concordia Alliance network. The network has replaced the Advantage Plus Network. The service will be provided by Employee Benefits Group unit of Sun Life Financial.

The United Concordia Alliance network will thereby provide its customers with 27% more dental provider access points than the old network.

Sun Life already has an active presence in the dental insurance markets. It sells dental preferred provider organization (PPO) plans in all states in the U.S., with coverage for employees and dependents.

The plan is packaged in such a way that customers can tailor make it according to their requirements regarding deductibles, benefit waiting periods, coinsurance levels, and plan maximums. Extra benefits offered by the plan are built-in routine care, orthodontia for children and adults, and an annual maximum rollover benefit.

The company will have a braod penetration in the dental insurance markets, given that United Concordia network has 96,000 providers at more than 246,000 access points throughout the U.S.

Other players in the same industry providing dental plans are MetLife Inc. (MET), Humana Inc. (HUM) and CIGNA Corp. (CI).

During the recently reported fourth quarter earnings the company witnessed a strong growth in its Employee Benefits Group business, on the back of increased sales.

Sun Life is a leading Canadian life insurance company, with an active presence in the U.S. Over the long term we believe the company will be able to generate superior returns for its investors given a proactive approach to managing and mitigating fundamental issues.

Save the Date: Revitas to Host Life Sciences Industry Summit in Philadelphia

Revitas's annual Industry Summit: Life Sciences will be held on November 5-6, 2013 at the Four Seasons Philadelphia. This industry event features a combination of thought leadership tracks, keynote speakers, and user best practice sessions designed to showcase the power of Enterprise Revenue Dynamics.

Capitalizing on the success of last year's Summit, the 2013 Revitas Industry Summit: Life Sciences event will bring together approximately 250 Revitas customers, partners, industry professionals, and executives to learn and share best practices, and network with colleagues and industry experts.

The event will focus on the complex issues facing life sciences companies in contracting, pricing, and compliance. Last year’s industry keynote presenter Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., Founder and President of Pembroke Consulting Inc. and author of the Drug Channels website, spoke about how government regulation, shifting market lines, and increased transparency have challenged the life sciences. The 2013 Summit will push that conversation forward, addressing how the industry is handling global revenue management issues, where it is heading in 2013 and beyond, and how life sciences organizations can better manage their commercial and government contracting strategies through Enterprise Revenue Dynamics.

“Over the past year, the life sciences industry has gained some clarity through the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act ruling, but this clarity is fraught with complex regulations and new challenges,” said Al Smith, President and COO of Revitas. “Back by popular demand, the Revitas Industry Summit: Life Sciences will be an epicenter of thought leadership on the current life sciences landscape. With a global client base of midsize and large-scale companies across multiple industries, we understand the challenges of channel distribution in international markets. We’re bringing together executives and operational leaders of the foremost pharmaceutical companies to share global revenue management trends, strategies for emerging growth companies, opportunities for generics manufacturers, and forecasting and accrual tactics that will help these companies strengthen their businesses to drive revenue growth while maintaining rock-solid compliance.”

Life Fitness' Open API Changes Future of Mobile Fitness Apps, Personalized Workouts

Climb 100 floors on the stairclimber and earn a free smoothie? According to Life Fitness, the global leader in commercial fitness equipment manufacturing, these scenarios represent the new wave in fitness technology. Life Fitness introduces LFopen, the fitness industry's first and only open API (Application Programming Interface), that is changing the way exercisers interact with fitness equipment and, as a result, the future of fitness facilities.

As the first equipment-maker to open its product platform to all developers last October, Life Fitness boasts the only true open API in the fitness industry. In contrast to select partnerships with app developers, Life Fitness has made portions of its product code accessible to all developers around the world, without restrictions. This truly open integration benefits fitness facility owners looking to provide their customers with greater access to content and personalization, app developers and exercisers.

