The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  ‘And you seem to have found it,’ Gerrard said with an air of triumph. ‘Going by what happened to Andrea Barnett, you found it!’ He whirled and stared directly at the camera that was right in front of him, holding up a warning hand at Ben as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘At this stage we’ll stop our discussion here in the studio and show you some film, a very remarkable piece of film, that was taken only this afternoon at the hospital in the small seaside town of Minster, a piece of film that I believe will be an historic one. Over to our reporter Carolynn Lauderdale in Minster ….’

  Above their heads the monitor screens blanked, showed a series of rapidly flashing numbers and then the image of a girl with long hair hanging over her shoulders and framing a face on which was an expression of great earnestness. ‘Here at Minster Hospital,’ she said, staring firmly out at them, ‘I have had the opportunity to ….’

  ‘Three minutes, twenty seconds, studio!’ shouted a man in earphones who had been jumping about busily ever since they had come into the studio. ‘Audience, this is a good chance for you all to get your coughing over and done with!’ And he flashed a grin up at the rows of seats that banked one side, and the faces of the people there grinned back at him and obediently broke into a rattle of coughs that almost drowned out the voice coming from the monitors, and Jessie had to strain to hear it.

  ‘This child when she arrived here was in a desperate state … but let the specialist in charge of her case explain it all ….’ The image of the girl diminished as the camera pulled back from her to take in the person beside her, and there, grinning with a vast self-satisfaction, was Lyall Davies, and Jessie stared at that so familiar face with amazement. Was that Lyall Davies, the man she knew so well and found so foolish? Or was it just an actor, a simulacrum of the real Lyall Davies, posturing there, so obviously pleased with himself? But there was no mistaking that thick voice with its plummy overtones and she listened horrified as he seemed to describe himself as a great physician of world-wide repute – was he actually saying all that or just implying it? It didn’t matter, because the sense of what he was saying was clear enough – he had seen this desperately sick child brought to him, had looked upon her with deep compassion and had turned to his colleague in the laboratories for help in her care.

  ‘I knew about his stuff, of course,’ Lyall Davies almost purred it. ‘Knew he was beavering away down there in his little cubby hole, and I venture to say I had perhaps a clearer view of the clinical possibilities than he did! Remarkable scientist, of course, remarkable, but not the … ah … clinical acumen of we physicians. Not the experience, of course, but bless the man, there he was with this magical stuff of his! And I knew, absolutely knew we had to try it. Child was dying, don’t you know. It was pitiful to see, dying! So after some persuasion ….’

  He smirked and at once there was the image of the greatly caring physician, almost on his knees to the ice-cold researcher who didn’t really care about people at all, only about his science.

  ‘At last my little bit of commonsense prevailed! He was cautious, of course, properly so, but sometimes one has to be brave, wouldn’t you agree, and take the bull by the horns, so to speak, make a major effort for the sake of a sick child – and that was my small contribution.’

  And again he smirked and this time the picture he projected was one of a selfless, self-effacing, all-caring doctor, who always put others’ needs before his own; and watching that grinning image Jessie felt nausea and turned and looked at Ben who was sitting staring up at the monitor with the same look of disgust on his face that she knew was on her own. ‘Bloody man!’ she said aloud and didn’t care that J.J. Gerrard flicked an interested glance at her before turning back to the makeup girl who was crouching at his side and patting his face with a piece of chamois leather soaked in eau-de-Cologne.

  The scene on the monitor shifted and showed Ward Seven B and Jessie leaned forwards, fascinated, as the camera moved lingeringly over the rows of beds in the cubicles and then closed in on Andrea Barnett. The child was sitting up in her bed looking both nervous and excited, and though she was pale was clearly in basic good condition. Looking at her, Jessie tried to see the way she had looked that day when they had started using the Contravert on her, tried to see those eyes now darting brightly about as the half-closed white-rimmed blanks they had been; and couldn’t. That child, that Andrea had been almost lifeless. This one was as alert and alive as Castor and Pollux were, when they swung eagerly towards her as she came to their cage with her hands full of nuts for them ….

