BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

me know… I mean, I work with these people all the time.”

“It’s just the way he treats everyone. Especially the volunteers. It’s awful. Shocking. If you heard it from my room, you wouldn’t believe it. I’m amazed we haven’t had a lawsuit.”

He unclasped his hands. “Course, it might be confidential. But I’m just helping out on the information side. This gig, it’s not my regular job. I’m an attorney.”

“I’d better be careful then.”

“Always.”

She fingered an ear. “Could I ask your advice then? On a confidential basis?”

“Course you can. Between us, professionally.”

“Let me just tell you this then and see what you think.” She sank onto a chair beside the desk. “And this is just one example of the things he says. Just one. Okay?”

“Gotcha.”

“So, a young guy came into our center. Okay? A volunteer randomized in the trial. Turns out he’s seroconverted: a breakthrough infection. So he’s positive for HIV. Okay? And he comes in to see Wilson for a clinical consultation.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re not going to believe this. But you know what Wilson said to him? He’s actually giving the volunteer his test results. HIV-positive. And it’s not only me who heard this. You know what he said?”

“Hit me.”

She turned and looked through the arch. The Montreal Room was empty. All the same, she lowered her voice. “He said… And I quote. He said… Wilson said, ‘Should have thought about that when you were taking it up the ass.’”

Ben’s teeth flashed. “Come again?”

“I knew you’d laugh. This isn’t funny, you know.”

“I’m not laughing. Honest. He said what?”

“So he, Wilson, told a volunteer, after giving him his test results, ‘Should have thought about that when you were taking it up the ass.’”

“Hold on now, hold on. Let’s back up a bit, can we? This is Frank V. Wilson, MD?”

“Correct.”

“Leading the landmark phase III clinical trial of the world’s first effective vaccine against HIV?”

“Indeed.”

“And was the volunteer…”

“Taking it up the ass? I think that would be a reasonable possibility. This is San Francisco.”

“Actually, I was gonna ask if the volunteer was gay. Or a male having sex with males, I guess I should say.”

“MSM, yes.”

He picked up a ballpoint and pressed it to a notepad.

“And he said what?”

Sumiko repeated all thirteen words.

Ben wrote them down. “And there’s more?”

“More? More than you can begin to imagine. But it’s not only the abuse he deals out, the plain nastiness of the man. It’s the effect he’s had on the trial.”

“In what way?”

“Volunteers miss appointments, no-shows, wasting session time. And that’s if they come back at all. Our drop-out rates are the worst of any center. Lost to follow-up data are awful.”

“Bad, is it?”

“So, for the entire enrollment, averaged for all centers—United States, China, and South Africa—the number of volunteers the trial completely lost track of has been excellent: one-and-a-half percent. Really quite good. San Francisco? Three point four-nine.”

“Okay, I’m not like an epidemiologist or anything. But I guess there’s gotta be variation from center to center. Gotta be random variation, hasn’t there?”

“Except it’s not random. It’s him. People used to come in for enrollment, come for one or maybe both shots, then half of them never even came back for blood tests. Just disappeared.”

Ben stroked beneath his chin, nails rasping stubble, then tapped his lips and grimaced. “Three point four-nine percent? I don’t think that’s quite half.”

“Alright, it’s not half. But our volunteers are a precious resource. We need those people.”

She leaned away from the desk and looked around the module. Along the top of the video wall ran a ticker tape newsfeed with the latest from Medscape and WebMD. A digital thermometer read 72°F. A stethoscope lay displayed beside the monitor.

“I’m telling you—and I think it’s my professional duty to tell Dr. Mayr—the whole place is a shambles. A disgrace. Ardelia’s always complaining about his record-keeping. And, let me tell you, one of our data people told me Wilson was changing clinical case reports. Retrospectively. Months later.”

Ben lifted the stethoscope, clipped it to his ears, and slid the chest-piece under his jacket.

One sister murmured, “He’s hotter than he’s smart.” But the other pressed the nuclear button. “So, you know what I did?”

“Hit me.”

“I checked out the names of the lost to follow-ups. Ran them through Google and the Chronicle online. And two of them actually came up as dead.”

“Dead?”

“Two out of fifty-six. What are the odds of that?”

“Dunno. Guess it depends what they died of.”

“One boy drowned. And a woman suffered heart failure.”

“Well, like I say, I’m only a lawyer. But I guess them being dead might make them miss appointments.”

“They missed them before they died. I checked.”

He didn’t look convinced. “Okay. I don’t know what to say. Maybe you should tell Doc Mayr. She’ll probably want to know about the things he says.”

“She won’t want to know.”

“Sure, she’ll want to know.”

“Believe me, she won’t want to know.”

He rose from the chair. “You want my advice? Tell the truth and shame the devil. That’s always my motto. Got to be. She’ll definitely want to know. And I think I can fix you a meeting.”

Sumiko produced a business card and laid it on the desk. “You think you could do that? Could you?”

“That’s a no problemo. I’m Ben Louviere. I’m like Doc Mayr’s special assistant.”

Four

THEODORE HOFFMAN’S Crown Victoria rolled to a halt on H Street at Twelfth like a train edging into Union Station. He’d replaced her distributor cap and sparkplugs on the weekend, and now she was running damn comfy. Through the door panel, his knuckles felt the clatter of the valve train: as smooth as an old lady knitting.

Marcia Gelding swung her legs from the seat beside him and clambered onto the street. She’d been sipping martini cocktails with Trudy Mayr in the bar when Ben Louviere blundered in and broke the news.

“So, this needs fixing,” she spat. “Do I make myself clear? Pronto. Prontissimo. Fix it.”

“You got it.”

“You too, Doctorjee. Fix it.” She spoke into the back of the vehicle. “I hate deaths. They’re always the worst.”

She thumped the door