personal involvement

Posted by dt on Wednesday, 16 July 1997, at 3:57 p.m.

Readers:

reminders-

1. I know you (collectively) are very smart and can guess or otherwise
deduce who I am or where I am or who I'm am referring to. Please do not do
so on this board. I leave out mentioning specific names for my as well as
others protection of privacy, etc. 2. I purposefully mix up and jump around
in time.

LBS-

All of what dt did was not bad.

At dt's meeting at Langley, he was surprised that he was told to study and
learn about the work of two medical researchers, named Bishop and Varmus.

I said, "study?" "Yes," I was told by an elderly gray haired man. It was the
first time that he spoke during the meeting. He said further, "We want you
to become a student again and learn what you can about the virus work the
two researchers were doing at a highly respected medical school." At this
point, I broke in and said that I know who these two were and what they were
doing; I won't be apart of anything that turns their work into germ warfare
stuff. The senior USAF officer (mentioned previously) stated that I wouldn't
be doing anything like that. Pushing my inquisitiveness, I asked, "What's
this got to do with ufos and flying saucers anyway?" The white haired man
started to say, "You read all the Belvoir documents didn't....", just then
the senior officer smiled at dt and interrupted, "You'll find our in time."

So, as a medical student, dt among many other things listened intently to
lectures given by the religious oriented Bishop wearing his characteristic
white socks and Bergenstocks, and to the stereotypic I-would-never-trust-him
researcher nerd Varmus. They were developing a hypothesis wherein they
wanted to prove that certain genes caused cancer in humans. This was not
very popular thinking amoung my teaching M.D.'s.

I had a good time as I volunteered to help them with their HeLa cultures,
etc. What this meant was that at first I had to salivate whenever they said
something. Later, they learned to appreciate me when they realized that
viruses were not unknown to me (as I had my own theories too). What was
unique about their thinking was that they felt certain suspect viruses could
trigger or "induce" genetic loci on human genes to start the deadly cancer
process. I believe that the health ramifications are beginning to become
obvious today. I was extremely interested in the actual cellular change
mechanisms.

After a short time, I left them doing their research for which both
eventually won Noble Prizes in 1989.

I need to add that while at the Langley meeting that I was to be assigned
what is called a "focal point" officer in the community. I was to report to
this person (via telephone) who was unknown to me. I could ask questions and
visa versa; this person kept track of me and was, in general, a cheer
leader. For example, one day this person emphasized that I did very well on
my gross anatomy final (96 out of 100 points); I recognized the cisterna
chyli (sp?) but missed some vein or something in the foot.

Later, I found out why the above grade was important. My focal point wanted
me to review some anatomical findings that he was going to send me (the rule
was that I read documents which were never to be copied and which were
either returned or destroyed in front of a designated witness). Actually
they turned out to be autopsy and lab results. I soon found out that my lab
books and notes from medical school didn't help me much. I was confused in
that I asked myself why would they send me to med school than have me look
at some type of animal findings. I knew the document didn't relate to any
lab animals that I was aware of and the quantities of chemicals, blood
volume,etc. indicated something larger than a medium size dog.

Then it hit me! dt had his stupid hat on (remember I was vacationing in
school). When I realized what you probably have already guessed, I told
myself no way. I was like all of you. To use a recently popular movie
saying, I said, "Show me the aliens!"

I immediately asked my focal point officer what the hell was going on, that
is, was I looking at EBE stuff. This is when I got the infamous answer of "I
can neither confirm nor deny." I was neither shown any EBE's (they were
apparently rather close to me, however, at Norton AFB) nor given anymore
associated data.

What happen next was I got a conference call from members of the "working
group." (yes, I will follow Corso's lead) Their backgrounds were in the bio
sciences per their questions put forth to me. Although not an engineer, many
of the questions would seem to dictate such educational background. Some
questions were easy, "what vascular size would account for a blood flow
of....", some were not, "how do you think the virus X recognizes a cellular
Y's outer membrane, how is the DNA changed if....,...???" We eventually
worked our way to the molecular level.

Then, I was asked what do I think of Bishop's and Varmus's work (this is
many years before they were awarded the Noble). I say pretty good, but I'm
not sure what good it is because we are not sure of how many human genes
there are or where they are...blah...blah...blah.....

Ahhhhahh!! One of my unknown questioners shouted. "We don't know much about
the geography of the human genome." I thought "geography?" I responded," well,
yes."

Then he said, "What are you going to do about it?"

-dt