Hypocrite's Isle

One

Edinburgh

November 1998

A ripple of polite applause gave way to the sound of shuffling feet on tiered, wooden flooring as the audience moved down to the exit doors on either side of the Lister Medical Lecture Theatre. The theatre was located in the oldest part of the hospital, with portraits of medical men of note in its two-hundred-year history gazing down from the walls — included among them the eponymous Joseph Lister, who had been a surgeon at the hospital and who had gone on to pioneer the use of antisepsis. None of them smiled, as befitted a profession not noted for taking itself anything less than seriously.

There were other, more modern lecture rooms in the hospital and adjacent medical school buildings — and all equipped with the latest in audio-visual equipment — but it was traditional that visiting lecturers be invited to use the Lister, and the idea of walking in the footsteps of the great proved seductive to most.

Dr Frank Simmons, a senior lecturer at the adjoining medical school with an international reputation in cancer research, had a lot on his mind. He chose to remain seated at the back until the majority had left, only getting to his feet to join his friend and colleague, Dr Jack Martin, when he saw him near the back of the exiting throng.

‘God, I’m getting old,’ murmured Simmons, who was actually in his early forties.

‘We all are,’ replied Martin, who was much the same age. ‘And mainly because that seminar went on for thirty-five years.’

‘Then it wasn’t my imagination?’

‘I think that guy was trying to prove the earth was flat,’ said Martin. ‘I’ve never seen so many meaningless graphs outside of an election night. Fancy some lunch?’

Simmons checked his watch. ‘I have to be back at the lab by two thirty — a sandwich maybe?’

The two men walked back to the medical school and took the lift up to the staff canteen where they waited in a short queue at the counter to pick up their food. They sat down at a table by a window where they could look out as ambulances came and went, visitors pursued their eternal search for parking places, and nurses and technicians moved to and fro in the choreography of hospital life.

‘What’s on your mind, Frank?’ asked Martin. ‘You look troubled.’

‘Do you realise how many hours we must have wasted over the years listening to waffle like that?’ said Simmons, before taking a serious bite of his baguette.

‘I suppose that’s one of those things in life it’s better not to know,’ smiled Martin.

‘There was this advert on TV last night — an appeal for funds for cancer research. They wanted people to give a few pounds per month. It was slick, professional, really well thought-out...’

‘They all are these days,’ said Martin. ‘They’re deliberately designed to make people feel as guilty as sin if they don’t put their hands in their pockets. Tugging at the heartstrings of the nation is big business. But don’t knock it; some of it is coming our way.’

‘But we both know how many thousands of people are involved in cancer research, how much money is tied up in it,’ said Simmons. ‘People live and die doing it. It’s become a profession in its own right... Mary’s doing law and Justin’s going into cancer research...’

‘I suppose it has to go on for as long as it takes,’ shrugged Martin.

‘I think it’s more what they’ll do with the money that’s bothering me,’ said Simmons. ‘They’ll take on more staff, buy more equipment and do more of the same.’

Martin looked puzzled. ‘And your point?’

‘It’s not staff and equipment that’s missing from the equation. It’s ideas, new ideas... the things you can’t buy.’

Martin took a sip of his coffee. ‘Aren’t you being a bit unfair?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s time we faced facts. The public are being conned into thinking that the thing holding up a cure for cancer is a lack of funds. Not so. Jack Kennedy threw money at the problem back in the sixties, millions of dollars, and all they got out of it was a whole lot of institutes full of people in white coats — all of them still working today.’

‘Come on, there’s some good stuff going on.’

‘Sure, but the amount of repetitive crap that’s being carried out... and the Mickey Mouse science that shelters under the umbrella of cancer research — like the stuff we’ve just been listening to — that’s another matter.’

‘It’s difficult...’ said Martin.

‘Yeah, it’s difficult...’ said Simmons.

‘I didn’t notice you leaping to your feet and telling our friend in the Lister that his work was going nowhere,’ countered Martin, sensing accusation in Simmons’ echo.

‘You’re right... you’re right,’ conceded Simmons. ‘We sat there, knowing it was rubbish, but we listened to our head of department thanking him for coming along and telling us about his exciting work and we all clapped like a bunch of seals...’

