Deadly Science

by Ken Brigham

  He put his empty martini glass on the bar and wandered about the house. He went into Beth’s study. He stood for a moment looking into the display case with the collection of rare pistols. He knew nothing about guns, but according to Beth, these were valuable collector’s items. She certainly valued them, no doubt about that. Beth had rarely spoken of her father to Cy, but he knew that she had inherited the guns from her father and that seemed to explain their sentimental value. If she had any other mementos of her father he was unaware of them.

  He sat down at the desk. He had rarely been in that room. There had been no reason for it, and Beth seemed more than a little territorial about that space. That was fine with him. He had no problem giving his wife as much space as she needed. He opened the center drawer of the desk and looked through its contents. Pencils, paper clips, a Swingline stapler. And a familiar looking folder lay to one side of the wide drawer. He picked up the folder and recognized it as the one Katya Karpov had given him that supposedly contained evidence that Beth had falsified some of the drug study data. He hadn’t looked at the contents before and Beth had assured him, without much explanation, that the material was irrelevant. He’d assumed that Beth had destroyed the material but obviously she hadn’t.

  He was interrupted by the sound of the telephone ringing. He picked up the folder and went into the den to answer the call.

  “This is Cy Bartalak,” he intoned into the mouthpiece.

  “Cy, glad I caught you,” Oscar Orbitz responded.

  Cy thought that Orbitz sounded somber, but then he pretty much always sounded somber. Oscar Orbitz was a somber person.

  “Yes, Oscar,” Cy said. “Do you have some information about Beth?”

  “Yes, Cy, that’s why I called. I dropped by your office and when I didn’t find you there, assumed that you had gone home,” Orbitz answered. “We don’t really have an answer, Cy, but Beth is clearly suffering from some kind of disease or condition of the central nervous system that is affecting many of her higher integrative functions.”

  “That certainly seemed to be the case to me recently,” Cy said, thinking how neurological examinations usually just confirmed what was obvious to any careful observer of behavior.

  “There are also some troubling test data, Cy,” Orbitz continued. “Both the EEG and the MRI are abnormal. The abnormalities appear to be rather diffuse, throughout the cerebral hemispheres, frontal lobes as well as elsewhere. The patterns are not specific for anything known, but they are very real and not subtle either. Although we’ve done an extensive tox screen that’s negative, I’m still worried about some kind of drug reaction. You don’t have any more information or thoughts about that, do you?”

  “None whatsoever,” Cy responded. “Like I told you earlier, I just don’t think Beth is the drug abuser type. What do you suggest at this point?”

  “Two things,” Orbitz replied. “I suggest that we keep her in the hospital for a week or so. If she’s been using some drug that we can’t identify and if the effects are reversible, we should see some improvement in her symptoms in a setting where she can’t possibly have access to the drug.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Cy said. “What else?”

  “I’ve talked at length with the neurologist, Cy, and we both think that if her symptoms don’t improve pretty quickly that she should have a brain biopsy. The pathology might provide some definitive answers that we can’t get otherwise.”

  “A brain biopsy?” Cy was incredulous.

  “It’s not a decision that has to be made tonight, Cy, but think about it. As you know, the procedure isn’t dangerous. And your wife has something that is likely to be very serious. If it’s not reversible, well, you know the long term implications. Chronic neurodegenerative diseases present difficult challenges of many kinds.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that, Oscar,” Cy said. “But thank you for calling. Let’s just hope that this is something transient even if we never understand it.”

  “Yes, Cy,” Orbitz said. “Let’s hope for that.”

  When he had hung up the phone, Cy laid the folder he had retrieved from Beth’s desk drawer on the table beside the chair in the den where he was sitting. He got up and went to Beth’s private bathroom just off the large bedroom where he had occasionally spent a pleasant night; not frequently of late, he thought. He opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and surveyed its contents. There were several bottles of pills, all of which appeared to be over the counter supplements. A multivitamin, fish oil, vitamin D, chondroitin, something called SAM-e (from the label he saw that this was s-adenosyl methionine, a naturally occurring chemical that he knew to be an antioxidant). When he had removed these bottles from the cabinet shelf, he noticed an amber plastic container at the back that looked like the containers pharmacists used for prescription drugs. He retrieved the bottle and looked at the label.

  Cy stared at the label for a long minute, his mind scrolling back through the past to a specific conversation that he had had with Beth probably six or seven months ago when they were reviewing the studies of his drug in mice. He had been ecstatic about the results of those animal studies. It appeared that the drug not only had a dramatic effect on the mice with experimentally induced dementia, but even the normal control mice got smarter. The normal mice receiving the drug learned how to negotiate the complicated mazes several times faster than normal mice that didn’t get the drug. Cy had told Beth that he thought this meant that the drug enhanced the function of even normal brains. He was wildly enthusiastic about its potential.

  He read the label on the amber bottle—Cy’s Wonder Drug—in Beth’s unmistakable handwriting. He removed the cap and poured one of the pills into his palm. These were the brown oval pills, the drug formulation they had made for the laboratory tests. They appeared unlike the pills used in the formal drug study, which were round and white designed so that an identical appearing placebo could be easily made. But, except for some differences in the filler that had been used, the pills were identical. The active ingredient of the differently appearing pills was the same drug.

