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to know the reasoning of the people you re dealing with. You have
to talk to them realistically. Congressman Brown spoke with author-
ity. He had a university degree in physics, had once been a practicing
engineer, and throughout his political career was one of the crucial
66 Accidental Scientist
supporters of research in Congress. He also knew that talking  realis-
tically does not come easily to scientists, and certainly not to acade-
micians.
My own first visit to Congress was memorable. A colleague and I
were taken to see a congressman from the South who had been a
member of the House of Representatives for twenty-five years. I re-
member that he had his feet on his desk, but that may be an embellish-
ment from my imagination. We delivered a carefully rehearsed and de-
liberately brief treatise on the importance of fundamental biomedical
research as sponsored by the NIH. The congressman listened patiently
until we finished, then announced that we had confused him by link-
ing fundamental research to the NIH. Why had we done this, he asked,
when the NIH supports only clinical research, whereas it is the Na-
tional Science Foundation that supports fundamental research?
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.35 A large portion
of fundamental medical research is supported by the NIH. This gentle-
man was profoundly misinformed about how billions of federal funds
were being spent every year. I winced, remembering that the congress-
man had by then voted on twenty-five successive federal budgets for
research. Then I looked behind him, where his chief of staff was hold-
ing his head in a pronounced and deliberate display of frustration.
Message:  our bosses may not always know what is going on, but we
do. And they do indeed. Most of the congressional staff with whom I
have dealt are bright, energetic, capable, well intentioned, and wise to
the ways of the world. Think twice before arguing with any of these
folks. I have tried it more than once and have generally fared poorly.
That lesson learned, my colleague and I were led down the hall to
see another and very powerful member of the House of Representa-
tives. There was a brief wait in the anteroom, during which time we
were joined by a young woman who was the congressman s staff for
medical affairs. When informed of our purpose, she surprised us by
saying,  Sock it to him; I have been trying to change his position on
this for weeks. She was as ardent about our cause as we were.
We performed again. This time, the response was more personal,
more sophisticated, and more devastating. The congressman picked
up a picture of his granddaughter and announced:  Gentlemen, if I do
Accidental Scientist 67
what you want, when this little girl grows up, she will have no choices
left. The congressman was wary of further encumbering future fed-
eral budgets with long-term commitments a favorite mantra in the
halls of Congress and most certainly a legitimate concern.
We discussed the point for almost an hour, more time than I am
usually willing to give a petitioning colleague. I was coming to under-
stand the essence of representative government. The congressman was
genuinely engaged with our issue, he had a firm and well-articulated
position, he clearly loved to argue, and he was good at it.
By now, our organization has provided hundreds of scientists with
opportunities like this. The opportunities arose at first as windfall.
But now we have become more systematic and more strategic. In par-
ticular, we have full-time personnel organizing groups of scientist-
advocates and dispatching these groups to Capitol Hill for assaults on
congressional offices. At last count, we had organized in California,
Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York, and had hopes
of expanding into New England.
A second objective of our exercise in politics was to create a nation-
wide team of correspondents who would generate a rapid response to
crucial legislative initiatives. We soon built the membership of this
team to more than two thousand, all of whom are available to be mo-
bilized on short notice by email. The group embodies a formula that I
heard early in my tuition on Capitol Hill: one letter gets a response,
ten letters gets some attention, one hundred letters may get a vote. Re-
member that formula the next time you are trying to find the time to
write to a member of Congress: you might be number one hundred.
Teaching Science to Politicians
As a third tactic, we instigated the organization of a congressional
caucus on biomedical research. Caucuses are a familiar part of con-
gressional life: self-assembled affinity groups such as the Black Caucus,
the Manufacturing Caucus, the Trade Caucus, and many others meet
intermittently to be briefed about their concerns and to plot legislative
strategies. But there had never before been a congressional caucus de-
voted to research on health and disease.
68 Accidental Scientist
We saw here the potential to create an unprecedented vehicle for
the regular consideration of biomedical science on Capitol Hill. This
initiative required delicate maneuvering by our lobbyist, because cau-
cuses can be called together only by members of Congress them-
selves. Our role could be informal and advisory only. Several members
of Congress were recruited to chair the caucus and the membership
gradually grew to its current level of approximately 170.
Congressman George Gekas of Pennsylvania deserves special men-
tion. He has been the mainstay of the caucus, attending and chairing
virtually all of its meetings to date. Several years ago, the American So-
ciety for Cell Biology presented him with its award for public service.
He accepted the award with an extemporaneous and impassioned ad-
dress on the importance of medical research an authentic and stir-
ring piece of Americana that stunned the audience of jaded scientists.
I have learned not to underestimate members of Congress: many are
very good on a stump and bring passion to governing.
The main activity of the caucus is a regularly scheduled series of
luncheon programs; there have been more than one hundred of these
over the past decade. Speakers are biomedical scientists recruited from
around the country with the injunction to make their remarks accessi-
ble to a general audience. The remarks are published in the Congres-
sional Record. Subjects have ranged from new treatments for cancer to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]