  ‘Thirty seconds, studio!’ bawled the man with the earphones and the makeup girl scuttled away, ignoring the streaks of sweat on Ben’s face, as J.J. Gerrard again settled himself in his seat, and then the whispers that had been going on around them stopped as the earphoned man lifted his arm and looked at J.J. warningly. The red light flicked on on the camera facing him and then he was saying smoothly, as though he’d been talking to them all through that film, ‘A remarkable story, a very remarkable story! A child who should have been dead, from all accounts, now clearly very much alive and well and living in Minster! How did you feel, Dr Pitman, as you watched that piece of film?’

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ Ben said uneasily and flicked a glance at Jessie. ‘Actually it was my assistant Jessie – Mrs Hurst, here – who suggested that Contravert could be useful in the child’s treatment. I was dubious, because of the possibility of side-effects, you see ….’

  J.J. Gerrard had turned to Jessie for a moment at Ben’s words but now he whirled his chair back in order to look hard at Ben again. ‘What’s that? Side-effects? You mean this drug could be dangerous?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘That’s the trouble with all this fuss you people are making. It’s too soon to be publicizing it, you see! We need to do any number of tests in animals, in people, long-term trials – you really can’t go off half-cocked like this!’

  ‘But when lives are at stake, Dr Pitman, it isn’t easy to withhold a lifesaving drug ….’

  ‘Sometimes you have to,’ Ben said, and set his mouth mulishly, and Jessie wanted to call out to him, to warn him of the effect his expression could have on the people watching. Already she had seen all too horribly clearly how Lyall Davies had managed to show himself as a person he most certainly wasn’t, and she wanted passionately to shout to Ben, to cry out, ‘Don’t let them show you as something you’re not! Be careful, these bloody cameras are hunters, they’ll hurt you, they’ll damage you, be careful!’ But she said nothing, silenced herself by her awareness of those voracious cameras, waiting there in her chair, her hands folded on her lap, tensely watching him.

  ‘The mention of possible side-effects to your drug is a timely one, Dr Pitman,’ J.J. was saying silkily. ‘It brings me to another vital question. What about the side-effects of your research, rather than of your drug?’

  ‘Of my … I don’t understand you?’ Ben said and stared at him, clearly confused by the change of tack.

  ‘Of your use of dangerous strains of viruses in animals, Dr Pitman.’ J.J. was sounding silkier than ever. ‘You have already explained to us, have you not, that you do your research by deliberately infecting laboratory animals with a dangerous flu strain – 737, you call it, I seem to remember – and then treating some of the sick animals with your drug Contravert, and letting the others die of it ….’

  ‘Wicked bastard!’ someone shrieked from the audience and there was a little flurry from the banked rows of seats as some of the floor staff went hurrying up towards the source of the disturbance. ‘Wicked, cruel bastard, why don’t you give yourself your stinking diseases and ….’

  J.J. held up one hand and smiled with an air of great imperturbability. ‘Your opportunity to join in the debate with Dr Pitman will come!’ he said with great joviality. ‘Let me have the privilege of getting the facts clear first, if you please!’ And there was a little spatter of applause from the rest of the audience as J.J. turned back to Ben.

 
‘As I was saying, Dr Pitman, the side-effects of your research are risky, too, are they not? Now these animals infected with this deadly virus have escaped and ….’

  ‘Damn it, they didn’t escape!’ Ben exploded, and this time Jessie leaned forwards and held out one hand towards him, needing to silence him, wanting to do anything to stop him showing himself in so bad a light, as an irascible and difficult person. ‘They were deliberately stolen and released by a bunch of idiots who hadn’t the least idea what they were doing ….’

  ‘Humane people, not idiots!’ screamed the voice from the back of the audience. ‘You’re the idiot, deliberately giving vile diseases to helpless little animals. You’re the wicked one ….’ There was a louder scuffle as the objector was clearly physically removed and with magisterial patience J.J. Gerrard waited till it had subsided.

