Medical Research Cuts
Questioned
S.Q. Lapius stepped gingerly off the tennis court,
drenched with sweat. His shirt clung to his undulating fat.
Perspiration drowned his brow. His eyeglasses were misty.
“What a waste this is,”
Lapius said, reaching for a drink and watching the water drain from him in
rivulets.
“What a waist is right,”
I said, “You were a 44 before you started to play, and you’ll be a 44 as soon
as you finish that drink,” I said toweling him off to prevent the inevitable
puddles that develop whenever Lapius is permitted to perspire in one place for
any length of time.
“No, Harry, I was
referring to the sweat, perspiration, being a waste.”
“15 minutes of tennis
isn’t exactly vigorous, Simon, but I guess it is for you,” I had recalled
seeing him break into a sweat from the effort of cutting a tough steak.
“Come on, get changed. You look like a pile of soiled laundry,” I walked
him into the locker room.
“Incidentally,” I asked,
“why is sweating such a waste?”
“We will have to conserve
it, Harry. It may fast become a national resource.”
“Your drink was too
strong,” I suggested.
“You are being perverse,
Harry. Or haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“That the Columbia
University Presbyterian Medical Center has decided to discontinue research on
subjects which called for the analysis of body secretions.”
“You josh.”
“No, my boy. Tis
truth, verily,” Lapius said struggling into his pants. “It seems that
some of the excreta and-or secreta of patients was being taken without informed
consent. That is, the researchers failed to inform the person that his
stool, sweat or tears that were being examined for metabolic studies, we’ll
say, on excretory rates and routes for antibiotics or other chemicals. I
guess one person sued, and won, making the subject fair game for our legal
colleagues.”
“That is ridiculous,
Simon. Do you mean to tell me that such an important bastion of medical
research as Columbia-Presbytarian would be intimidated by that kind of
business?”
“Yes. The civil
libertarians feel that so much could be found out about an individual by
examining his excreta, that unless he gave an informed consent, the research
must come to a stop. Word got around that they could show you were a drug
addict, or had some disease or other. To tell you the truth I don’t know
exactly what the problem was, but apparently someone fussed, and said their
sweat or urine or tear drops were personal property and could not be used
indiscriminately for research.”
“So why not get informed
consent, and be done with it. After all, why close down these projects?”
“I don’t really
know. But certainly if you have to get informed consent, you raise in the
patient an index of suspicion. Maybe they just didn’t want to bother with
the legality of it.”
“But certainly we seem
to be coming full circle. Between this, and the new rulings about fetal
experimentation, research may well be grinding to a halt, and perhaps we are
about to enter a new ‘dark ages’ where rational thought will be replaced by
individual opinion. The effort and money that the United States put into
medical research during the past twenty five years was one of the noblest
national acts in the history of the world. We subsidized medical research
not only here at home, but scientists in countries the world over were able to
apply, and if found worthy, received research grants. I think the entire
cost was less than a billion dollars a year, and it changed the face of medical
science. Enough raw data was developed, enough techniques and instrumentation
devised to last us a century or two before the new information is digested and
applied.
“But it is a shame to
see it coming to an end, that era of subsidy in sciences. If it were to
die of attrition, it would be bad enough, but to die under the strain that the
scientists are unworthy snoopers, or even worse, as is happening in Boston,
criminals, is unbearable. The investment the United States made in
medical science was a golden burden that this country bore proudly. I
think, Harry, it ranks with the Marshall plan in generosity, and will even have
more long-reaching effects,” Lapius was in his shirt now, and doing his stringy
bow-tie. He started chuckling.
“I can remember,” he
said, as we were walking out of the locker room, “when Churchill promised his
Englishmen during the early and bitter days of the war, that he had nothing to
offer them but blood, sweat and tears. I’d like to take him up on that
offer now.”
“You can’t just this
minute,” I said, as we reached the lobby.
“Why not?” Lapius asked.
“Take a look at your
feet,” I told him. “You forgot your shoes.”
He turned dismayed, to reenter the locker room. “Of course, they were the other things doctors would examine experimentally, nail parings and hair. All off limits now. A pity.”