Tech Demand and All-Access App Development
According to a global survey conducted by Life Fitness last year*, access to mobile technology is extremely important for exercisers. In fact, one-third of survey respondents said they would be willing to switch gyms to gain access to WiFi, docking stations, video, audio or online content on equipment.

Using LFopen, app makers can tap into consumers' desires for fitness technology to build an endless spectrum of personalized fitness applications that work directly with Life Fitness workout equipment. Life Fitness' open API gives customers and developers access to the same API Life Fitness used to develop its own Life Fitness app and tracking website, LFconnect, with no restrictions or partnerships involved.

"Opening up our API was a bold decision, but one that allows the best creative minds to unleash their talents and develop applications we could never have dreamed up," said Chris Clawson, president, Life Fitness. "Providing an open platform means that we, as a fitness equipment manufacturer, can focus on our strength of building the best workout equipment on the market, while developers use their expertise to create engaging, motivational and personalized applications for exercisers."

As a result, exercisers can download any app with LFopen integration to create a customized gym experience tailored to their preferences. Both Android and iOS users can take advantage of apps since Life Fitness is the only fitness manufacturer whose platform is compatible with both operating systems.

Mobile Apps as the New Customer Clincher
From integration with front desk systems to enhancing on- and off-product experiences at the gym, facilities can use LFopen to attract, retain and grow with exercisers in a hyper-personalized way. Facilities can work with developers to create facility-branded apps that leverage workout presets, workout results, real time monitoring and more.

"There is a lot of confusion surrounding the term 'open API' and what it means for fitness facilities," said Clawson. "As the leader in fitness technology, we're looking forward to defining this term and showing facility owners how it can, and will, impact the future of fitness and, ultimately, their business' bottom line."

March 14th Webinar
Life Fitness will host a global webinar on the benefits of open API, led by Clawson, at 1 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, March 14th. Clawson will give details on open platform strategies and how the "open" movement will affect the fitness industry, from facility owners to app developers and exercisers. To sign up for the LFopen webinar, please register online at: www.lifefitness.com/openwebinar.

Study finds declining life span for some women

A new study offers more compelling evidence that life expectancy for some U.S. women is actually falling, a disturbing trend that experts can't explain.

The latest research found that women age 75 and younger are dying at higher rates than previous years in nearly half of the nation's counties — many of them rural and in the South and West. Curiously, for men, life expectancy has held steady or improved in nearly all counties.

The study is the latest to spot this pattern, especially among disadvantaged white women. Some leading theories blame higher smoking rates, obesity and less education, but several experts said they simply don't know why.

Women have long outlived men, and the latest numbers show the average life span for a baby girl born today is 81, and for a baby boy, it's 76. But the gap has been narrowing and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown women's longevity is not growing at the same pace as men's.

The phenomenon of some women losing ground appears to have begun in the late 1980s, though studies have begun to spotlight it only in the last few years.

Trying to figure out why is "the hot topic right now, trying to understand what's going on," said Jennifer Karas Montez, a Harvard School of Public Health sociologist who has been focused on the life expectancy decline but had no role in the new study.

Researchers also don't know exactly how many women are affected. Montez says a good estimate is roughly 12 percent.

The study, released Monday by the journal Health Affairs, found declining life expectancy for women in about 43% of the nation's counties.

The researchers, David Kindig and Erika Cheng of the University of Wisconsin, looked at federal death data and other information for nearly all 3,141 U.S. counties over 10 years. They calculated mortality rates for women age 75 and younger, sometimes called "premature death rates," because many of those deaths are considered preventable.

Many counties have such small populations that even slight changes in the number of deaths produce dramatic swings in the death rate from year to year. To try to stabilize the numbers, the researchers computed some five-year averages. They also used statistical tricks to account for factors like income and education.

They found that nationwide, the rate of women dying younger than would be expected fell from 324 to 318 per 100,000. But in 1,344 counties, the average premature death rate rose, from 317 to about 333 per 100,000. Deaths rates rose for men in only about 100 counties.