  ‘I take your point, Dr Pitman, that you had no intention of permitting your … ah … subject animals to leave your laboratory alive, but the fact remains, does it not, that you were dealing with lethal bacteria here ….’

  ‘Viruses,’ Ben growled. ‘At least get the facts right. Viruses, not bacteria. They can be dealt with via antibiotics. Viruses can’t.’

  ‘I stand corrected,’ said J.J. Gerrard, and cast a droll look at his audience. Clearly those who dared to correct the great J.J. were few and far between. ‘But the essence of the situation is the same, surely. Lethal viruses, now loose in the community, could spread the disease to a great many other children like Andrea Barnett, who we saw in that historic piece of film?’

  ‘It could,’ Ben said unwillingly. ‘It could … but we can’t know that it has. The first cases of this current epidemic started before my animals were released, so we can’t be sure it’s due to the organism I was using. I know that cleaner woman might have picked it up and … but we don’t know, do we? There’s a great deal of flu of one sort and another going round at the moment. Probably several different strains are involved – why pick on my research to be blamed? The evidence is so flimsy ….’

  ‘But it’s possible?’ Gerrard said and leaned forwards to stare more closely at Ben. ‘It’s possible?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Ben was sweating even more now. ‘I’m trying to tell you. I don’t know. No one could know.’

  ‘But the possibility is there?’ J.J. was clearly very pleased with himself, well launched now on his famous Probe technique of nagging an interviewee until he capitulated. ‘The possibility is there?’

  ‘It’s what I’m afraid of,’ Ben said at last in a low voice, and J.J. leaned even more closely towards him and said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ and this time Ben shouted it. ‘It’s what I’m afraid of!’

  ‘You are afraid of it,’ J. J. now had a note of great seriousness in his voice. ‘You are afraid of it. But were you not afraid of your virus while you were using it in your laboratory? Was there no fear in you then of the possible outcome if the virus escaped, by whatever means?’

  ‘No. Why should there be?’ Ben looked at him with a sort of helplessness in his expression. ‘How can I explain to you who know nothing of what hospitals are, and how they’re run and what it’s like to do research on a shoestring, how can I possibly make you, or anyone, understand? It’s … we shouldn’t be talking about all this! It’ll only alarm people unnecessarily! If I hadn’t had it forced on me I’d never have used Contravert outside the laboratory and I’d never have agreed to come here tonight! All you’re doing by making all this fuss is creating anxiety … it’s all wrong ….’

  ‘But surely people have the right to know what goes on in the medical world? You wouldn’t suggest you scientists should be allowed to do whatever you like with no references to us, the people? We live in a democracy, surely, Doctor, and doesn’t that democracy’s rules and standards apply to you as much as to anyone else? Aren’t you as accountable as anyone else?’

  ‘Of course I am!’ Ben said, sweating more and more heavily now. The streaks on his face could be seen clearly on the monitor above her head, and Jessie could have wept for his obvious misery. ‘Of course I am – but not like this! This isn’t being accountable – this is being pilloried. You don’t know what you’re talking about, you put a set of loaded questions to me, based on all sorts of false assumptions and then ask me – can’t you see how unjust all this is?’

  ‘I can see how distressed you are, Doctor,’ J.J. said with great courtesy. ‘Let’s give you a little time to recover your composure while I talk to your assistant Mrs Hurst ….’

  Here we go, Jessie thought. My turn. And suddenly she remembered the time, all those years ago, when she had had to have her tonsils out, had had to lie in a bed in a hospital ward which smelled horrible, watching other children wheeled away on long white beds and then brought back smelling even more disgusting and with their faces all bloodied, waiting for her turn; and that image and the fears it recreated in her were so powerful that she hardly realized that he was asking her a question and that she was answering it.

