Bioshock > Adam > Adam and Eve
One day Brigid Tenenbaum, strolling through the docks of Neptune's Bounty, saw a dock worker playing catch with a co-worker. This was remarkable to Tenenbaum, since she knew the dock worker's hands were crippled during World War II. She asked him why his hands were now okay. He replied that the day before a sea slug bit him on one of his hands. The next morning he could flex his hands for the first time in years. Tenenbaum asked whether he still had the slug that bit him.
He did.
Tenenbaum found that the slug excreted stem cells that can repair any damaged tissue. From those stem cells she developed a substance that came to be known as Adam. And Frank Fontaine, her employer, marketed Adam and its derivatives through his Fontaine Futuristics front.
Adam is the base on which plasmids and gene tonics are made. The plasmids require fuel to maintain their power, and that fuel is another Adam-derived serum called Eve. How much Eve is consumed varies with the plasmids used; but this can be controlled with the Eve Saver tonic (available with the version 1.1 upgrade).
Adam also finds its way into other products. It is the basis for the plant-restoring Lazarus Vector. It is also a component in the Vita-Chambers.
The slug that excretes Adam can only produce so much. Tenenbaum discovered that if she implanted the slug in the stomach lining of a suitable victim, and then have the victim eat, the victim will vomit up to thirty times the Adam that a slug could produce by itself. She also found that the only suitable victims
were little girls; these victims became the Little Sisters. Fontaine founded the Little Sisters Orphanages to keep the girls while they produced Adam.
Adam is a two-edged sword. It can heal injuries and restore health. It can boost intelligence, strength and speed. But it works oxymoronically like a benign cancer, producing tumors, ulcers and lesions, esp. in such outer-germ-layer tissues as the skin and nervous system. Worse, as the stem cells replace the original ones, the user becomes addicted to Adam to maintain life. The user no longer eats, drinks, or even sleeps. At this point the user becames an aggressor or splicer. Extended use of Adam brings about physical and cerebral damage, producing violent aggression, insanity and death.
It also appears that, while Adam can restore health, it cannot prevent disease. A tape in Arcadia's Tea Garden reveals the male half of a tryst buying a med hypo to ward off the aftereffects of his lover's prior visits to the Garden. And, in a tape that did not make it into the game, Dr. Tennenbaum had to deal with a bout of influenza that killed all but one of the original Little Sisters.