Paul Turner


 * "Science is changing a lot faster than we expected, faster than anyone realizes".


 * "Why are people more afraid of aliens from outer space than they are the monsters we're creating ourselves?"

Paul Turner was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. After Turner graduated from high school, he went on to Johns Hopkins University. He graduated from Johns Hopkins with a Bachelor of Science in Molecular and Cellular Biology and a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army via the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps. Turner received an Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship and went on to attend the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

After earning his medical degree, he went through three years of internal medicine residency at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Upon obtaining his certification from the American Board of Internal Medicine, Turner was assigned as a physician to Womack Army Medical Center in North Carolina. He later returned to Brooke Army Medical Center and entered the Infectious Disease Fellowship Program. After his three year fellowship, Turner was assigned to a research position at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

During the the Persian Gulf war, he was sent to investigate a suspected biological weapons site in Iraq. The mission went awry when a sneak attack by an Iraqi soldier exposed Turner to an unknown chemical or biological agent that left him with a rare form of aplastic anemia — terminal and incurable. He was eventually given a medical discharge by the Army.

Turner spent the next six years struggling against Gulf War Syndrome and against the Army's reluctance to accept responsibility for the countless veterans suffering from it. Despite the best efforts of Sydney MacMillan, his doctor at the VA hospital, he lingered dangerously close to death... until a mysterious Japanese Woman visited him in the hospital and provided him with a serum that sent his illness into instantaneous remission. She saved Turner then and she continues to provide him with the needed serum to keep the disease in remission. She has a hidden agenda and needs him to help her accomplish certain goals.

Just a few months after making his miraculous recovery, Turner rejoined the Army as a civilian "special investigator" with USAMRIID. His assignment: to investigate criminal abuses of science (delving into areas such as human cloning, gene splicing, and chemical weaponry). Section 44 of USAMRIID's charter permits it to investigate such matters.

In a world where scientists play God simply because they can, Paul Turner is the voice of reason wondering if they should.

Note

 * This character appeared in the short-lived television series, Strange World.