Walking across the Homewood campus of the John Eager Howard University in Baltimore, Ricky Valenti was stuck by the grandeur of the buildings designed in Georgian architectural style. He was somewhat apprehensive in meeting the physician who directed the amyloidosis clinic. So many people rushing across the campus, all looking like they had a mission in life, and right now, his mission was to determine if this physician and his clinic might have an offer of hope for niece’s daughter who suffered from varieties of amyloidosis, a disease characterized by the accumulated of protein clumps called amyloid fibrils in different organs.
The clinic director had been nice enough on the telephone, but when Ricky looked up his research record, he realized that this physician was just barely out of school. Amyloidosis was a complicated disease from what he could find during his research. Was someone barely out of their training really the person best suited to caring for his niece’s ailing daughter? It’s not as though this fellow came from a long line of physicians and scientists. Far from that, in fact. But for the moment he would have to do. Maybe he had a new treatment available that no one else was willing to even talk about. Ricky just didn’t know. One thing he did know was that the fast pace of life across the several quads he traversed getting the medical center had sped up his own walking--and he arrived 10 minutes early for his appointment.
As Ricky entered the medical center, he took off his fedora hat and showed his driver’s license to the guard at the reception desk. He looked around and saw the statues of John Eager Howard, his sword upright in his outstretched right hand centered in the entry rotunda, looking at the statue of calvary right just outside the medical center’s front entrance.
Another guard at the visitor’s desk adjacent to the reception desk directed Ricky to Dr. Calvert’s research office. The amyloidosis clinic was not open that day, but Ricky would still be able to talk with the clinic director. If he was satisfied that the director might be the appropriate physician for his family member, he would arrange for appointments for her. That family lived in Baltimore and presenting to an attending physician at John Eager Howard would be easy to do given that they lived barely five miles away.
Ricky found Dr. Calvert’s office, and the two men hit it off from the start. Dr. Calvert indicated that he didn’t currently have a new treatment for the disease afflicting Ricky’s family member, but there was a new drug in development that he was sure would turn the tide, as it were. It was a drug that Dr. Calvert had developed, but he was having trouble interesting a drug company in developing the drug for use in people. Ricky suggested that Dr. Calvert develop the drug himself--Ricky even offered to help him raise the needed capital. No, Dr. Calvert indicated, that was something frowned upon at John Eager Howard University. Many of the great physicians had tried to commercially develop their discoveries, but the university made it clear that it was not interested in them doing so. If a separate company came along and wanted to license the drug, well, that might be a different matter. But that company couldn’t avail itself of the John Eager Howard University physician in the process. Otherwise, the university suggested, the faculty might become corrupt by the largesse of wealth offered by commercialization and their medical practices---and patients--would suffer accordingly. It was an absolute, even though the faculty could not figure out how the same phenomenon didn’t corrupt the faculties at other universities, like Stanford or Oxford.
Perhaps, Dr. Calvert suggested, Ricky might interest some of his associates in setting up a company to develop the drug. Surely there were executives experienced in the industry who might be induced to make a jump to a start-up. It happened all the time, Dr. Calvert said. Ricky responded that he knew nothing about the industry. It wasn’t something that he could learn overnight. In the back of his mind, though, Ricky wondered if he could really master what he needed to to bring such a company into being. Dr. Calvert acknowledge that pharmaceuticals weren’t an area within Ricky’s expertise. After some further discussion about the status of Ricky’s family members, Dr. Calvert indicated that he would be happy to accept Ricky’s niece’s daughter into his clinic. Ricky indicated his thanks to Dr. Calvert and left the medical center to go visit his family. The meeting had been a productive one--Ricky was happy he had invested the time and money in the plane ticket from home in St. Louis.