‘It’s the academic way...’

‘Quite.’

‘Cheer up, Frank, the seminar wasn’t that bad. No, I take that back; it was, but there’s no reason for you to feel personally responsible for the slowness of cancer research. A journey of ten thousand miles and all that. You’re doing your best; I’m doing my best...’

‘I suppose,’ conceded Simmons with a sigh. He looked at his watch and got to his feet. ‘I’ll have to go. I’ve got a meeting with my PhD students.’

‘How are they doing?’

‘No worries with Mary Hollis — she’s been fine from the word go. She should be able to publish her latest findings soon — her third publication. Tom Baxter’s fine too. He had a slow start but he’s doing all right — a bit of a plodder but he gets there in the end. It’s Gavin Donnelly, the new one, I’m not so sure about. He’s either a genius or an idiot and I’m not sure which.’

‘Could be every group leader’s nightmare,’ joked Martin. ‘A student brighter than his supervisor. Only one way to cope with that: steal his results and run. But remember to acknowledge his contribution in your acceptance speech at the Swedish Academy.’

Simmons smiled. ‘It’s actually the alternative I’m worried about — that he’s an idiot who slipped through the net and got an honours degree for good attendance.’

‘Well, they do say everything’s being dumbed down these days. Where did he do his degree?’

‘Cambridge.’

‘So he should be able to spell his name and do the four times table. What have you got him working on?’

‘Genes affecting membrane structure.’

Simmons entered the small meeting room adjoining the main lab and apologised for being a few minutes late, using the seminar in the Lister as his excuse. ‘Didn’t see any of you folks there.’

Mary Hollis, a thoughtful-looking girl in her early twenties with ash-blonde hair tied back with a lilac ribbon, was pouring coffee. She smiled and said with a gentle accent that gave away her Dublin origins, ‘Sorry, I’ve got an experiment running. I have to take samples every twenty minutes. Coffee?’

‘Please.’

‘Dentist,’ explained Tom Baxter. ‘Root canal treatment.’ He gave a crooked smile which seemed to match just about everything else in his appearance. He was well over six foot tall, lanky, with narrow shoulders that never seemed to be quite horizontal. He wore a checked shirt and jeans — standard student wear — and sat slumped in one of the six chairs in the room with one long leg crossed over the other. A clipboard rested on his raised knee while he tapped the end of a biro pen against his teeth.

Simmons noticed — as he had many times before — that Tom’s glasses tended to slope at the opposite angle to his shoulders. He turned to look at the third member of the group, Gavin Donnelly, who seemed to be avoiding his gaze. ‘What about you, Gavin?’

Donnelly, a good head shorter than Tom but with a much more athletic build and a shock of long red hair, looked up and replied in a thick Liverpudlian accent, ‘I went for a walk.’

Simmons gave him a moment to elaborate, but nothing was forthcoming so he said, ‘You do realise that attendance at departmental seminars is expected for all first-year postgraduate students?’

‘I hate seminars, Frank. Times have changed. We have the internet now.’

Simmons saw Mary and Tom exchange uncomfortable glances and felt slightly embarrassed himself, but he kept his cool. ‘Indeed, Gavin, and it’s a valuable tool,’ he agreed. ‘But reading articles on the net is no substitute for being able to question scientists about their work and listen to their response to informed criticism.’

‘That’s the theory but it doesn’t work out like that, does it?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Universities have seminars for the sake of having seminars. Academics like the sound of their own voices. Half the speakers I listened to last year had very little to say at all — and did so at great length. Anything worthwhile had already been published.’

‘Oh, come on, Gavin,’ smiled Mary. ‘Play the game. Go to seminars, collect your brownie points and stop being such a pain.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Tom.

‘I just think it shouldn’t have to be that way,’ insisted Gavin.

‘But it is,’ said Mary, leaning towards him and lecturing him kindly, as if he were a younger brother. ‘Accept it and get on with your life.’