"We were surprised" by how much worse women did in those counties, and by the geographic variations, Kindig said.

The study wasn't the first to reach those conclusions. Two years ago, a study led by the University of Washington's Dr. Christopher Murray also looked at county-level death rates. It too found that women were dying sooner, especially in the South.

Some other studies that focused on national data have highlighted steep declines in life expectancy for white women who never earned a high school diploma. Meanwhile, life expectancy seems to be growing for more educated and affluent women. Some experts also have suggested smokers or obese women are dragging down life expectancy.

The Murray and Kindig studies both spotlight regional differences. Some of the highest smoking rates are in Southern states, and the proportion of women who failed to finish high school is also highest in the South.

"I think the most likely explanation for why mortality is getting worse is those factors are just stronger in those counties," Murray said, adding that abuse of Oxycontin and other drugs also may add to the problem.

Some also think the statistics could reflect a migration of healthier women out of rural areas, leaving behind others who are too poor and unhealthy to relocate. That would change the rate, and make life expectancy in a county look worse, explained Bob Anderson of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics

"We shouldn't jump to the conclusion that more people are getting sicker in these geographic areas than previously," he said.

But that is open to debate. Migration didn't seem to affect male death rates. Murray disagrees with the theory, saying he has tracked a great deal of movement from urban areas to less-populated counties.

Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation

Once your life is inside a federal investigation, there is no space outside of it. The only private thing is your thoughts, and even they don't feel safe anymore. Every word you speak or write can be used, manipulated, or played like a card against your future and the future of those you love. There are no neutral parties, no sources of unimpeachable wisdom and trust.

It is the loneliest of lonely things to be surrounded by your loved ones, in danger, and forced to be silent.

May you never experience a Federal investigation. I did, and it consumed me, and changed everyday that will come after it for the rest of my life.

It all began with a call from Aaron Swartz on a jail-room phone. This essay is my attempt to explain what happened between that call and my friend's suicide. This will not be the final word on Aaron's story, nor is it intended to be.

Two years later, these are the events as I remember them, and the feelings as I knew them.

* * *

Aaron and I were best friends. We'd been the voice in each other's ears and silent textual companions online for more than four years. We were a daily presence for each other, no matter the number of miles that separated us.

RELATED DOCUMENTATION

If you haven't been following the Aaron Swartz case, see the Editor's Note for context.
A letter from Quinn Norton to prosecutor Steve Heymann
Norton's reflection on the case shortly before meeting with prosecutors
Norton's subpoena
For the first year, we lived together. Being just roommates lasted less than a month, and we entered a powerful and sometimes difficult relationship which we decided would only last a year. We spent the next three years trying and failing to cleanly end our romance. He was an incredibly secretive person, private about our life together, his thoughts, and the events of his life. I was a nosy reporter, always trying to get things out of him. He would never tell me how much he was paid in the Reddit sale, and his reticence came a running joke between us: me prying, cajoling, pressuring, and Aaron, never giving in.

On January 6, 2011, I got a call on my mobile phone from a number I didn't recognize. Usually I don't answer unknown numbers. This time I did. I heard Aaron's voice: scratchy, distant, nearly inaudible. He'd been arrested. I didn't ask him what happened. I only asked him what he wanted me to do.

He needed bail. He had a lawyer, Andy Good, in Boston. I had to get a hold of this lawyer and find someone to bail him out. I found a local friend, who went and got out $1,000 to post Aaron's bail. I didn't ask any questions. Neither did my friend.

The rest of January went on in a strange haze. Neither of us seemed able to believe this was serious. Aaron eventually told me it was computer related, something about a wiring closet at MIT -- explaining only the contents of his arrest record.

I am a journalist of hackers. They are my beat and my friends, so I'd seen people harassed and persecuted. Some piece of research or conference presentation would suddenly become an investigation, phone calls and meetings with lawyers. We came to expect raids, surveillance, and threats from powerful men who couldn't tell the good guys from the bad in my world.

