BLIND TRIAL

by Brian Deer

  She ushered Hiroshi to seats halfway back on the aisle and scoured the room for faces. To their right: Simone Thomas, second author of the paper. Ahead: Wang Lei Wu, the fifth author. Beside him: Maureen—“Hi!”—with Darlene Ruffin, lab researchers, sales staff, and suits.

  Video cameras were rigged at strategic positions, each branded with the company’s logo. One grabbed the scene from the carpet at the rear, another from the left-side wall. On the aisle, midway between her seat and the podium, a third was trained, in theatrical drama, on a gray-and-black Brother fax machine.

  Who still used fax machines these days, she wondered? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen one. And the Brother was displayed like Fax Machine of the Year at the World Congress of Fax Machine Operatives. Resting on what looked like a hotel dining table, it nestled among layers of folded pink cloth and a gray-and-white sign.

  The Time Has Come

  A sticker under the keypad read, “BerneWerner Biomed,” and two tiny spotlights brightened the paper feed from which the marketing approval to change the history of global health was scheduled to slide at four o’clock.

  Sumiko opened the folder that Ben had given her, expecting the usual bragging. But she couldn’t suppress a gasp when she eyed the first sheet. She elbowed Hiroshi. Unbelievable.

  REMEMBERING DR. GERTRUDE S. MAYR

  It is with the deepest regret and sadness that the Chairman and Board of BerneWerner Biomed Inc. announce the tragic death, in a domestic accident yesterday, of Dr. Gertrude S. Mayr, our Director of Vaccine Development, and the pioneering force behind WernerVac.

  Today’s meeting will commence with silent tribute, reflection, and personal prayers for Dr. Mayr.

  A biographical note completed the page with a list of Trudy’s honors and awards. On the back was a photograph from the latest annual report: the vaccine chief surrounded by her team. She wore a white coat and cradled a model of HIV the size of a Halloween pumpkin. She stared into the camera through tortoiseshell glasses, her face an unreadable mask.

  “CHOP CHOP. Let’s go.” Marcia Gelding snapped shut a silver mascara case and strode to her appointment with destiny. She wore a company-gray suit, with company-pink piping, gray heels, and pink fingernails. A pearl-studded halter strengthened her horizontals. She clutched a sheet of handwritten notes.

  She descended the stairs, passed the brown-uniformed guard, and strode into the foyer beside the ballroom. In her wake trailed the platform party for today’s formalities, plus Mr. Hoffman, who said he never sat on platforms. Frank Wilson scooted from the doors of an elevator. And, at the rear, hauling a rucksack, limped the awful, vile, disgusting man himself: her temporary, very temporary—one-month-to-termination—Executive Vice President, Research & Medicine.

  His presence appalled her. But her general counsel argued that not bringing Doctorjee was risky. If a scandal broke later, his nonattendance might be viewed as implying they’d known what he’d done. The sole consolations were his difficulty walking and a padded neck brace supporting his chin. Apparently, Trudy hit him with a car.

  “Marcia. One thing.” It was him addressing her.

  She spun and flapped her notes at his mouth. “Don’t you say anything. Don’t you even speak. Don’t you even speak to me again.” Then she adjusted a button and winked at Heinz Hendriksen. The impression she sought—and not without grounds—was that she often addressed staff in this way.

  Marcia nodded to Ben, glanced at the literature, and passed into the brilliance of the ballroom. It was 14:46 when she strode toward the podium, with the rest of them following in line. Wilson gathered speed and scooted up a ramp. Mr. Hoffman grabbed a chair near the front.

  Applause swept the room—already too warm—as her party took their designated seats. She tapped a microphone nestled among tulips and took a few breaths to calm her nerves. “Thank you everyone,” she began. “Thank you so much. This is such a great delight. Quite fantastic.”

  She summoned her best smile and unleashed it on the gathering with a dollop of her best British diction. “I’m afraid our change of venue has evidently confused some news organizations, so perhaps we are a little more sparse in attendance than expected. But even now, traffic permitting, I very much hope they will be with us momentarily from the NIH campus at Bethesda.”

