BLIND TRIAL Brian Deer (best novels for beginners TXT) 📖

as she dropped beside the towel. “Mr. Louviere here’s told me all about your good work for us. Nice for us to get a chance to talk.”

Sumiko pivoted and re-shouldered her blouse as a Boeing 737 sloped toward National airport. Ben sank cross-legged, knees pointing in her direction. Without shades, his blue eyes assumed a squint.

Trudy Mayr removed the hat. “Get right to the point here, why don’t we? Ben here says you feel Frank’s been, maybe in some way, shall we say, less than a hundred percent professional.”

“Less than professional? A hundred percent less than ethical. Dr. Mayr, the place is a shambles.”

“‘Trudy’s’ fine.”

Ben rubbed his fingers around his cruciate ligaments. “Guess it’s tough for the guy, what with his wheelchair and everything.”

“That’s right.” Trudy Mayr flapped the hat. “Had things tough since his accident, you know. But he’s got a solid reputation. Three hundred-fifty peer reviewed papers and book chapters. And the trial data’s come through to us in very acceptable form.”

“Oh, his accident, his accident. That was years ago. Years. Millions of people use wheelchairs and they don’t behave the way he does. And, of course, the data look acceptable. He goes in and changes them. That’s why.”

The hat stopped flapping. “Well, those hints you were dropping this morning. If that’s what you’re getting at, they don’t mean a wet wind in April. When you drill down to individual sites, you do get these anomalies. Other studies have worse, believe me.”

“Wilson’s the anomaly.”

“You know, maybe what it sounds to me here is it’s a personality-clash type of thing you got going. Plain don’t get along with the fella. Personal chemistry. I can understand that. Lot of folks don’t get along with me.”

Sumiko eyed Ben, who’d rolled onto his back and lay with his hands behind his head. He’d spread his legs wide—left knee to the sky; right knee pointing her way—in a V. Above his shorts, he wore a crew-necked white cotton T-shirt, lettered across the chest: DePaul & Furbeck. Between the shorts and the shirt, she saw a gap of hairy skin. His left knee rocked back and forth.

“Did Ben tell you the things he says?”

“Sure. Frank can be mean, I’ll give you that.”

“And that doesn’t trouble you?”

“Of course it troubles me. Been troubling me for years.”

“You know what he said to a Latina volunteer? He was actually in reception, right in front of Ardelia? Do you?”

“I’ve been a little busy.”

“He said… And Ardelia heard this too. She’ll tell you. He said to the volunteer, ‘See you in three months, if you haven’t been deported.’”

“Good grief. And you heard that?”

“‘See you in three months, if you haven’t been deported.’”

“Well then, I can see there would be a personality clash. Yes, that’s awful.”

“Dr. Mayr, one thing this is not is a personality clash. It’s a professional concern, I assure you. He told Pearl Aderonke—she’s one of our research nurses—about an IV drug user, right there in the room. Now let me get this right for you. He said to Pearl, ‘Can you take her bloods, if she’s got any left?’ Right there in the room she was.”

“An IV drug user?”

“And African American.”

“Did the volunteer say anything?”

“She did. She said, ‘Screw you asshole’ and walked out the center. Took us two emails and a phone call from me to persuade her to come back.”

“Awful. All this may well be medical board material, I can see that. And you need to write a report for our HR folks, if you would. But we have other things to think about right now, you know.”

“He comes in late, leaves volunteers getting mad in the waiting area. You should hear it from my room. If he doesn’t approve of clinical data, he changes them. Everyone knows that. Never bothers checking on why clients don’t come back. This isn’t all in my head.”

Dr. Mayr shook a solitary Doral from her purse and made repeated feeble efforts to light it. She tore three cardboard matches before Ben sat up to help, now exposing the back of his shirt. It was printed between his scapulae “The Law in the Loop.” Cotton strained on the trapezius of a pony.

Sumiko had known it was pointless complaining. The company was sure to close ranks. “And of course, with all those lost to follow-ups, the trial’s efficacy data may be compromised.”

“Compromised?” The vaccine chief sighed and looked to the sky. “Dr. Honda, the trial’s randomized. How could Frank’s interpersonal conduct compromise the data?”

“We don’t know, do we?”

“Nonsense. How? It’s double blind. He doesn’t know, and they don’t know, who’s getting placebo. At least he can’t discriminate over that.”

Sumiko had expected a wall of denial. “For one thing, if he’s insulting differentially some certain kinds of volunteers and not others, that would make his consultations an uncontrolled variable, wouldn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s true. Given the very small numbers of seroconversions from which our efficacy figures are actually derived, he might have preferentially driven away volunteers with particular characteristics.”

“Absurd.”

“More prone to at-risk behavior, for instance. And that might actually slant the efficacy data to appear more favorable to the vaccine.”

Trudy Mayr sighed again, and recommenced flapping. “That would be vanishingly improbable. And have you ever heard of a trial controlling for the offensiveness of clinicians? It’s simply not credible. How would you do it? If what you say’s right, his behavior’s appalling, I agree. But it can’t affect our results.”

“It is right. And those two deaths as well should have been identified properly and recorded in the appropriate manner. The protocol states clearly that all events…”

“Damn it Sumiko, I wrote the protocol. People do die on trials, you know. They drown, they get heart disease, they get burnt up in hijacks. They just die. Perhaps they died after we locked the data.”

“They didn’t.”

“Well, you know they don’t make a spit in a twister’s difference. You’re not saying they were anything to do with the vaccine? You’ve not joined the QAnon crazies?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then.”

Ben sank back and lay silent on the grass.