February brought the inevitable raid. The Secret Service came to his house and his office at the Harvard Ethics Center and took hard drives and computers. Aaron's phone was taken. He got an iPhone to replace it. I asked him if I could have his old phone when he got it back. He said, "Sure. It might be a while."

I knew that Law Enforcement could be terrible about getting things back in a timely manner. But I couldn't yet imagine it would be years, or that there might be a trial. Most of these cases, even the PACER affair that had interrupted life and scared us in 2009, resolved with the police simply going away.

In early March I was staying at a friend's loft in the Bay Area. Someone knocked at the door of the loft, and I ran downstairs, still dressed in my pajamas, and answered the door. It was a tall man and a short woman in blazers and unmatched trousers. They had the dowdy cleanliness of law enforcement. They said they were from the Secret Service and that they wanted to ask me a few questions. Shocked and unsure of myself, I let them in to talk to me. One should never, ever do this.

They asked about Aaron, I told them I didn't know anything. They pointed out that he'd called me, and asked what he told me. I told them I hadn't asked anything about his arrest, and they were incredulous.

Eventually I ran out of things to tell them, and they produced the real reason for their visit: a subpoena. The prosecution wanted my communications with Aaron, anything we'd shared, any time I'd talked about JSTOR or MIT or the case with anyone. It was pages of demands for my digital life with Aaron, the private world we'd shared. There was a grand jury date listed as well: "YOU ARE COMMANDED," it read.

I had to Google grand jury to find out what it was.

I did know I'd need a lawyer. I went to a lawyer friend and explained I was broke. She thought of someone she'd worked with once in Boston and gave him a call about helping with my case, pro bono. I didn't understand how any of this worked. In time, I would dub the case the "World of Shit I Don't Know."

A week before the Secret Service came to the door, my car was rear-ended by a school bus. The car itself was totaled, but I thought there'd been no injuries, just a little soreness in my neck. Within a few weeks the stress of the case and the neck pain would develop into a cycle of torturous daily migraines, a pain so rich it blotted out thought for hours a day. It was the second time this had happened to me, the first being in 2007. In both cases the standard complement of migraine medications weren't very effective: only opioids worked, and my doctor put me on Vicodin.

And so, scared, naive, and in pain, I met my lawyers Adam and Jose, from the firm Fish and Richardson in a beautiful and shiny building next door to and towering over the federal courthouse. The building looked like a modernist space station, the Jetsons with cleaner lines and an endless sense of power and money. I am a hackerspace girl who has grown up broke, sometimes too broke to eat, with a drug dealing Vietnam vet dad. I felt immediately and continually out of place. I met my lawyers many times, but I never felt comfortable.

In that first meeting, I told them I would be a good client and that I was deeply grateful for their help. I was. They told me not to talk to Aaron, that I shouldn't stay with him. I did anyway. Sometimes we just needed to hold each other. Sometimes we needed to say something. But we tried to and mostly obeyed the proscriptions on talking abut the case.

As strange as it seems now, when I was first subpoenaed, Aaron was more worried about me than him, and both of us were worried about Ada, my seven-year-old daughter. She was the light of both of our lives, and we wanted to make sure none of this would touch her. The problem was my computer. It contained interviews and communications with confidential sources for stories going back five years. The subpoena didn't actually call for my computer, but materials on my computer. Jose and Adam implied that if the prosecutor didn't think I was being honest, he might move against me, seize things.

And if the prosecutor took my computer, I would have to go to jail rather than turn over my password. I had no choice. I'd been logging all of my communications for years, professional and personal. Aaron knew this, and he was furious at me for it when he read the subpoena. It was a kind of impersonal fury, not directed at me and my decisions, but the situation itself. "Why did you log?" he asked me repeatedly. I told him that it had kept me sane in my divorce. But he already knew that, he'd been there.

