Profit, Loss, and Miracles

After a ten-year struggle with lupus, Zelphoe Gabrielle (Gabby) Maloney was near death. Treatments for the autoimmune disease, as well as the disease itself, were destroying her internal organs. But Gabby never accepted that she would die. She had five children and a devoted husband who gave her an indomitable will to live. Only one option was open to her. Only one procedure would save her life: a stem cell transplant. Her insurance company would not authorize it. After multiple appeals, she was denied the right to live. Profit, Loss, and Miracles is a dramatic and touching story of a woman who fought-and won-against a corrupt insurance company in collusion with officials of a state government. On her deathbed, she waged a righteous legal war against the multi-billion dollar machine that tried to silence her and her husband. People in government and industry who stood in her corner had their reputations destroyed. People who defended the actions of the insurance company were rewarded handsomely. A few heroes helped save Gabby's life: two doctors, a journalist, lawyers who headed toward bankruptcy because of the case, and an astronaut who commanded the first mission to fly around the Moon. Gabby and her husband had never met Frank Borman, II, the astronaut who served as Commander of Apollo 8, when he made it possible for her to have the life-saving cell transplant. With some of the most central, high profile perpetrators now deceased, the full story can be told. In the spirit of A Civil Action and Erin Brockovich, this is a powerful story of right triumphing over greed.