What is the conundrum wrapped in the enigma that is missing in American Science, and possibly all science?  The answer is very clear to me now.  It is the patients.  Except in those cases where the scientists entered the healthcare arena because of a relative who was stricken by their disease of interest, there is an abstraction of feeling embraced too many times in the profession that is enhanced by the complete objectivity already present in scientific discovery.

In the research centers, our patients come to us in the form of tissue, serum, blood, urine, and saliva. They come in aliquots, in test tubes, and on slides, and these human beings are anonymous.

What brought me to this conclusion?  As we discuss the silos of power present in research centers, it becomes clear that hospitals have similar structures or silos of power.  Certain lead physicians, strong techs or outstanding nurses create a center of gravity around which funding, support and power emanates. One of my cynical friends jokingly suggested about a very pompous physician   that “If he ever wants to commit suicide, all he has to do is jump off his ego.”

The hospital setting has as many egos as the research centers.  The unifying factor in the hospital that makes it all come together, however, is the patients and their families.

The patient hand off from the Emergency Department to the Lab to the Radiology Department to Critical Care is all made possible by the physicians and staff working closely with those patients and their loved ones.  In a collegial environment, egos, distrust, and all of the emotional luggage is immediately set aside as the patient’s life is attached to a thread of connectivity that is reinforced through unification of the effort and knowledge provided by the various professionals involved.

How different would the world of science be if, instead of slides and test tubes, the scientists were given the opportunity to look into the eyes of their patients on a daily, hourly, or minute by minute basis?  How much harder would they work, or how much more passion would be in their actions if the children of the mother dying of cancer were hanging from their lab coats begging for help?

As long as our patients are one little, abstract, anonymized piece of the puzzle in our labs, life will go on as usual. Until our researchers see and feel the pain.  Until they know the challenge first hand, and become part of the personal lives of those inflicted with suffering, we will still see plenty of scientists everywhere leaving early, taking long lunches or killing time in their cubicles.

WE NEED TO MAKE THIS REAL TO THOSE SCIENTISTS WHO EMBRACE THE ABSTRACT AS OPPOSED TO EMBRACING THE PATIENT AND THEIR PASSION TO FIND THE CURE.