These days, I not only don't log, I refuse to talk to anyone who does. I often refuse to communicate without encryption. But I had to continue to log during the investigation. I was told that changing my behavior while being investigated could be held against me, because in an investigation it is suspicious to learn from your mistakes.

Aaron and I sat together in his place one night in March. He could see I was scared and he held me. He told me that Steve Heymann, the prosecutor, had offered a deal: three months in prison, three months in some sort of halfway house, and three months probation, and one felony count. He told me he would take it if I wanted him to.

We talked about it, about what a felony count would mean to him, to his life and his dreams in politics. I thought about my father, sent away to state penn when I was 17, and how it had crushed him. He'd not lasted long after prison.

To be a felon in this country is to be a pariah, to be unlistened to. Aaron wanted more than anything to speak to power, to make reforms in the very system that was attacking him now. In most states a felon can't even vote. The thought of him not voting was unfathomable.

But the truth is I wanted him to take the plea deal and end it. I wanted to not be scared anymore, to not deal with these people anymore. Nine months didn't seem so long, and I came very close to asking him to do it. But I looked at him, and I thought about PCCC (the first of his political action groups), Demand Progress, and Washington DC, and all the work he'd done. "If you want to fight it, you should fight it," I told him. I told him I would support him.

I've spent many nights this year, awake, wishing I'd been a little more selfish that day. We were at the mercy of a man we didn't know and who we'd never met. We were in his power, but we didn't know it yet.

Aaron said Steve had been furious when he turned down the plea. He sometimes screamed at my smiling and compliant lawyers over the phone until they visibly shrank in their seats, glancing uncomfortably at each other.

Despite this, my lawyers very much wanted to play nice. They explained there were two ways to approach a prosecutor, hostile and friendly. They told me they didn't know this prosecutor, but that they favored a cooperative approach.

I wanted to be friendly and cooperative -- it was how I got through life. I didn't know anything the prosecution cared about, and I thought that maybe I could talk Steve out of the prosecution, or at least into not being so harsh. This was so obviously a ridiculous application of justice, I thought. If I just had the chance to explain, maybe this would all go away. My lawyers told me this was possible. They nursed this idea. They told me Steve wanted to meet me, and they wanted me to meet him. They wanted to set up something called a proffer -- a kind of chat with the prosecution. Steve offered me a "Queen for a day" letter, granting me immunity so that the government couldn't use anything I said during the session against me in a criminal prosecution.

I went home and started researching what a proffer actually was, and how it might work. I learned that the "Queen for a day," or proffer, letter was often used by targets of the investigation to negotiate deals of lighter sentencing in exchange for information; in short, it was the mechanics of snitching. I was outraged and disturbed. I didn't want a deal, I didn't want immunity, I just wanted to sit down and talk about the whole terrible business, to tell them why this case wasn't worth their time, and Aaron didn't deserve their attention. I didn't need a deal, and in fact, given that I had nothing to offer the government's case, I didn't think I even qualified for it.

I asked my lawyers to refuse, and we fought about it, repeatedly. They brought up things from my past that could be used against me; not criminal behavior per se, even they admitted, but they wanted me to have immunity. I had a terrible headache, and eventually gave in.

Aaron was furious. He told me not to meet Steve. But no one, including Aaron, would tell me why. No one would tell me even how to get out of it. And still I had an unshakable belief that if I could just somehow explain all this it would go away. I delayed once, too sick to go. My lawyers told me Steve was furious at my medical delay. I might be arrested. I told Aaron, and others, that I wanted to talk to Steve human to human.

As I learned more and more about the proffer, I realized it wasn't the straightforward sit down and chat Adam and Jose had told me it was. There were different types -- some quite positive -- but there seemed to be no way to tell what I was walking into. Aaron told me his lawyer was angry too, that I was being an idiot. I began to wonder (stupidly, and to myself) if he thought my contempt arrest would help his case. He wondered, loudly, whose side I was on.

