HyperGrow

HyperGrow was a secret government funded medical research program. The main goal of the program was to study the aging process by using children as test subjects. It eventually morphed into finding a drug to accelerate, decelerate, or stop the aging process all together.

The first draft of the project was created when the founder, Dr. Paige Roland, was 25 years old, around 2344 when she was on the Scientific Board of Directors. It was the first successful "gene modding" effort made my humans and also the last. It was Dr. Paige Roland's only project and her legacy.

Concept
The basic concept of HyperGrow came about when a decorated scientist, Dr. Paige Roland, approached the government with her research on the aging process. Her ideas buzzed around the scientific community for a while until it was wrote off as immoral by the Future for our Youth Committee. She hid under the radar, hiring Dr. Waylon Barrett as her assistant, and re-drafted her thesis to morph it into something resembling a plan to create better medicine to prolong youth. It took 6 years to get funding from the government, but the funding included a deal with Cornovis and test subjects. A group of scientists were hired on to join her, but they didn't know they were going to be working on her first thesis.

Origin
The first HyperGrow experimentations took place in the hospital at Cornovis EFOM #09 in 2342. The children there had all been exposed to radiation after an explosion on their home planet and Paige thought they were the perfect candidates because their bodies were already broken. The aim was only to further her research but the project failed due to unforeseen complications with the radiation in the blood and poor results. Most the children that were tested on died.

Relaunch
The government cut off Paige's funds after the failure at Cornovis EFOM #09 but she kept her deal with Cornovis who saw their partnership with her as profitable. They secretly set up her personnel as the doctors at the hospitals in all their facilities. They provided her with all the medical supplies and test subjects she'd ever need as long as she made improvement on her own research, and Cornovis' private research.

Cornovis' had created a partnership with the military years before to provide soldiers with no emotional attachments. They had seen an advantage with Paige and paired her up with some of their top scientists to combine her aging research with theirs to create super soldiers for the military. The goal then was to develop a genetic modifier using results from the endless test subjects, and once one was created, a preliminary screening would be held to select the kids with genetic potential. Few kids passed their preliminary screening, but those who did were exposed to extensive experimentation and had their memories of the experience wiped.

The HyperGrow studies were conducted in closed off rooms, known as Psych Rooms, in the facility hospitals. The documented use of these rooms were psychological therapy. They were kept extremely confidential; even the kids who were left with bruising and scarring after the sessions didn't know what was happening to them. The program was successful for over 100 years, bringing in top scientists from every generation, until the uprising. Paige lived to see the entire course of the project. Over 47,000 kids had been tested on.

Failure
The heads of Cornovis were brought down by the government in 2504 after extensive evidence of the mistreatment of and immoral experimentation on the kids under their care. HyperGrow fell as a result of this, before they could ever create a functioning, healthy super soldier. The program was disbanded and never picked up again. The Future for Our Youth committee took over Cornovis to continue running the existing orphanages, but the committee disbanded after several scandals in 2571 and Cornovis became a government entity once again.

List of Known Involved Scientists

 * Paige Roland
 * Waylon Barrett
 * Jacob Rousset
 * Felicity Stanton
 * Maverick O'Massey VII
 * Cassandra Wells
 * Victor Hartley

List of Known Test Subjects

 * Todd O'Massey
 * Olive Ward (Indirectly)

Trivia

 * Paige never reached her original goal after becoming obsessed with building the soldiers.
 * Paige was the only member to see the entire project's lifespan. She lived to be an astounding 187 years old.
 * There's a record of all involved scientists and tested kids held under confidentiality.
 * 1/4 of the tested kids all died at a premature age from an aggressive autoimmune disease. The other 3/4 were forced to inject themselves with a drug in order to stay alive. The drug was unique by person; it was the drug the doctors to used to experiment on them with.
 * Dr. Jacob Rousset unknowingly experimented on his own daughter.
 * The preliminary screenings usually consisted of DNA testing, but sometimes if results were inconclusive other measures would be taken.
 * Test subject 8383, aka Todd O'Massey, was a favorite among the scientists because his DNA held the best shot at success.