‘Take a seat Doctor,’ replied the woman, indicating with one hand while picking up the telephone with her other. A few minutes later a young man appeared in the hall and said, ‘Dr Milne asks if you wouldn’t mind waiting in the library until everyone is here?’
‘Of course not,’ replied Bannerman automatically, but wondering about the word, ‘everyone’. He was under the impression that this was to be a meeting between himself and Milne. He followed the young man up to the library where he was invited to sit beside a small table that was bedecked with magazines. He picked up one with two smiling Africans on the front and flicked through the pages without taking in too much. The magazine was comprised of a series of reports on successful projects undertaken to improve health care in the Third World.
There was a young clerk in the room. She was replacing books on the shelves but was aware of Bannerman’s presence. She saw the magazine he was looking at and said, ‘It’s wonderful what they’re doing in Africa isn’t it?’
Bannerman looked at the innocent smile on her face and smiled back. ‘Yes it is,’ he replied but inside his head he was thinking what a load of twaddle the magazine was. It was exactly the kind of rubbish the West wanted to read about Africa. Comfortable, optimistic nonsense about success in the field without any reference to the enormous scale of the problems of pestilence and famine. Yet, would it really help if they did understand? he wondered. Would it encourage people to give more if they understood the true scale of the problem? or would it put them off altogether?
‘If you would follow me Dr Bannerman?’ said the young man who had re-appeared in the doorway putting an end to his philosophizing.
Bannerman put down the magazine, smiled goodbye to the female clerk and followed the young man downstairs, where he was shown into a large room with a long table as its main feature. Four men were sitting at one end; one of them got up and came towards him as the young man left.
‘Dr Bannerman? I’m Hugh Milne. We spoke on the telephone. We are all obliged to you for coming here at such short notice. May I introduce, Sir John Flowers, Secretary of the MRC, Dr Hector Munro, Director of the Neurobiology Unit in Edinburgh and Mr Cecil Allison from the Prime Minister’s office.’
Bannerman nodded to each of the men in turn and took his seat.
Flowers said, ‘I understand from Dr Milne that you were kind enough to examine some brain sections we sent you.’
‘It didn’t take long,’ said Bannerman. They were very clear. Typical Creutzfeld Jakob Disease.’
‘So I understand,’ said Flowers. ‘Hugh also explained their origin?’
‘I understand the sections came from the brains of three young men who died after a short illness and that all three worked with sheep.’
‘Quite so,’ said Flowers. ‘What was your reaction when you heard this?’
‘I thought there had to be some kind of mistake, a mix-up with the slides perhaps.’
‘We are assured that there was no mix-up,’ said Flowers.
‘So I was told,’ said Bannerman.
This puts us in a very difficult position,’ said Flowers. He turned to the man from the Prime Minister’s Office and said, ‘Perhaps Mr Allison would like to explain?’
Allison nodded, cleared his throat and said, ‘Her Majesty’s Government is very anxious to assure our European colleagues that there is absolutely no problem with British meat products. Ideally we would like to be able to say categorically that slow virus diseases of animals cannot be transmitted to man through the food chain.’
‘I see,’ said Bannerman.
‘We have reason to believe that Her Majesty’s Opposition is about to press us very soon to make a statement to this effect. If we cannot do this with the backing of the Medical Research Council then the effects on the farming community might well be
catastrophic.’
‘All the evidence has been pointing to an effective species barrier between animals and man and then suddenly, we have this report from Scotland,’ said
Flowers.
‘I can well understand the problem,’ said Bannerman.
‘Naturally, we are hoping that the report is mistaken in some way,’ said Allison.
‘But even if it is, and please God it is, I understand that there has been an overall increase in the incidence of degenerative brain disease in the population. Is that not so?’ asked Bannerman.
Allison appeared to move uncomfortably in his seat. He said, ‘Our statisticians have concluded that that is not necessarily the case. Data in the past has been scant and very difficult to obtain so what represents a true increase percentage-wise is quite hard to define …’
Bannerman looked at Flowers but the Secretary diverted his eyes and looked down at the table. ‘I see,’ he said.
‘If this report is accurate however,’ said Flowers, ‘and an animal brain disease has been transmitted to man, then that would be quite another matter.’ ‘Quite,’ said Allison.
Flowers looked up at Bannerman and said, ‘Might I ask what your feelings are at this stage Doctor?’
‘I think that if this report is real, then some extra factor must have come into play,’ said Bannerman.
‘What sort of extra factor were you thinking of?’ asked Allison.
‘If the Scrapie agent caused the deaths of these men then I believe it must have changed in some way; something caused it to mutate, enabling it to cross the species barrier.’
“This is largely the conclusion I and my colleagues have come to. It would be very worrying of course, if the change were due to a spontaneous mutation occurring in the animals because that would mean that this sort of thing could happen at any time and in any place. If however, the mutation was induced by some outside factor then it may be possible to identify such a factor. With luck we should be able to take steps to prevent it happening again.’
‘Something tells me that you have identified a factor,’ said Bannerman.
‘I think we may have,’ said Flowers. ‘The area where the three dead men farmed the sheep is adjacent to the Invermaddoch power station.’
‘The Invermaddoch nuclear power station,’ added Allison.
‘Oh,’ said Bannerman, taking a moment to consider the possible implications. Radiation was one of the most common inducers of mutation in living things. ‘I suppose you couldn’t hope for a better candidate,’ he said, ‘assuming there has been a leak. Has there?’
‘Officially no,’ said Allison.
‘What does that mean?’ said Bannerman.
Allison took off his glasses to clean them, unnecessarily.
There was a slight problem at the station some six months ago,’ he admitted hesitantly. ‘Which was covered up,’ said Bannerman.
‘We were assured that it was very slight and we didn’t want to cause unnecessary alarm,’ said Allison.
‘But it happened,’ said Bannerman.
Flowers moved in to defuse the situation. ‘I think it’s about time we came to the point,’ he said to Bannerman. ‘We were rather hoping to enlist your professional help with this affair.’
‘I would be happy to help you with the lab work if that’s what you mean,’ said Bannerman.
‘Actually, it isn’t,’ said Flowers. ‘What we would like, would be for you to investigate this whole matter.’
Bannerman was taken aback and left speechless for a few moments.
Flowers said, ‘We need a first-rate pathologist to go up to Scotland and report back. We have to know; one, if the men’s deaths were really due to Scrapie; two, what caused the disease to cross the species barrier; and three, whether or not we can regard this as an isolated incident.’
‘And it has to be done discreetly,’ added Allison.
‘Presumably no mention of Scrapie was made on the men’s death certificates?’ asked Bannerman.
‘No. The official cause of death was given as meningitis.’
‘What about the sheep in the area?’