  Cy’s Wonder Drug, he thought. So Beth had taken his speculation that the drug improved normal brain function to heart. She was always looking for a supplement that would improve the function of her body. She must have squirreled away a ration of the pills from the lab experiments. And she must have been taking them, a brain supplement to go along with her catalog of body supplements—a complete regimen for the health-conscious consumer.

  He replaced the other bottles in the cabinet, but carried the amber container of Cy’s Wonder Drug with him back into the den. He retrieved the folder he had left there, went into his study and laid the folder on the desk. He sat the bottle of pills on the desk beside the folder.

  He opened the folder, removed the document, and began to study it. The document was labeled with a subject study number and it contained tables of laboratory results with columns labeled baseline, 1month, 2, months, 3, months, and 6 months and rows with labels indicating the tests that were done. He focused on two kinds of test results—measurements of cognitive function and blood levels of the protein that he believed indicated disease activity. The tests showed marked improvement from baseline in the first three columns, but in the last column, the six month data, the measurements showed marked deterioration to levels that were even worse than at entry into the study.

  He replaced the document into the folder, closed it, and set the bottle of pills on top of it. He stared at the information that he was now forced to try to assimilate. Stupid, he thought. How stupid could she be to take a drug that had never been given to humans? Everybody knows that there are gazillions of drugs that have looked promising in animal studies that didn’t prove effective or were even toxic in humans. Beth was too smart to ignore that. Well, apparently not. Apparently her unquestioning confidence in him had blinded her to any possibility other than that, like the maze solving mice, she would get smarter by taking this drug. There was no other e
xplanation. Stupid. Really stupid.

  And, he had to accept the fact that the data in the folder before him were most likely the true data from subject number one and that the data Beth had given him were false. He had his problems with Katya Karpov, but she would not have manufactured the material in that folder. She just wouldn’t have done that. The first three month data would have been enough to do a deal with Big Pharma. If the six-month data didn’t look so good, just don’t reveal it. Or destroy it and stop the study. It was true that the six month data were icing on the cake, but they had the cake even without it. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

  He went back to the bar in the den and mixed himself another dry martini. He needed a plan. The fact that Beth had been taking the drug need not be revealed to anyone, least of all to Oscar Orbitz. If the drug had long term brain toxicity, if that is what the information from Bagley, subject number one, including the autopsy data, indicated, it was still not known whether those effects were reversible. Perhaps Beth’s response would clarify that. Her unfortunate stupidity in taking the drug might still provide some useful results. And, if Beth did not appear to improve with time, there would certainly be no brain biopsy. He would see to that.

  Beth’s second act of stupidity might prove to be a more difficult problem. As far as Cy knew, the only other person to have a copy of these six-month data was Katya Karpov. He didn’t believe that she would pursue this issue beyond informing him for several reasons. Her only recourse would be a charge of scientific misconduct against Beth and that would be a foolish move by a woman who was anything but foolish. Foolish because taking such an action is extremely serious and not infrequently the one making the complaint winds up the victim—labeled a troublemaker, a difficult person—their value in the academic marketplace dramatically reduced. Katya knew that.,Everybody knew that.

  Then, and Katya had surely thought about this as well, it could be claimed that her supposed evidence was the false document rather than the material in Beth’s official database. He and Beth could claim that, and it would be a classic he said/she said situation where his word would surely carry the day. Everybody knew that Katya and Beth didn’t get along, and it would not be difficult to convince people that Katya had it in for Beth and that this was a desperate attempt to discredit her. Even Katya’s self-incriminating claim that she retrieved the information from Beth’s computer was open to serious question. Most people would think it unlikely that Beth would have left her computer accessible to anyone else if it contained such important information, certainly not if she intended to alter the data before entering it into the official record. It was just not a credible scenario. And finally, Cy didn’t think the dean or anybody else in the university hierarchy had the cojones to take him on. He was too important to both the academic stature and the finances of the place. They just wouldn’t do it. He would have that two-bit sorry excuse for a dean, Harmon Corbitt, for lunch if the wimp even thought about it. And Corbitt knew that! Cy had made it clear to the dean where the power was on more than one occasion.

  So, Cy didn’t fear the academic consequences of the evening’s discoveries. However, he did fear the potential financial consequences. The remote possibility that Katya would lodge a complaint of scientific misconduct, even though it would be foolish and a battle that she would lose, the very fact that there was such an investigation in progress could delay the GPI deal and might also sensitize them to their job of due diligence. Timing was critical here. He had to sew up this GPI deal promptly. He thought that should be possible, but there were several potential hitches.

  The hitch he feared most was the consequence of Global Pharmaceutical’s scientists reviewing the results of the clinical studies. They would obviously have to be given access to the files that Beth had kept under lock and key. There was no reason to suspect that there was anything fishy about any of the data except the six month studies from subject number one. But, how clever had Beth been with her little ruse? Wouldn’t a perceptive expert find something to suspect—a cleverly photo-shopped electrophoretic gel (that’s how Cy’s biomarker protein was measured) was hard to detect but not impossible. There might be other clues if one was looking for them. Cy would need to spend some time with those files before turning them over. But even he wasn’t as skilled with the analytical procedures as the GPI folks would be. This could be a problem.

