Chapter 13: Aldebaran

Courted by Big Pharma

Professor Angela Dawney is at work in her office sifting through a pile of incoming mail. There are various notices from the University Administration and University Admissions departments (brown envelopes), some copies of the academic journals she has personal subscriptions to (large heavy envelopes), a manuscript of a technical article for review (A4 white envelope), an acknowledgment card for a gift Angela sent to her office cleaner who was married recently (small envelope), and finally a rather smart envelope with American stamps.

On the front is an outline drawing of a prancing bull. One of its eyes is a bright red star and the envelope bears the word “Aldebaran.” Angela sighs. This is definitely some thing she wants nothing to do with. So strong is the feeling that she is tempted to throw it straight in the bin, but a nagging curiosity to know more about “Aldebaran” tempts Angela to open the envelope. Inside are several pages of closely printed text and an accompanying letter. Angela reads:

Angela reads through the letter once more, with a sinking heart. Aldebaran needs a pharmacologist, not an academic psychologist like her. Despite the blandishments in the letter, Angela knows there is probably very little she can offer the company and she has absolutely no wish to end up working on a project for the United States Department of Defense or any other defense company.

She decides to deal with this distraction at once. She opens her email program — and there is an email from Aldebaran! She opens the email — and it is the same letter which has just come to her in the post. Angela wastes no time. She clicks the link to reply to Somerset and types a firm but polite rejection. She reads over her reply. Is it firm enough? No room for doubt, surely? Angela presses <send> and dismisses Aldebaran from her mind.

Several hours later, S David Somerset opens Angela’s email and reads:

Somerset smiles. The fish is eyeing the bait, he feels. Dawney has given him an opening to contact her again. If he had received no reply whatsoever, he would have had a harder uphill struggle. As it is...

Somerset checks his watch. It’s 2:42 pm. The time in England will be 7:42 pm. He looks over the numbers he has for Angela. Her office number? She is probably home by now. Her mobile number? Too aggressive at this stage. Her home number? Far too intrusive, at the moment. What about merely an email? She had rejected him by email once. It would be easier to reject him again. It had to be a call.

He places the call to Angela’s office number, just in case she is working late, but whilst the number connects and rings, there is no reply. Well: early days. What did he know about Angela? Single. No long-term regular partner. Ambitious. Hard working. He decides. He will call again tomorrow, when Angela first arrives at work.

The following morning, Angela is at her desk, enjoying the cup of tea she has made and thinking about her objectives. She is also thinking about a date she has in the evening with a friend from Computer Science. They are going out to dinner, and then ... well, who knows? Angela licks her lips and thinks once more about Cho Hye Jin. Her tanned South East Asian skin; her English Midlands accent softened by her lilting voice. Angela loves the way Cho keeps her hair, the way she can pile it up on her head in a tight lustrous black bun, held by a leather hair slide and coloured rods, and the way it moves and sways when she lets it down, her laughing cheeky eyes and the sweet coconut smell her skin always has. She is thinking about the way Cho usually wears her shoes on her bare feet, the way her calf and Achilles tendon both look as her leg transforms into her ankle and then on to form her feet — when the telephone rings!

Angela starts, because she does not usually get calls at 7:30 in the morning. That, after all, is one of the reasons to reach the office early.

She picks up the receiver. “Professor Dawney speaking.”

“Professor Dawney?”

“Yes?” Angela is surprised to hear an American voice. For a moment, she cannot imagine who this might be and at this time, when the Americans are all asleep in bed...

“Hi, it’s David Somerset ... from Aldebaran. You were kind enough to email me yesterday.”

“Ah,...” says Angela. Her heart sinks now she knows who is calling but she begins to think quickly. She wants to get rid of Somerset —and yet, she is disinclined to be rude. Something about his voice...

Somerset is speaking again: “Well I just wanted to call you personally and thank you for taking the trouble to reply to me so fast. To be completely honest, I was expecting either no reply at all or a very abrupt rejection, so I wanted to thank you for your courtesy in being prepared to consider us.”

“Er,...” replies Angela, not sure for once what to say. What the hell did I say? she thinks. Surely I did send a curt rejection?

Somerset is speaking again: “You see, the thing is we know there is an established protocol for analyzing a drug trial and we have people who do that. It’s just that we would like to be innovative. Can you understand that? These trials: sometimes the effects you get are modest — that is, modest compared to established therapy, but this time we have something really new. We believe in it and we want to be scrupulous in the way we carry out the trials.”