Simmons, who had seen a lot of students from poorer backgrounds come and go and was all too familiar with the rebel without a cause, smiled and held up his hands. ‘Enough, guys,’ he said. ‘Gavin is obviously a man of principle and should be respected for that, but Mary has been kind enough to offer some sound advice.’ He turned towards Gavin. ‘Maybe he should at least consider it. Let’s leave it at that and now you can all tell me what you’ve been doing for the past week.’

‘You didn’t say what the seminar was like,’ said Mary as she handed Simmons his coffee and took up stance by the blackboard. ‘Gerald Montague, wasn’t it?’

Simmons thought he detected a hint of mischief in her enquiry. ‘It wasn’t very exciting,’ he replied. ‘Unusual approach but perhaps somewhat... flawed.’

‘Hasn’t stopped him publishing at least a dozen papers on that nonsense,’ said Gavin. ‘So much for peer review...’

Simmons gritted his teeth. ‘Peer review isn’t perfect, but it’s still the best way we’ve got of screening new material for publication, Gavin,’ he pointed out.

‘On the other hand, there are so many old pals scratching each other’s backs, you’d think they’d come clean and have a blazer badge and club tie made for themselves,’ said Gavin.

‘Oh, Gavin,’ said Mary, running out of patience. ‘Sometimes you behave like a kid who’s lost his lollipop. No system is ever perfect, and if you go on setting impossibly high standards for all those around you, you’re going to have such a disappointing life.’

‘I’m just saying what’s true,’ said Gavin.

‘What you think is true.’

Gavin looked at the floor and took a deep breath. ‘Okay, what I think is true,’ he conceded.

‘Well, maybe it’s a jaundiced view. Maybe you should just stop and consider for a moment before you say anything.’

Kiss arse, you mean?’

‘No, I do not,’ said Mary. ‘Just think before you speak.’ She said this so calmly and pleasantly that Gavin smiled and showed no heart for continuing the exchange.

‘Anyone want to hear what happened to the G45 cloning I’ve been doing?’ asked Tom — an interruption welcomed by the others.

‘We all do, Tom,’ said Simmons.

Mary passed him the chalk stick she’d been weighing in her palm and glanced at her watch before getting up. ‘Back in a mo. I have to take a sample.’

Tom took up a gangling stance beside the blackboard, adjusted his glasses so that they were no longer in danger of falling off his nose, and turned to face the others. ‘As you know, I’ve been trying to put the C1 gene into a cloning vector so that I could move it into the H12 strain... well, no joy I’m afraid. Three attempts and absolutely zilch.’

Mary came back into the room, ducking her head and making exaggerated tiptoe movements as she returned to her seat.

‘What vector did you use, Tom?’ asked Simmons.

‘Alpha 12.’

Simmons bit back the comment he was about to make. He wanted to see if anyone else would say something.

‘Copy number,’ said Gavin, without looking up from the doodle he was making in his notebook.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Alpha 12 is a high copy-number vector. Hector and Jameson showed last year in Molecular Microbiology that C1 can’t be cloned in high copy number — it’s toxic to the cell when present in large quantities.’

Tom scratched his head. ‘Really? I must have missed that.’

‘No great harm done,’ said Simmons. ‘Use a low copy-number vector next time, Tom, and you’ll have a different tale to tell next week.’

‘Wish I’d seen that,’ mumbled Tom as he returned to his seat. ‘I feel a bit of an idiot now.’

Gavin continued his doodle.

Mary took Tom’s place and chalked up some figures on the blackboard. ‘I’ve been doing some control experiments to make sure the effect I spoke about last week was scientifically valid,’ she said. ‘And it is.’ She chalked up some more data. ‘An 80 per cent increase in the test culture, none at all in the controls.’

‘Well done, you,’ said Simmons.

‘But you haven’t shown any result for the Beta cell line,’ said Gavin, glancing at what was on the blackboard.

‘Well spotted, Gavin,’ said Mary with an icy smile. ‘That’s what I’m doing today and so far, it’s looking just as good as the others.’

‘Touché,’ said Gavin with an amused smile.

Simmons enjoyed the sparring between Mary and Gavin. He was pleased that Gavin had been so quick to spot the hole in Mary’s data, but equally pleased that Mary had been ready to plug the gap. ‘Well, that should wrap things up nicely,’ he said. ‘How about you, Gavin, what have you been up to?’

‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘About anything in particular?’ enquired Simmons with a deliberate vagueness that made Tom and Mary smile.

‘The approach we spoke about for altering membrane structure. I’m not sure we’ve picked the best way.’

‘Why not?’

‘Just a feeling.’

‘Does this mean that you have come up with a better way?’ asked Simmons calmly.

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, do let us know when you make the breakthrough.’

Mary hid another smile by putting her hand to her mouth. Tom stared intently at the floor.

It was six thirty when Simmons left the lab and said good night to the servitor on the door. ‘Brass monkeys out there tonight, Doctor,’ said the man, looking up from his book. Simmons found out what he meant almost as soon as he left the warmth of the building and saw his breath swirl in clouds around him as he made his way to the car park. He tugged his collar up and fumbled for his keys in his coat pocket, taking care with his footing on the icy surface of the inner quadrangle. He had a ‘why did I ever leave California?’ moment when his breath started to freeze on the windscreen almost as soon as he’d got into the car and his attempts to clear it by hand only made things worse.

Although Scottish by birth, Simmons had spent five years at the University of California at Los Angeles and had only returned to Scotland a year ago when he and his wife, Jenny, decided that they wanted their two children, Mark and Jill, to have a Scottish education — or, more correctly, grow up as British children rather than develop the mores and attitudes of sun-kissed Californians. They had bought a house a few miles outside Edinburgh — a converted farm steading — and Jenny, a nurse, had returned to working part-time as the practice nurse at the local GP’s group surgery.

‘You’re very quiet this evening,’ said Jenny as they cleared away the dishes. ‘Something on your mind?’

‘You could say,’ agreed Simmons.

‘Why don’t you go up and tell the kids their story and then come down and tell me all about it? I’ll have a whisky waiting for you.’

‘But you can’t feel personally responsible for the slowness of cancer research,’ exclaimed Jenny when Simmons told her about the doubts he’d been expressing to Jack Martin at lunchtime.

‘I’m part of it, though. I can’t divorce myself from it and blame the lack of progress on other people.’

‘But you work hard and you’ve been very successful. That’s why they gave you the position in the first place.’

‘It’s academic success,’ insisted Simmons. ‘I’ve published a lot, but when it comes to the question of whether that has made the slightest difference to people actually suffering from the disease... that’s another matter.’

‘But surely the only alternative is to stop doing it and walk out. Will that help them?’

‘No, but...’

‘Look, you said yourself, you need lucky breaks in science and if you’re not there at the bench when the break comes along, you’ll miss it, right?’

Simmons nodded and took a sip of his whisky.

‘What brought this on anyway? You’re not usually so negative.’

‘I suppose it was that damned seminar.’

Jenny smiled. ‘What else is bugging you?’

‘Gavin Donnelly.’

Jenny raised her eyes. ‘The charming Gavin. What’s he been up to?’

‘Damn all. That’s the trouble.’

‘Well, he’s not a child, even if he acts like one. It’s his funeral if he doesn’t do any work and finishes up not getting a PhD.’

‘True, but he’s clearly not stupid. He knows a lot. He obviously reads the journals. He saw right away why Tom’s experiment last week hadn’t worked: he noticed immediately what was missing from Mary’s results when she chalked them up. It’s just... that he does damn all himself and thinks he knows everything...’

‘Which is your prerogative,’ smiled Jenny.

‘... and has the social skills of a lamp-post.’

‘Quite. I’m not liable to forget his first visit here.’

‘Let’s not go there. How was your day?’

‘Remarkably stress-free, I’m pleased to say.’

Simmons looked at her affectionately. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ he said. ‘You’re always the same; so supportive, so steady. I go up and down like a yo-yo and...’

‘Sssh. You’ll be telling me next I’m your rock.’

‘Anything good on the telly tonight?’

Jenny looked up the schedules in the paper. ‘Nothing inspiring... there’s a documentary on ancient Egypt on Channel 5 at ten — a quest to find the treasure of someone-hotep. But Channel 5 at ten?... I think we both know what they’re going to find, don’t you?’

‘Zilch.’