“I wasn’t able to attend,” I said. That was technically true. If one is not invited, it is difficult to attend. Also, I had no idea what Toronto conference he was referring to.
When the Director finished her briefing, the room fell silent. All eyes turned to Giscard for some pearl of wisdom. He swept the paisley scarf around his neck with even more care than usual. “Mais oui,” he said, drawing the attention of the few people in the room who had not been looking at him. He struck a pensive tone, deliberately unfurling the scarf. At last: “I think that if a vector can spread a virus, then it can also spread an antibody, yes?” He had a prodigious ability to appear profound while repeating what he had just been told.
“That is the hypothesis we are now exploring,” the Director said.
“By this thinking, the small bug—how does one say it?”
“The North American dust mite,” the Director offered.
“Yes, the dust mite. The dust mite becomes valuable to its host, the human, because it somehow introduces the antidote for Capellaviridae. Yes?”
A scientist at the conference table interjected, “We’ve not found any sign of an antibody. That was one of the first things we checked for. We cannot find any antibodies in those who are not affected—”
“Yes, yes, okay,” Giscard said, cutting him off and, at least from my perspective, dismissing him with what looked like a wave of the scarf. “I assume as much, or I would not be here. This is not your typical potato, right?” Remarkably, people throughout the room, including most of the senior scientists, laughed at this bizarre potato comment. Giscard continued, “But somehow the ongoing presence of this small bug—”
“The dust mite,” a scientist sitting opposite Giscard offered.
“Yes, okay, the presence of the dust mite is somehow affecting Capellaviridae so it does not turn dangerous.”
Tie Guy, who was sitting in a chair against the wall, interjected confidently, “We have nothing to show causality here—no biological evidence whatsoever—just a robust inverse correlation. When people are exposed constantly to the dust mite, they do not get sick. When that exposure is interrupted, either because the dust mite is successfully exterminated, or because a person moves to an area where there are no dust mites, Capellaviridae is prone to turn virulent.”
“Yes, yes, like the Director said,” Giscard agreed. “And when you expose people who are sick with Capellaviridae to the dust bug, they get better?”
“It’s been very hard to test,” I offered. “Most people get better on their own, so we’d need a huge trial to prove effectiveness. We don’t have the time and we don’t have the volunteers.”
Giscard gave the scarf one final furl around his neck. He leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together, making sure that the whole room recognized that he was now engaged in deep contemplation. “And so here we are,” he said.
“This is where we’ve been since I proposed the hypothesis,” I said with more than a little irritation.
“Can we break for a coffee?” Giscard asked. “I think this situation is very manageable.”
“It’s not feeling manageable,” the Director said. “We have very little time.”
“Let’s have a coffee,” Giscard insisted. “I have some ideas.” The Director was nonplussed at having the meeting interrupted for a coffee break. (There were urns of coffee in the conference room.) Giscard was disrupting the protococlass="underline" reports to be presented, assignments to be made, and so on. The guy had no official role, and now here he was proposing a coffee break eighteen minutes into our official daily briefing.
“We have a lot of business to get through,” the NIH Director said.
Giscard waved dismissively at the crowded conference table. “But this is not how science happens, with bureaucratic meetings. We need to think—how do you say it, brainstorm. We do not need the accountants in the room.” Obviously there were no accountants in the room, and Giscard had now managed to annoy much of the staff, but he was not entirely wrong. The NIH meetings had become increasingly mechanistic and process-oriented. The time spent in meetings like this drowned out some of the casual conversations among researchers that could often lead to breakthroughs.
“We have some important things to get through,” the Director said. “Then perhaps we can do a smaller session a little later with no agenda. Please understand that we are keen to take advantage of your expertise, Dr. Giscard.”
“As you like,” Giscard said with a twirl of the scarf. “I am here because there is a crisis.”
The Director moved through business quickly, after which a group of us on the science side retired to a small windowless conference room with whiteboards on three walls. As we filed into the room, Giscard spotted Jenna speaking with the Director. Once again, he made a beeline for her. “Will that room be okay, Dr. Giscard?” the Director asked as he approached.
“Yes, yes,” he assured her as he turned to Jenna. “But you will join us?”
“Me?” Jenna asked, apparently oblivious to the fact that Giscard was stalking her. “I’m just an extra pair of hands around here.”
The Director, no naïf when it came to predatory scientists with huge egos, said quickly, “Jenna has some things to do for me. She’s not part of the virus working group.”
Giscard touched Jenna lightly on the shoulder: “We will talk later.”
“That would be great,” Jenna said.
With the flirtation out of the way (for the time being), a group of six or seven of us retired to our small windowless room. Tie Guy spoke first, outlining his statistical findings. A scientist from the CDC summarized what we had learned about Capellaviridae, including its similarity to the influenza virus. Giscard behaved differently in this environment—more scientist and less French showman. It may have been my imagination, but I think he even twirled his scarf less often. Moments earlier I had felt a strong urge to strangle him with the scarf, but now I could not help admiring how his mind worked. I presented my theory that the North American dust mite was somehow using Capellaviridae to gain an evolutionary advantage. “I suspect this virus has an on-off switch—somewhere, somehow,” I said. “The dust mite controls that switch and benefits as a result.”
“Yes, this is right,” Giscard said confidently.
“We can’t find any evidence of that,” a CDC scientist objected. “The virulent and dormant forms of the virus are identical.”
“That’s not right,” Giscard said dismissively. “One form of the virus makes you sick, one does not. Those are not the same. They cannot be the same.”
“They have the same DNA,” the scientist replied.
Giscard grew even more dismissive, something I did not think possible. He made a strange pffff sound, blowing air out his pursed lips. He pointed at a young CDC scientist sitting next to him. “You have DNA. I hit you with a mallet. Your DNA does not change. But now you are different because your brain is on the floor.” He paused as we digested and recoiled from his analogy, not least the scientist whose hypothetical brain was now lying on the floor. Giscard continued, “If you people start with the assumption that the virulent form of the virus is no different than the dormant virus, then of course you will miss the difference!” I watched the body language of the scientists around the table as this French interloper chided them for their sloppy work. There were a few sets of rolled eyes, but I suspect most in the room were feeling some variation of what I was feeling, namely that Giscard was a complete asshole who was probably right.