My lawyers were starting to get into fights with other lawyers, sometimes screaming fights, and the lawyers' stories weren't matching up. I was getting more ill, headaches everyday and unable to get properly treated due to insurance problems. My thoughts of talking the prosecutors out of this foolish attack on Aaron were fading, even as Jose and Adam still encouraged me to try.

Mid-April was our lowest moment together, but still Aaron would come to my place to read. This was so like him. He'd grab a book like we were touching Safe in an endless and bitterly exhausting game of tag, pull my arms around him, and read to me. Sometimes, we'd fall asleep like that. It felt as if these moments were what kept us both alive.

But other times, the case would come back, intruding on our touch, creating space between us and filling it.

I knew by the week of the proffer that it wasn't what I wanted, but I saw no choice. I thought that I would be raided or possibly arrested if I tried to back out, that my lawyers would terminate their relationship with me, that I would be out on my own. All the time I was trying to hold it together for the outside world.

Aaron was not just terrified for himself, he was terrified of something happening to me. We talked about how Ada would be if I went to jail. As the proffer approached, even he turned to helping me, trying to figure out how to make the best of it.

I insisted again to Aaron that I would be kept safe by my total ignorance on the matter. He was never comforted. We accused each other and forgave each other nearly daily. We were so angry: him at my proffer, the logs I'd kept, at the person closest to him being compromised. And me, I was terribly angry at the very thing I said would keep me safe: my ignorance of his JSTOR activities. Why hadn't he told me anything? Why had he let me get sideswiped by all of this? Why, above all and for the love of God, had he gotten caught?; It was always my first rule of doing anything that power might frown upon in any way: Don't get caught.

A friend in New York told me about an old Scandinavian word exported to Scotland -- fey -- that specifically referred to the sense of the doomed approaching their last battle, unable to do anything but go forward. I wandered around gently repeating it to myself. I would argue for Aaron with the prosecution, but I knew I was too weak and sick to make the showing I'd hoped for. I was fey.

* * *

On April 13th Jose and Adam and I went to the courthouse, finding our way to a small windowless fluorescent office stacked with disused file boxes in the corners. Our office chairs barely fit around a table. A friend had given me a tweed skirted woman's suit to wear for the day. It was slightly too big, and it made me feel small and awkward. We were trying to make me look respectable, non-threatening, like one of them. We were dressing me up to walk into the lion's den. (Apparently, lions call for tweed.)

We were six at the table: my two lawyers, Steve's two Secret Service men, me, and Steve. Everyone was in suits except for Steve, who kept us waiting for a few minutes, and came in dressed in fleece and plain pants, all casual power.

I made it clear to everyone before we started that I was on Vicodin, per my doctor's orders. I produced medical records, which everyone ignored. Steve said we could take breaks any time I needed to. One of the agents and Adam took out identical legal pads to take notes on at opposite ends of the table. I was given water, and we began.

At first they didn't ask me about Aaron. They were questioning me, trying to get me to admit I knew something. They made me retell everything Aaron had told me, but it was all taken directly from their own arrest record. The harsh questioning about me threw me off balance.

They leaned in and loomed over me physically, calling me a liar, scowling and pausing and narrowing their eyes at me. I was cowed. Much of the time I spent telling them the same things, that I didn't know what he'd been doing, that I never asked what the arrest was for when he called me. They told me that was unnatural; they didn't believe me. I wanted to say, "Of course I wouldn't ask! There was a chance I'd be dealing with you people."

They said I must have known something because I was connected with hackers. They knew this, they told me, because they'd read everything I'd ever written online. I bit my lip. I fought the urge to say "If I'd known, we wouldn't be here. There's no chance you would know a thing."

They said they knew we were close because they'd found a car seat in his apartment. I really did look at them like they were idiots at that point. We'd been together for years. A simple google query would show more than a car seat.

