Research Staffing – A Silent Corruption
S.Q.
Lapius was surrounded by crumpled paper tissues. He coughed and wheezed with the rest of us,
while trying to get through his daily chores.
“The ‘flu’ was kinder when it killed you,” he gurgled.
“Did
you take your shots this year?” I asked.
“What
good,” he said. “The virus is smarter
than the virologists. It changes itself
every few years.” His sneeze fanned the
embers glowing in a distant hearth.
“Talking
about viruses,” I said, “Did you happen to see the review of the committee of
the National Cancer Advisory Board on the program of the Virus Cancer Program (
“Of
course I did. And it’s about time. The Virus Cancer Program is a creature of the
National Cancer Institute. The program
is funded at between $50-$60 million a year.”
“That’s
a lot of loot,” I said helpfully.
“Excessive
to say the least,” Lapius gurgled trying to clear his throat, and wrapping the
steamed towels tighter around his tortured throat. “It wouldn’t be so bad if the money were
disbursed nationally as grants to individual investigators, but it is held
tight to the vest, and handed out as contract money instead.”
“What’s
so bad about that?” I asked innocently, trying to goad him to forget the minor
infection that had waylaid him.
“What
is bad about that, Harry, is that it is a perversion of the original purpose of
the National Institutes of Health funding program. Originally researcher weren’t allowed to even
accept salaries from the program. This
was permitted when the institutes in which the research was carried out, mostly
teaching institutions, universities and medical schools, griped to the
government, claiming that time out for research should be at their
expense. The government acceded. Once this was allowed, universities built
entire teaching staffs of research men whose salaries were paid mainly by the
government. A silent corruption, which,
because it was supposed to be for the public weal, was never criticized. Actually the research program became sort of
a federal aid to education.
“Originally,
those in charge of research grants were men with missionary zeal, like the
first generation of any new and public spirited project. But soon, the members of the various
scientific institutes of the National Institutes of Health were given the
privilege of building their own programs.
Intramural funding expanded continually.
Finally they were permitted to contract their research projects to
outside scientific institutes, public or private, and monitor the results, from
the hub at
“That’s
a lot of money to manage.”
“Of
course it is. Not only is it a lot of
money to manage, but the data and information bought for that money is almost
infinite, and can scarcely be managed by a single set of brains. The net effect was to centralize research
instead of disseminating funds to individual research groups. It relied on one set of brains to find a cure
for cancer instead of distributing the money so the ingenuity required could be
distributed among many brains. I was
glad to see that the head of the committee investigating the Virus Cancer Program,
Norton Zinder of the Rockefeller Institute, was justifiably critical. He said, ‘There is an inordinate amount of
power in the segment chairman’s group.
It is this power that is responsible for the tensions that exist among
contractors in the program and accounts for the antipathy to the program in the
scientific community.’”
“I
didn’t realize that the sympathy existed.”
“Of
course it does,” sneezed Lapius, probing at his nose with another tissue. “The segment chairmen control contract money
which could be used to supplement the large in-house programs they were
running. The net effect was less money
to outside investigators, and to restrict the ingenuity of the American
Scientific community to a few insiders at the National Institutes of Health. What started out as a beautiful dream is
becoming a nightmare.”
“But
suppose they find the cure for cancer?”
I asked.
“But
suppose they don’t?” Lapius
countered. “You have been around long
enough to know, Harry, that investigative breakthroughs accrue from the
convergence of surprise results culled from any independent fields of
research. Suddenly everyone is on the
virus bandwagon. When Ludwig Gross first
demonstrated that viruses could cause cancer, the establishment was on the
chemical carcinogenesis kick, and they tried to shoot him down. Now they’ve joined him. As a matter of fact, in 1919 when Ellerman
and Bang first demonstrated the viral cause of leukemia in chickens, the
scientific establishment was so opposed to the concept that they called it
leucosis instead of leukemia. The
pendulum has swung.”
“You
don’t believe viruses cause leukemia?” I prodded.
“What
difference what I think? The problem is
that the funds for research should be properly distributed, not held closely by
a power clique in the government. Some
chicken farmer in
With
that Lapius closed his eyes to suffer in silence.