The Balance of Nature

A young doctor has been doing research on cell regeneration. Such a breakthrough would allow people to get younger and would cure many cellular diseases. It starts with an effort to save his wife who is suffering from a horrible form of cancer. The process works at first and then immediately regresses. She dies and he withdraws, with his equipment, to a remote location in a small town. There he meets a woman, thirty years his senior, living in an abusive situation. They develop a friendship but that friendship leads to more abuse from her vicious, unhappy husband who blames the world and her for all his issues. One day he beats her so violently, she is near death. The young doctor needs to act. He treats her with the machine, adding a new element he has just discovered. The reason for my hesitancy is that there are so many scientific maneuverings that are terribly far fetched, even for science fiction. When it was over, my response was, "Oh, really?"