Tomorrow and Tomorrow

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Fred Spencer, the highly successful commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is brilliant, honest and hard working. Tom Callahan, Fred's boyhood friend, and close advisor to the President, is the opposite. Tom, who is heavily in debt, takes advantage of Fred's concern over the health of his young daughter, who is HIV positive from a contaminated needle used in a blood transfusion. Tom persuades Fred to accept a bribe from a Japanese pharmaceutical company, with which Tom is conspiring, and prematurely approve the marketing of a new AIDS drug being developed by that company. After agonizing over his decision, Fred agrees to the illegal scheme, with the hope that the drug will cure his daughter. When the criminal scheme unravels, there follows widespread publicity, a Congressional investigation, the appointment of an independent counsel, threatened legal prosecution of Tom and Fred, an agreement by Fred with the independent counsel to testify against his friend, and a tragic denouement in an austere Federal courtroom.