This is an account of a project in China carried out in secrecy from the Chinese people and the Western World during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. Project 523, as it was called, resulted in one of the most significant advances in the treatment of malaria since the discovery and first use of quinine over 300 years ago. The origin of the project was a request from the North Vietnamese Government to Mao Zedong in China, for assistance in managing chloroquine drug-resistant malaria affecting their military forces during the Vietnam-American war. Initially the project was...