  But she was, and she sat there automatically responding to the man who was staring at her, aware only of the brightness of the light behind his head which wrapped it in a hazy nimbus, and the swell of his unctuous voice, and hardly thinking about what she said at all; and then, slowly, realized that she must be doing rather well. There was a little rattle of applause after she launched herself into an impassioned account of the lives that had been saved by the use of medical progress made via animal research, talking about the dogs that Banting and Best had used to develop insulin, which had saved millions of human lives, of the work done by Jonas Salk on animals when he prepared his poliomyelitis vaccines, and she caught a glimpse of Ben looking at her, his face approving and almost happy for the first time since they had come to this hateful building; and she began, suddenly, to feel better.

  J.J. was asking her to describe the lives the animals led in the laboratories and this time the image that rose to her mind was of Castor and Pollux – of the way those small black wrinkled hands would reach for her, to cling to her and to go seeking in her pockets and around her hair for titbits and how she stood and laughed and played with them when they behaved so – and without any sort of conscious planning to impress her listeners, she spoke of what she was seeing in her mind’s eye, of the way she cared for her animals, of the affection that they created in her, and spoke too of the bitter sense of loss she had felt when the intruders had taken them. And to her amazement there were tears in her eyes when she stopped talking and the audience was applauding her.

  ‘You see?’ It was Ben’s voice that rose above the sound of the fading applause and the camera swung to pick him up. ‘We aren’t cruel and uncaring! You’ve heard how the animals are looked after! How can anyone think we ill-treat them after listening to J … Mrs Hurst? And I assure you she’s telling the truth. Of course it’s sad when some of the animals die because of our research but we do all we can to make sure they don’t suffer pain, and we do it only to find a worthwhile object. It’s not as though we were trying to … to make a new shampoo or were looking for ways to make cigarette smoking safer. That sort of use of animals is greedy – it’s wasteful. But our research is different ….’

  ‘After Mrs Hurst’s splendid account of what you do there at Minster, Dr Pitman, who can doubt it?’ J.J. Gerrard said. ‘But it’s time now to go over to our studio audience, and to our wider audience who can phone in – the number is on your screen now – to get their opinions on this vital topic of our time. Now, to help you all, let me just recapitulate the case that we have heard outlined here tonight. Dr Pitman, as part of a research project which might, just possibly, reveal a cure for cancer as well as for the common cold and the more dangerous forms of flu and other virus infections which we suffer, has worked with animals in his laboratory. Some of those animals have been removed from the laboratory and released and may be carrying a dangerous epidemic with them ….’

  He held up his hand as Ben tried to protest. ‘No one blames Dr Pitman for
this unfortunate state of affairs – but it is a state of affairs that exists and it can’t be denied that it exists. Now, what we must discuss are the ethics of this complex situation. Have the researchers the right to expose us all to dangerous germs as part of their research into cures for those germs? And have they the right to use helpless animals, who can’t plead for themselves, for the work they do? That’s the nitty gritty of it, ladies and gentlemen, and I open the floor now to you, the people! Now, our first speaker is … who? Ah, you there, sir, in the middle … I believe you are a member of the Souls against Science Group? Yes … well, let’s hear from you. The airwaves are yours ….’

  26

  The hubbub in the hospitality room was clearly a jubilant one; the people who worked on the programme – of whom there seemed to Jessie to be an inordinate number – were congratulating each other excitedly, recapitulating with glee the various points J.J. had made, chortling over some of the idiocies perpetrated by the members of the studio audience who had participated, laughing hugely at the phone-in man who had got his wires crossed and thought they were talking about homeopathy cures for sick animals, and Jessie sat in the corner, her hand curved round a glass of wine she didn’t want, listening to it and trying to get clear in her own mind what had happened.

  Ben beside her said nothing, staring down at his own untouched glass of wine as the chatter rose and fell around them; now the programme was over it was as though they were no longer there. The people involved wanted to talk only to each other, not to outsiders, and they sat there, a little forlorn, until Jessie broke their silence by murmuring, ‘Can we go now, Ben?’

  ‘Mm? I suppose so. No point in staying any longer – Jessie, did I make as much of a fool of myself as I think I did?’