Arthur Hailey - Strong Medicine

"You'd have thought," Sam confided to Lilian a few evenings later over dinner, "that I'd suggested canceling the Declaration of Independence and taking us back to colonial status.”

Something Sam was teaming quickly was that holding the company's top job neither gave him carte blanche to do as he wished nor freed him from the shifting sands of corporate politics. A practicing expert in company politics was the director of research, Vincent Lord, also an immediate objector to Sam's proposal. While agreeing that more money should be spent on research, Dr. Lord described the idea of doing so in Britain as 'InaIve" and Sam Hawthorne's view of British science as "kindergarten thinking, founded on a propaganda myth.”

The unusually strong, even insulting words were in a memo addressed to Sam, with a copy to a friend and ally of Vince Lord's on the board of directors. On first reading the memo, Sam burned with anger and, leaving his office, sought out Vincent Lord on the research director's own ground. Walking on impeccable polished floors through the research division's glass-lined, air-filtered corridors, Sam was reminded of the many millions of dollars, virtually limitless sums, expended by Felding-Roth on research equipment-modem, computerized, gleaming, occasionally mysterious-housed in pleasant, spacious laboratories and served by an army of white-coated scientists and technicians. What was here represented an academic scientist's dream, but was a norm for any major pharmaceutical company. The money poured into drug research was seldom, if ever, stinted. It was only the specifics of expenditure which occasionally, as now, became a subject for argument. Vincent Lord was in his paneled, book-lined, brightly lighted office. The door was open and Sam Hawthorne walked in, nodding casually to a secretary outside who had been about to stop himthen, seeing who it was, changed her mind. Dr. Lord, in a White coat over shirtsleeves, was at his desk, frowning as he so often did, at this moment over a paper he was reading. He looked up in surprise, his dark eyes peering through rimless. glasses, his ascetic face showing annoyance at the unannounced intrusion. Sam had been carrying Lord's memo. Putting it on the desk, he announced, "I came to talk about this.”

The research director made a half-hearted gesture of rising, but Sam waved him down.”Informal, Vince," Sam said.”Informal, and some face-to-face, blunt talking.”

Lord glanced at the memo on his desk, leaning forward short-sightedly to confirm its subject matter.”What don't you like about it?" the content and the tone.”

"What else is there?" Sam reached for the paper and turned it around.”It's quite well typed.”

"I suppose," Lord said with a sardonic smile, "now that you're head honcho, Sam, you'd like to be surrounded by 'yes men.”

' Sam Hawthorne sighed. He had known Vince Lord for fifteen years, had grown accustomed to the research director's difficult ways, and was prepared to make allowances for them. He answered mildly, "You know that isn't true. What I want is a reasoned discussion and better causes for disagreeing with me than you've given already.”

"Speaking of reasoning," Lord said, opening a drawer of his desk and removing a file, "I strongly object to a statement of yours.”

"Which one?" "About our own research.”

Consulting the file, Lord quoted from Sam's proposal about the British institute.” "While our competitors have introduced major, successful new drugs, we have had only minor ones. Nor do we have anything startling in sight.”

"So prove me wrong.”

"We have a number of promising developments in sight," Lord insisted. "Several of the new, young scientists I've brought in are working-"

"Vince," Sam said, "I know about those things. I read your reports, remember? Also, I applaud the talent you've recruited.”

It was true, Sam thought. One of Vincent Lord's strengths across the years had been his ability to attract some of the cream of scientific newcomers. A reason was that Lord's own reputation was still high, despite his failure to achieve the major discovery that had been expected of him for so long. Nor was there any real dissatisfaction with Lord's role as research director; the dry spell was one of those misfortunes that happened to drug companies, even with the best people heading their scientific sides. "The progress reports I send to you," Lord said, "are always weighted with caution. That's because I have to be wary about letting you and the merchandising gang become excited about something which is still experimental.”

"I know that," Sam said, "and I accept it.”