“Yes, Mr — I am sorry, is it Mr Somerset or Dr Somerset?’

“Actually it’s ‘Dr, ‘ but please call me David...”

“Well, Dr Somerset,” continues Angela briskly, “I am sure you do, but surely the best way to do that is to use people with proven expertise in that area. That is something I just do not have.”

“I understand your reservations, Ma’am, and if I was in your position I would say the same...”

Angela finds herself blanking out Somerset’s voice. Visions of Cho Hye Jin are beginning to invade Angela’s mind once more. She imagines Cho flexing her hip and lifting her leg upwards, bent at the knee, balancing on her opposite foot on her flexed toes. Angela slips off the leather pump from the foot Cho has offered (Cho is tall and usually wears soft black flat leather pumps, wide at the front and comfortable so her bare toes can spread within). In her imagination, Angela bends her face down towards Cho’s foot. She draws her tongue over the top of her toes, enjoying their sweet leathery smell, exploring the clefts between them...

Angela is brought back from her reveries. Somerset is still speaking: “ ... so if you could even just review the questionnaire instruments, we would be very grateful. We think this could be really helpful in so many day-to-day clinical situations and be a real advance in the humane management of patients after injury...”

Humane. Injury. Day-to-day situations. These three phrases find their way into a sympathetic part of Angela’s brain, skimming over the hostile terrain of disinterest to find their targets like the cruise missiles she once protested about. That and the distracting visions of Cho Hye Jin.

Angela sighs. Perhaps if she humours the man and looks through the wretched questionnaires she can point him firmly in the right direction to someone else and get rid of him, once and for all?

“Very well, Dr Somerset. I will glance over what you are proposing to use and make comments. However, please note that I still believe I am almost certainly not the person for you, but perhaps I could point you in the right direction?”

“Ma’am, I should be very grateful! I will be in touch. Can I mail the information to you or would you prefer electronic?”

“Hard copy, please,” replies Angela, thinking that it would slow the process and meanwhile she can get on with some more valuable work and think some more about Cho...

In his office, S David Somerset allows himself a careful smile. The fish has tasted the bait!

In a week’s time, Angela receives another package from Aldebaran and a duplicate email copy.

The hard copy document begins with a reminder: the information therein is privileged. It belongs to Aldebaran and may only be read by Aldebaran employees and its authorized agents and must not be shared without the specific permission of Aldebaran. Breaking the document seal implies the Reader accepts the conditions of confidentiality.

Once Angela gets past the tedious legal rubric (For goodness sake, who do they think she is? She is well aware of research ethics and the need for confidentiality: she is a member of the University Research Ethics Committee!), Angela finds a description of the trial. It is very comprehensive but not dull. It begins with a statement of the problem illustrated with a number of heart-rending pictures of the sort of people Aldebaran wish to help: a child in hospital undergoing chemotherapy. A road traffic accident victim. A young soldier — just a boy really — whose leg has been blown off above his knee by a land mine. The document then goes on to explain how stress depresses the immune system retards physical recovery and sets out the pharmacological development of Procyon.

Finally, there is a very comprehensive account of the proposed clinical trial. This is the section which Angela directs her attention to. There is a lot — pages — about blood biochemistry and the analysis of cortisone found in urine and blood. This is a section Angela skips: she is not well-informed about clinical chemistry.

At last, she finds the questionnaires. The instruments the company hopes will throw some light on how the patients feel about themselves during the trial. It does not take Angela long to decide that, whilst the biochemical tests seem to be the last word in sophistication, the questionnaires are rather superficial and simplistic.

S David Somerset has laid his bait effectively. The changes required are something Angela can do easily. Accurate collection of reliable data is something she cares about and, playing successfully on Angela’s vanity, Somerset has given her the opportunity to show just how it should be done, properly.

Angela checks the e-copy of the trial documents. It seems identical to the hard copy with no additional information. Once again it is prefaced with the reminder from Aldebaran about confidentiality. Angela finds a box to confirm her agreement beneath more lines of eight-point type, and clicks the box to confirm her agreement to the terms and conditions.

In doing so, without careful reading of the tedious and tiny lines of text, Angela misses an important extra phrase: “Actions under this contract are subject to 18 United States Code section 794 - Gathering or delivering defense information to aid foreign government.”

Angela reflects on the proposition: some fairly elementary changes would transform the effectiveness of the documents. There would not really be much effort required. Then she can get S David Somerset and Aldebaran out of her hair for good. Angela makes a decision: she emails Somerset at Aldebaran: