Charles Wheelan - The Rationing

“Much of this work was not published,” I interrupted.

“Fine. That’s an irrelevant distinction,” he said haughtily. “You’ve taken Legos produced by other people and built something interesting.” There was tittering around the room in response to the Legos metaphor. “I’ll repeat my original question: Where is the original work? What Lego did you produce?”

In my mind: Oh, my God, he is screwing me.

I tried to compose my thoughts, but before I could respond the chair of the department interjected, “Enough of the Lego claptrap. The most valuable contribution one can make in science is to give voice to the work of others in a way that improves our overall understanding of a subject.” I looked furtively at my parents, whose body language improved noticeably after this intervention. A few of the graduate students exchanged sly smiles; they recognized this was no longer about my dissertation. The chair of the department was a well-respected microbiologist, one of the first women tenured in the department. She was fiftyish and dowdy, neither attractive nor unattractive. She was a lousy teacher but a kind person and a good administrator, making her much appreciated by students and faculty alike. She was a relative superstar in her subfield of protozoology.

Also, she was my adviser’s ex-wife. They had been recruited to the department together in the 1990s, both with tenure. Her publication record was more impressive than his, both before they arrived at the University of Chicago and after. He had an affair with one of his graduate students, leading to a separation and then a divorce. I have no idea why they both chose to stay in the department, but they did. The department was full of faculty who hated one another; these two at least had good reason.

Heads in the academic tennis match turned back to the rear of the classroom in anticipation of a response from my adviser. “And how have you improved our overall understanding of this subject?” he asked me. A softball. To those in the room without any understanding of the internal politics, like my parents, this whole discussion seemed to flow naturally. But to those of us who understood the Kabuki theater of academe, my adviser’s ex-wife, who also happened to be a far more impressive microbiologist than he was, had just smacked him down. He was going to lose if he went back at her. I knew that. More important, he knew that. His softball question was a white flag.

I gave an innocuous answer, something more or less straight from my abstract. There were some other softball questions and then my adviser politely brought the discussion to a close. I walked out of the room along with the rest of the observers, leaving my committee behind to deliberate on my fate. It did not take long. Ten minutes later they filed out of the room and informed me that I was now a doctor of philosophy. “Congratulations,” my adviser said woodenly.

His eyes betrayed what we both knew: I had been saved by the fact that he had been caught screwing one of his graduate students.

JEFF YUN, THE HEAD PATHOLOGIST FOR THE CENTERS FOR Disease Control, was standing at the front of a conference room. Ron Justman’s task force was assembled around the table. The lights were dim; a slide showing a single virus was projected on a screen on the far wall. “That’s it,” Yun said. “ Capellaviridae. ” The organism was hexagonal, with short hairlike structures emerging from each of the sides. “Each of the victims had extremely high levels of the virus concentrated in their livers. As best as I can tell, that’s the cause of death. The virus attacks the liver, and to a lesser extent the pancreas. Both organs shut down relatively quickly.”

There were blank stares around the table. Justman shrugged, “A cappella?”

“ Capellaviridae ,” Yun said.

“Never heard of it,” Justman said. “Am I missing something?”

“No,” Yun said. “No. That’s the thing.” He had a roundish, friendly face with closely cropped hair. Small beads of perspiration gathered on his upper lip. “It’s a totally unexceptional virus, commonplace in temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. It didn’t even have a name until twenty years ago.” He looked around the table, inviting someone to make sense of this pedestrian virus turned killer.

“Are humans the only host?” Justman asked.

“We don’t know. I’m telling you, nobody has ever studied this thing.”

“And you’re sure this virus is responsible for the deaths?” Tie Guy asked.

“I’m not sure of anything,” Yun answered. “But the concentration of viruses that we observed in each of the victims is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I spoke to my Canadian and European counterparts this morning. They’ve observed the same thing.”

“Hold on,” Tie Guy interjected. “Are we really sure of the causality here?” There followed a discussion of whether this virus, Capellaviridae , was killing people, or if people who were dying of something else were prone to becoming infected with Capellaviridae . Tie Guy lectured the room on what most of them already knew: many viruses are opportunistic, meaning they thrive when a host’s immune system is compromised. A cancer victim may die of viral pneumonia, but to blame pneumonia for the death would be to miss the real problem.

Justman said, “In any event, we know that this virus is, at a minimum, a marker of the problem, yes? Maybe it’s a dangerous pathogen, maybe it thrives when something else nasty is going on. Given how little we know, we should begin by focusing on Capellaviridae . Can we agree on that?” There were nods around the table.

“Is it harmful to animals?” the Indian-American woman asked. “We should at least know that.”

“My people are testing that right now,” Yun said quickly, not quite cutting her off. “I’ve got everybody working on this.”

“Let’s back up for a minute,” Justman interjected. “The Dormigen database. We’ve seen a spike in prescriptions—”

“And those people, at least some of them, are testing positive for Capellaviridae ?” Tie Guy interrupted.

“Yes,” Yun said. “That appears to be why we’re seeing the spike in Dormigen demand. Based on the limited data we have, it seems that most, if not all, of the increase in Dormigen prescriptions can be explained by some kind of epidemic related to Capellaviridae .”

“And Dormigen is effective against Capellaviridae ?” Justman asked.

“Yes, of course,” Yun assured him.

“Hold on,” Tie Guy said. “We still have not established that this virus is doing the harm. For all we know, it’s an opportunistic pathogen that happens to manifest itself—”

“Yes, fair enough,” Justman said, clearly impatient. “But whatever is going on responds to Dormigen. That’s what I’m asking.”

“Whatever is happening responds to Dormigen, yes,” Yun said. As he answered, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. “Sorry, I should check this.”

“Of course,” Justman assured him.

Yun scrolled through a text of some sort and then ran his hand through his short hair, clearly perplexed. “Okay, this is interesting,” he said as he looked at his phone. “I’ve got someone digging into Capellaviridae . Apparently it’s just a run-of-the-mill virus, so common as to be unexceptional.”

“What does that mean?” someone asked.

“That’s just what he texted me: ‘So common as to be unexceptional,’” Yun answered. He stared at his phone in silence for a few seconds and then looked up at Justman. “Let’s take a break for a few minutes. Can we do that?” As Justman nodded agreement, Yun was already punching a number on his phone and walking out of the conference room. The participants around the table seized on the break to check devices, all eyes staring down as if it were some kind of choreographed dance. When Yun returned just a few minutes later, all eyes went immediately back to him.