‘Precisely what disease?’ demanded Peter Battey, the second of the original Washington-based applicants, a balding, pebble-spectacled man.
‘I’ve already told you I haven’t worked out a specific tandem schedule; I won’t until I’ve had detailed discussions with Russell Benn across the corridor. But there are obvious targets and I think we should shoot for as many as we can.’
‘So, we’re going for the top prizes: AIDS, hepatitis B, cancers, influenza variants, common cold?’ enumerated Beverley Jackson.
It wasn’t a sardonic, professionally combative list like that of the Greek geneticist, needing a matching confrontation. His unspoken idea came again into Parnell’s mind as he said: ‘Why not? I don’t expect – won’t have – any of you backing off from a project that’s taken everyone else into a cul-desac. It’s because they’ve ended in dead ends that we’ve got to try something different, something newer and better.’
‘If we can think of something newer and better,’ said Lapidus, doubtfully.
‘The only way to find out is to try,’ said Sean Sato. The Japanese-American had the deeply black hair of his Asian ancestry but was taller, almost 6'. He was immaculately and fastidiously dressed beneath the laboratory uniform, the club-patterned tie tight behind a pin-collared shirt, the trousers of his muted check suit razor-creased above mirror-polished brogues.
It wasn’t a sycophantic remark, Parnell immediately guessed. ‘You’re arriving with some already-formed ideas?’
The man’s smile was apologetic. ‘Not so much pre-formed. Projects that could be added to the list.’
‘Such as?’ This first, getting-to-know-each-other meeting was evolving far differently from how he’d expected but it was better than he’d imagined. Certainly there’d been some professional posturing but already they were scratching the surface into which he wanted them more deeply to dig.
‘I could be accused of personal interest,’ announced Sato.
‘I won’t accuse you until I hear what it is,’ promised Parnell.
‘There’s a lot of concentration upon AIDS. Rightly so,’ said the man, eagerly. His gesture towards Beverley was a polite bow. ‘There’s a lot of concentration upon hepatitis B. Rightly so again: seventy-five per cent of the thirty-five million suffering from it are in the Western Pacific and South East Asia region, which very much includes Japan. But in less than five years – with little if any reduction in that figure – it will be overtaken by hepatitis C, an obviously genetically linked but wholly different strain of the same disease. At the moment the only antiviral agent that suppresses hepatitis B is lamivudine, which is also effective in treating HIV. Already there are some indications of superbug resistance to lamivudine. If that resistance becomes established, it will reduce any fight against not only hepatitis B, but C as well. And AIDS.’
‘Which conveniently rounds the square to drug resistance…’ began Parnell.
‘Not quite,’ refused Lapidus. ‘Interferon is a very successful treatment for hepatitis C.’
‘If the disease is identified sufficiently early,’ accepted Sato. ‘The problem is that it’s usually without symptoms until it’s too late, by which time liver disease and cancer are already established. The last paper I read estimated in five years from now, ten at the most, more people will be dying of the C strain than from AIDS.’
Far better than he’d expected, Parnell thought again: it could scarcely even be acknowledged as the first step but this was exactly how he wanted them to work, arguing not to prove him or herself more knowledgeable or qualified, but properly, expertly, bouncing ideas and theories off each other.
‘That’s a chicken-and-egg situation,’ said Beverley. ‘If disease is already generally established before there are any noticeable symptoms, the answer must be in much earlier screening of risk groups. And you’ve already identified them demographically.’
‘Perhaps I haven’t explained myself sufficiently,’ said Sato. ‘Earlier screening is obviously a factor and when the seriousness of hepatitis C is globally recognized, governments will have to devise a better and quicker diagnostic system: some, indeed, have already started to move in that direction. What I’m talking about is a new drug or treatment when chronic liver inflammation or cirrhosis or cancer is already there.’
‘Let’s start our list with it,’ decided Parnell, unwilling for a specific discussion to become too protracted this soon. He decided, too, against remarking upon their seemingly unconscious adoption of his operating plan: to do so would have sounded schoolmasterly and he considered he’d already suffered too much from that himself. Instead he said: ‘I think things have started well. I do want drug rejection and resistance to be on our agenda. That is where we might make our most obvious, hopefully even quick, contribution…’ He nodded towards Lapidus. ‘We’re all familiar with the diseases that have already been genetically coded. I want our work to identify others high on our agenda, even before we start properly liaising with the people next door…’ He hesitated, nodding now towards his side office. ‘On the subject of doors, mine isn’t ever going to be closed. Any problems, difficulties, anything at all upsetting anyone, I want to know about it and I want them solved, not gestating out of their proper proportions. Thank you for coming to work with me. I think it’s going to turn out just fine.’ Did he really think that? First an anticlimax. Now uncertainty about something he couldn’t identify… unless, that is, it was not about his international acclaim as a genetic explorer, but self-doubt at his personal competence to control, administrate, financially supervise and lead, as he was determined to lead along the forever-God’s-gifted upward spiral. Parnell was as unaccustomed to self-doubt as he was to commercial science. He wasn’t sure he liked either.
Parnell was surprised at the same-day response from Dwight Newton, promptly although not prematurely on time for the agreed meeting, the earlier uncertainties boxed away, hopefully forever. Neither was to be ashamed of: each was understandable, acceptable.
There was no avuncular, standing-in-readiness greeting this time from the research and development vice president. Instead the stick-thin man remained behind his desk, gazing up from between humped shoulders, spider’s-leg fingers at momentary rest before him.
Easily remembering the upbeat, reach-for-the-sky presentations at the seminar, Parnell enthused about his opening encounter with his staff, unembarrassed at the hypocrisy of intentional phrases like ‘team players’ and ‘pulling together’ as he recounted that morning’s gathering.
The scuttle-ready hands remained unmoving. Newton said: ‘I told you I always wanted to know what was going on.’
‘I’ve just told you!’
‘I would have liked to have sat in on it.’
‘It was a getting-together of a team. Nothing formal. Nothing formative.’
‘I would still have liked to have been there.’
‘I’ve found where the washrooms are now,’ retorted Parnell. ‘And can go there all by myself and I wash my hands afterwards.’
‘I don’t understand that remark,’ protested Newton.
‘You asked to be fully informed of everything that happens in my section. You just have been. Fully informed. I don’t expect everything I say or do or initiate to be monitored. I’ve been given the responsibility of a department, which I intend to fulfil according to the terms of my employment.’