Steve asked if there was anything I knew of to suggest why Aaron would do this, or what he thought about academic journals. I cast around trying to think of something, something that made sense to them, when Aaron had just gathered these datasets for years, the way some people collect coins or cards or stamps.

I mentioned a blog post. It was a two-year-old public post on Raw Thought, Aaron's blog. It had been fairly widely picked up by other blogs. I couldn't imagine that these people who had just claimed to have read everything I'd ever written had never looked at their target's blog, which appeared in his FBI file, or searched for what he thought about "open access" They hadn't.

So this is where I was profoundly foolish. I told them about the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. And in doing so, Aaron would explain to me later (and reporters would confirm), I made everything worse. This is what I must live with.

I opened up a new front for their cruelty. Four months into the investigation, they had finally found their reason to do it. The manifesto, the prosecutors claimed, showed Aaron's intent to distribute the JSTOR documents widely. And I had told them about it. It was beyond my understanding that these people could pick through his life, threaten his friends, tear through our digital history together, raid his house, surveil him, and never actually read his blog. But that seemed to be the fact of it.

It was also beyond my imagination that they could find something generous and good and think this made their case, that this was what made this case more important than all the ones they hadn't pursued. I told them academics hated the system as it existed -- everyone did, except Elsevier. I even talked about the US government mandating open access. They looked bored. The manifesto was their one happy moment in a session of frustration, anger, and veiled threats of prosecution for me. All of it -- what they cared about, what made them angry, what made them happy -- made no sense to me at all.

Steve asked if I had any last comments. I said yes. I told them I'd done this because I believed that people should be able talk plainly and be able to resolve things. I told them they were on the wrong side of this case, of history. I told them that I was trying to behave with honor, and that despite all the insults they'd thrown at me, I still believed that they could understand and see the right thing to do. I told them Aaron was an amazingly good person, that his work touched their lives everyday. I told them this case was ridiculous, I told Steve not to do this. They listened in silence. At the end of the proffer, Steve asked if I had any questions. I said yes, that I wanted to know why he was doing this. He told me that he couldn't tell me yet, but that he had good reasons. Steve told me he would tell me eventually.

I'm still waiting.

Several hours after the proffer, as Aaron and I sat in the Luna Cafe in Cambridge, it had not sunk in that I'd accidentally betrayed someone I loved. It was so mind-numbingly stupid on the part of these powerful men, these elites of law enforcement, that I couldn't conceive that I'd actually harmed Aaron.

Aaron was incredibly angry with me. I pointed out that any journalist worth a damn would have the manifesto in no time; he agreed, but said these guys weren't as smart as journalists. I said the press would uncover it when the case went public. He told me, as he had so many times before, that the press wouldn't be interested in the case. We were both wrong.

"I just went in there to tell them you were a good person, and to not do this," I told him.

"Why didn't you?" he asked me, still angry.

"I did." He looked away.

I told him I couldn't live with the thought I'd hurt him. And once again I pleaded with him. Why didn't you talk to me, let me help? I could have kept him safe. I could have at least tried. He got up and walked out, angry.

What was done was done, and we had to learn to live with it. We fought, and I apologized for the proffer. I'd done the wrong thing. I was sorry. I wanted him to apologize back, not for doing it, not for the nightmare we were living through now which I never accepted as his fault. I just wanted him to say sorry for getting caught.

Aaron told me that Steve had been viciously gleeful to Andy about the manifesto, that he'd said Aaron would never get as good a deal as he'd turned down now that they had that bit of evidence.

Later I listened to Aaron on the phone with a journalist describe downloading 400,000 law journal articles to do text analysis revealing what kind of legal research was being funded by what kind of companies in 2008, and publishing an academic paper at Stanford about it, all as explanation of why he might have downloaded the JSTOR articles. It was the best answer legally to the question I'd been asked in that small fluorescent room surrounded by big men. Listening to him say that I felt my insides collapse.