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I said that would be nice, but I wondered how it could come about.
"No problem. All you have to do is include me in the project. All I
would expect in return is that my name would go on all publications."
It was a few seconds before I could believe I'd heard him right. Then I
told him what he could do with his influence.
A few months later, I found out that the area surgical consultant,
practically next to God in the VA hierarchy, was visiting the hospital to
act on a report, made by my would-be "benefactor," that I was spending
too much time on research and neglecting my patients. Fortunately,
there was a lot of infighting among my superiors, and one higher than
the guy who'd made the charge was supporting me. His motives were
less to save a promising research program and more to embarrass the
other man, but I was cleared.
It was also clear that I was courting disaster by relying on VA money.
I needed outside support. I took time off from research to prepare two
proposals. One, which I sent to the Department of the Army, empha-
sized the possibility that direct currents could stimulate healing. Since
the Army's business produces quite a few wounds, I thought it would be
interested, but it was not. The proposal was turned down promptly, but
then a strange thing happened about a month later. I received a long-
distance call from a prominent orthopedic surgeon, a professor at a med-
ical school in the South. "I have a grant from the Army to study the
possibility that direct currents might stimulate wound healing," he
purred, "and I wonder if you might have any suggestions as to the best
approach to use."
My God, were they all this sleazy out there? Of course, when I looked
up his credentials, I found he had absolutely no background in bio-
electricity. He'd just happened to be on the Army review committee,
recommended disapproval, and then turned around and submitted the
idea in his own name, now getting the go-ahead since he, a man with a
reputation and friends on the review board, was going to do it, instead
of some unknown upstart.
I sent the second application to the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). I stayed within my specialty and proposed to study the solid-
state physics of bone, eventually hoping to find out if direct currents
could stimulate bone healing. The grant was approved, but only for
enough money to do part of what I wanted. And although it was nice to
have a cushion, a source not under local control, I nevertheless needed
some political clout to stabilize the situation in Syracuse.
I went directly
to the dean of the medical school.
Carlyle Jacobson had seemed to be a nice guy, not the type to stand