  Traffic permitting? They’d be sitting there like dumbbells. The fewer witnesses to this farrago the better. She glanced at her notes: three pages she’d drafted on the plane from Atlanta this morning. “But before we proceed to the very important, history-making, business of this afternoon, however, I do have a couple of announcements.”

  She gestured toward the fax machine. “As I think most of you know, at sixteen hundred hours—when the NASDAQ financial market closes—we are scheduled to receive confirmation from the Division of Biologics at the Food and Drug Administration, where the commissioner is standing by to formally notify us that WernerVac has been, yes, officially approved for marketing in the United States of America.”

  Clapping and cheers. Then everybody stood, clapped, cheered, and clapped.

  “Please. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.” She raised her palms.

  They sat.

  “And we can finally tell all and sundry that BerneWerner Biomed really has solved one of the most challenging riddles of immunology and developed the first significantly effective vaccine against a foe long regarded as unconquerable by immunization: the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV.”

  More cheers. Applause. Intermittent foot stamps.

  She allowed her cheeks to slacken and her demeanor to darken. “However, before we hear from our keynote speaker, Professor Hendricksen, I’ve two items of less pleasant news. Really rather bad news, in fact.” She silently counted—one, two, three—to embed a new mood in her features. “The first of which is that Dr. Poyser, our chairman, is regrettably unable to be with us, due to a terrorist alert at Frankfurt airport.”

  Darker still. She felt her jaw sink. “Then there’s the weekend’s tragedy.” Two, three, four. “As many of you will already know, Dr. Gertrude Mayr—Trudy—our esteemed and much-loved colleague, our dear, dear friend, and to many of us a personal inspiration, sadly passed away as a result of a frightful domestic accident… I’d be grateful now if everyone would stand.”

  SILENCE TICKED around the tilted heads as Doctorjee listened to his colon. He’d expected the company to lay on a buffet, or at least sandwiches for senior staff. But lunch was nothing—not even bar snacks—and he’d missed breakfast with Nandini and the girls.

  His left leg throbbed. He ran a finger round the neck brace. Frankly, the discomfort was intolerable. If Trudy Mayr hadn’t departed for sublime adjudication, he would certainly have consulted an attorney.

  And now he must stand here after such gross abuse. How he wished he’d never joined BerneWerner. Of course, she was British. And didn’t she revel in it: lording over her colonial subjects? How she would have loved to be portered to the hills for Darjeeling on a shady verandah. Having ascended from a career counting pig food supplements, she regarded the company as her manifest destiny: her inalienable, imperial Raj.

  She trilled like a canary with that brittle, foolish voice. “Thank you so much. Marvelous. Yes.”

  No, thank you, memsahib. He crashed to a chair, shooting bolts of agony through his hip.

  He’d prepared a most eloquent epistle for this occasion. But madam insisted, “Not a word.” It would be Hendricksen, that sickly yellow corpse to his right, who would explain the science of WernerVac. Hendricksen: the fourth author, a genitourinary physician, who were it not for HIV would be fingering dicks and poking gonorrhea with a stick. Hendricksen: a man whose specialty was pus. And he was rising to give the keynote address.

  “Colleagues, ladies, gentlemen, I feel like an impostor.”

  Surely not?

  “It’s Trudy Mayr you should be hearing from today.”

  Well, that would be
stimulating. Indeed, it would. Return of the Southern fried turkey. Doctorjee tuned out from the clap doctor’s blathering. He’d heard it all a hundred times before.

  “Antigenic variants…” Hendricksen rambled. “Retrovirus challenge more difficult than coronavirus… RNA… correlates of immunity…” Blah, blah, blah… “Some felt this might never be accomplished…” Blah, blah…

  The executive vice president riffled through his folder, broke the seal on a bottle of sparkling water, and poured a glass of refreshment.

  Madam had insisted the event be moved here in case the media witnessed any “mishap.” The result was an audience to make an Athens lab meeting look like a focus group of Nobel laureates. The health and human services secretary was meant to sit beside him, but they put her off with talk of egg-throwing. To make up the numbers, they’d brought the first forty staff to cross the lobby in Atlanta this morning. He recognized the Mexican who stocked the vending machines. He probably couldn’t spell PhD.

  “In that previous strategy, researchers noted that the V3 domain was a major antigenic target for serologic responses induced by candidate vaccines…”

  Nobody was listening. Why would they bother? Half the audience were reading their folders. Some were chattering—and none too quietly. Frankly, some were being quite rude. Simone Thomas was brazen, holding papers above her head and waving to Stephen Kwong. Wang Lei Wu was kneeling on a chair, three rows back, to speak to Corinna Douglas behind.

  “Paradoxically, the V3 loop was reported as hypervariable by some researchers and relatively stable by others…”

  Doctorjee opened his folder and located the typescript. More interesting than Hendricksen, certainly.

  WernerVac prevents infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial in adults at risk of HIV-1 infection at 71 trial sites in the United States, 8 in China, and 16 in South Africa.

  Most concisely edited. Excellent.

  The subjects (m=17,254; f=9,458) were randomly assigned to receive either WernerVac 300 micrograms or placebo…

  He turned the page. The very air seemed to buzz. Hendricksen stumbled on a sentence. “Now… uhm… ahh… turning to cytotoxic T-lymphocytes…”

  But a voice from the floor interrupted the lecture. It was Kwong. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  Doctorjee looked up, then back to the page, leaning forward in the brace to see better. What did Kwong want? He was brandishing the typescript. The meaning of what? Good God.

  Serious adverse events were documented, but not reported by the trial sponsor, including a suspected enhanced-progression, possibly deceptive imprinting, syndrome in which active HIV-1 infection was accelerated, and clinical disease manifestation worsened among 3 identified subjects randomized to WernerVac.

  What in Vishnu’s name was this? How could this happen? Outrageous. We’re in trouble. Get out.

  One volunteer in whom the syndrome was identified was euthanized by the sponsor in a bid to avoid public anxiety and damage to volunteer retention...”

  “What is the meaning of this?

  The volunteer was administered a lethal injection.

  Now more were standing, waving papers, and shouting. Everyone talked at once.

  Marcia Gelding stammered. Mr. Hoffman sprang up. Doctorjee flipped back to page one. His hands were trembling. He eyed the page, word by word.

  Prevention of HIV-1 Infection with WernerVac

  A phase III double-blind placebo controlled trial

  Frank V. Wilson MD, Simone R. Thomas MD, Stephen Kwong PhD, Heinz Hendricksen MD, Wang Lei Wu MD MS, Maureen S. Valentine PhD, Viraj Grahacharya MD PhD MPH, Gertrude S. Mayr PhD, and H. Ben Louviere JD.

  Sixty

  BEN SETTLED on the trestle table next to module B and listened to the rising voices.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Madam chair, I have a question.”

  “May I speak?”

  “Marcia, please.”

  He’d cleared a space among the stacks of literature, and one hand now rested on The Time Has Come bumper stickers; the other on gray-and-pink folders. Beneath the table, his feet swung back and forth, back and forth, rasping cartons of cheap champagne.

  Through the open double doors, he heard murmurs become utterances, utterances become calls, and calls become yells.

  “Will somebody please say what’s going on?”

  The switch had been masterful—a tour de fucking force—taking nearly all Sunday evening. Luke had sloped off to a bar across the mall, leaving him covering Kurt Cobain tracks. But he promptly quit the Gibson for a more serious project: more serious than anything in his life.

  First, he scanned the typescript he’d Xeroxed in Gelding’s office and converted it to Word for Windows. Then after an interruption—the phone call from Hoffman—he’d redrafted the tables, adding “Deaths, 1; Undisclosed serious adverse events, 2,” and summarized the explanation in the text. Finally, this morning, driving to Hartsfield-Jackson airport, he’d stopped at a Fedex Office Print & Ship Center and run off two hundred copies.

  Someone tapped a microphone—a resonant booming—then Gelding’s voice squawked above the noise. “Ladies and gentlemen, doctors, everybody. Please. If you’ll bear with us a moment. Please. We appear to be the victims of an unfortunate prank. We appear to be the victims of a hoax.”