  He picked up the bottle labeled Cy’s Wonder Drug and the folder. He returned the folder to Beth’s desk drawer where he had found it and replaced the bottle of pills on the shelf in Beth’s medicine cabinet. He then decided to go to bed. He realized that he had eaten no dinner, but he didn’t feel hungry.

  The house missed Beth, he thought, as he made his way to his bedroom. He undressed and lay down hoping for a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.

  Chapter 30

  The next day turned out to be more interesting for Cyrus Bartalak than he could have imagined.

  When he arrived at his office, there was a message informing him that the dean wished to see him as soon as possible. The message sounded as close to a summons as he could remember receiving from the dean, and he was not happy about that. He considered ignoring the message but thought better of it. He went to the dean’s office but he did not arrive there in a good mood. He strode past the secretary, ignoring her attempt to detain him, and entered Corbitt’s office without knocking. Surprised by the unannounced intrusion, Corbitt looked up from the material that he had been studying on his desk.

  “Come in, Cy,” Corbitt said, making no attempt to hide his annoyance. “Do sit down,” he motioned to a straight chair in front of his desk instead of to the sofa and coffee table arrangement in the corner where he normally met with visitors.

  “What do you want with me, Harmon,” Cy said. “And why the urgency?”

  “Yes, well, professor,” Corbitt replied. “We have a problem that I thought it best to make you aware of before proceeding to the next step.”

  “Problem?” Cy queried. “What problem?”

  The dean removed two documents from the folder that was open on his desk and slid them across the desk toward Bartalak.

  “Katya Karpov has lodged a complaint of scientific misconduct against Beth,” Corbitt said.

  “Surely not,” Cy responded. “Katya’s had some difficulties with Beth, but charging her with scientific misconduct? I can’t believe Katya would do that.”

  “That was my response, as well. That is until I had the chance to review these documents that she provided with her letter to me.”

  Bartalak looked at the documents and immediately recognized the table of data that Katya had given him earlier and the Bagley autopsy report that had appeared mysteriously under his office door. He spent several minutes looking the documents over in an effort to appear that he hadn’t seen them before.

  “Do these documents look familiar to you, Cy?” Corbitt asked, looking directly into Bartalak’s eyes.

  “I’ve never seen them before,” Bartalak replied.

  “Dr. Karpov tells me that she gave at least one of the documents to you earlier and told you that she thought it was evidence that Beth had altered some of the data from your drug study. Is that not true?”

  Bartalak laid the sheets of paper back on the desk. He got up and began to pace back and forth in front of the dean. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Corbitt was struck with how ugly Cy Bartalak was; he was a really ugly man. Odd, Corbitt thought, that he hadn’t been so aware of that before.

  After a long pause, Cy walked back and stood directly in front of the dean. He stood there for a few moments, neither of the men speaking.

  Finally, Cy said, “Harmon, Katya did give me a file that may have contained this material and she did express concern about Beth’s handling of the drug study data. But, Katya has had a problem with Beth ever since we arrived here. I really didn’t think there was anything substantive to her complaint. And, in retrospect unadvisedly, I gave the file to Beth
and asked her to review it and let me know if there was anything of concern. She did that and told me there was nothing to be concerned about. I basically forgot about it.”

  “What?” Corbitt interrupted. “It was Beth’s behavior that Katya was questioning. You were relying on Beth’s judgment about the validity of the complaint against her? Come on, now, Cy, that makes no sense at all.”

  “Harmon, I trust Beth. She’s honest. I agree that in retrospect, it wasn’t the best decision, but, as I said, Katya has it in for Beth, has for a long time. I really thought that this would go away.”

  “Not good,” Corbitt said. “Not good at all.”

  Bartalak paused, rubbing his temples with both hands and then said. “You’re probably unaware of this, but I admitted Beth to the hospital yesterday. Oscar Orbitz is taking care of her. She’s developed some kind of neurological disorder that no one seems able to diagnose. But Oscar thinks it may be serious. I’m pretty distracted by that right now. You can appreciate that, I’m sure.”

  “My God, Cy,” Corbitt responded. “Did this come on suddenly? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’ve noticed some changes in her behavior for a little while, but I didn’t think it anything to worry about until recently. I’m really very concerned about her. And I admit I’m feeling more than a little guilty that I didn’t get her seen by someone earlier. I can only hope that, whatever it is, it’s reversible.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cy,” Corbitt said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Thanks, Harmon,” Bartalak replied. “Well, maybe you can delay proceeding with this scientific misconduct thing until Beth’s condition is clearer. Neither she nor I need to deal with that right now.”

  Corbitt paused a moment, thinking, and said. “Cy, I’m going to have to go forward with this. Of course, it will take a few days to put a committee together. I may be able to stall a bit, but there will have to be a thorough investigation of the charge, review of the evidence, etcetera. You understand.”