He was aware that in any drug company a perpetual tug-of-war existed between sales and manufacturing on the one hand and research on the other. As the sales people expressed it, "Research always wants to be a hundred and ten percent sure of every goddam detail before they'll say, 'Okay, let's go!' " Manufacturing, similarly, was eager to gear up for production and not be caught out by sudden demands when a new drug was required in quantity. But, on the other side of the equation, researchers accused the merchandising arm of "wanting to rush madly onto the market with a product that's only twenty percent proven, just to beat competitors and have an early lead in sales.”

"What I'll tell you now, and what isn't in my reports," Vincent Lord informed Sam, "is that we're getting excitingly good results with two compounds--one, a diuretic, the other an anti-inflammatory for rheumatoid arthritis.”

"That's excellent news.”

"There's also our application for Derogil pending before the FDA.”

"The new anti-hypertensive.”

Sam knew that Derogil, to control high blood pressure, was not a revolutionary drug but might become a good profit maker. He asked, "Is our application getting anywhere?" Lord said sourly, "Not so you'd notice. Those puffed-up nincompoops in Washington He paused.”I'm going there again next week.”

"I still don't think my statement was wrong," Sam said.”But since you feel strongly, I'll modify it when the board meets.”

Vincent Lord nodded as if the concession were no more than his due, then went on, "There's also my own research on the quenching of free radicals. I know, after all this time, you believe nothing will come of it-" "I've never said that," Sam protested.”Never once! At times you choose to disbelieve it, Vince, but there are some of us here who have faith in you. We also know that important discoveries don't come easily or quickly.”

Sam had only a sketchy idea of what the quenching of free radicals involved. He knew the objective was to eliminate toxic effects of drugs generally, and was something Vincent Lord had persevered with for a decade. If successful, there would be strong commercial possibilities. But that was all. "Nothing you've told me," Sam said, getting up, "changes my opinion that creating a British research center is a good idea.”

"And I'm still opposed because it's unnecessary.”

The research director's reply was adamant, though as an afterthought he added, "Even if your plan should go ahead, we must have control from here.”

Sam Hawthorne smiled.”We'll discuss that later, if and when," But in his mind, Sam knew that letting Vincent Lord have control of the new British research institute was the last thing he would permit to happen.

When Lord was alone, he crossed to the outer door and closed it. Then, returning, he slumped in his chair disconsolately. He sensed that the proposal for a Felding-Roth research institute in Britain would go ahead despite his opposition, and he saw the new development as a threat to himself, a sign that his scientific dominance in the company was slipping. How much farther would it slip, he wondered, before he was eclipsed entirely? So much would have been different, be reflected gloomily, if his own personal research had progressed better and faster than it had. As it was, he wondered, what did he have to show for his life in science? He was now forty-eight, no longer the young and brilliant wizard with a newly minted Ph.D. Even some of his own techniques and knowledge, he was aware, were out of date. Oh, yes, he still read extensively and kept himself informed. Yet that kind of knowledge was never quite the same as original involvement in the scientific field in which your expertise developed-organic chemistry in his own case; developed to become an art, so that always and forever after you had instinct and experience to guide you. In the new field of genetic engineering, for example, he was not truly comfortable, not as at home in it as were the new young scientists now pouring from the universities, some of whom he had recruited for Felding-Roth. And yet, he reasoned-reassured himself-despite the changes and fresh knowledge, the possibility of a titanic breakthrough with the work he had been doing still was possible, still could come at any time. Within the parameters of organic chemistry an answer existed-an answer to his questions posed through countless experiments over ten long years of grinding research. The quenching of free radicals. Along with the answer Vincent Lord sought would come enormous therapeutic benefits, plus unlimited commercial possibilities which Sam Hawthorne and others in the company, in their scientific ignorance, had so far failed to grasp. What would the quenching of free radicals achieve? The answer: something essentially simple but magnificent. Like all scientists in his field, Vincent Lord knew that many drugs, when in action in the human body and as part of their metabolism, generated "free radicals.”