  As he listened, he saw a shadow on the jazzy mauve carpet, then Hoffman appeared in the doorway. The general counsel raised a fist, as if to say, “I’ll break it again,” but didn’t say anything in words. He turned to a fire alarm panel by the door, raised an elbow, and fractured the glass.

  THE ALARM stabbed the air like a kamikaze pilot, dragging the hotel into frenzy. Hoffman turned back into the brilliance of the ballroom. He’d no time now for Ben Louviere. He’d looked out for that kid, that cute little boy, and tried to help anyway he could.

  Now this in return. Like father like son? How fucking, fucking wrong can you get?

  Half the assembly was standing, flapping papers and folders. This thing was out of control. Kwong was screaming about “the meaning” of something. Wang Lei Wu yapped, “Marcia, Marcia.” Darlene Ruffin paced in circles, like a dog chasing its tail. Simone Thomas clamped a palm to her forehead.

  The platform party split as if someone tossed a grenade and it rolled somewhere hidden among the tulips. Marcia shoved Hendricksen past a video monitor. Wilson spun and scooted down the ramp. Doctorjee forced a bundle of papers into a rucksack, threw it across his shoulder, and limped away.

  Thank Christ we’re not live on CNN.

  A hotel manager in owl-sized glasses entered to make an announcement. “Ladies, gentlemen,” she called. “We have a security alert. Would you please make your way upstairs as quickly as possible? Could we please clear the building? Thank you, please.”

  Hoffman grabbed her shoulder and produced a clip of banknotes. “Look, you need to tell ’em now, leave every damn thing right here. Bags, folders, papers, everything. Especially the papers. We don’t want anything taken from this room. Nothing. We don’t want them taking the papers. You get me?”

  The manager took the money and pressed it into her cleavage. “Ladies, gentlemen, please make your way to the front exits upstairs. Please leave all your property here. This is important safety information. You should not take anything at all in your hands, for security reasons. No bags, or papers, whatsoever. This is important security information, for your safety.”

  A camera operator shouted, “Mr. Hoffman. You want this?”

  “No. Shut it off. Get out.”

  What he most needed now were folks he could trust: his scholarship kids. At least the women. “Start collecting up the papers,” he told Dominique and Sarah-Jane. “Pat them down if you gotta. Just get them.”

  He spotted Janice Hughes and gave the same instruction. “Slap their damn faces if you must.”

 
Kwong edged toward the doors, hiding a folder under his coat. Hoffman snatched it and yanked out the typescript. “Don’t need this, so I’ll take it, thank you, please. Thing’s a set-up. Hoax. Thank you, please.”

  Three pairs of doors to the foyer were shut, and a crowd backed up at a fourth. “So sorry about this.” Hoffman elbowed through. “This is damn serious. Gimme that.”

  Simone Thomas protested. “But I still want to read it.”

  He wrenched it from her fingers. “Please.”

  As the last of the gathering headed up the stairs, he figured he’d gotten most. But not all. He wouldn’t count on the motherfuckers to give the right time of day. Trust me, I’m a doctor? Yeah, right. Dr. Honda pushed past him, and two plain refused. He’d be lucky to return this genie to the bottle.

  Now a knot of sales guys hung back on the stairs, but otherwise the foyer was empty. He looked in the module and walked right round it.

  That son of a bitch had run.

  SUMIKO SPUN through the door, stepped onto Twelfth Street, and stopped in the shade of a ginkgo tree. Ben’s name on the typescript was the first thing she’d noticed during the silent tribute to Trudy. As Hendricksen droned about serologic responses, she’d wondered about the role a lawyer might play to warrant the last authorship credit. He’d no qualifications in medicine or science. Then she skipped through the text. And was stunned.

  Now ringed in a chattering, jostling, huddle, she pulled the typescript from her blouse. What she read was incredible, impossible to grasp. And yet it made perfect sense.

  She galloped through the tables, back and forth through the text, and skimmed through the references. Astounding.

  At last, she understood. She could see what happened. But, still, this was extraordinary. Staggering. Here was a thirty-three-year-old woman: it had to be Helen Glinski. A retail manager. It was her.

  Of course, enhanced progression, perhaps deceptive imprinting. There’d been a paper on that at a conference in Samoa, but everyone went to the beach.