carefully. “Well, I’m glad to hear somebody has even greater optimism for my project than I do. Maybe I ought to trade notes with him.”
“If we didn’t have rumors to play with, wouldn’t this medical center be a dull place to live,” Dr Festung pronounced.
Geoff laughed dutifully, although he had his own opinion of the back-stabbing gossip that filled so many conversations here.
“Waste of time trying to cure cancer anyway,” the epidemiologist continued. “Nature would only replace it with another scourge just as deadly, and then we’d have to begin all over again. Let it run its course and be done, I say.”
“Well, that’s your specialty,” Geoff said with a thin smile, uncertain how serious his companion meant to be taken.
“Common sense,” confided Festung. “Common sense and simple arithmetic—that’s all there is to epidemiology. Every Age has its deadly plague, far back as you care to trace it.
“The great plagues of the ancient world—leprosy, cholera, the Black Death. They all came and went, left millions dead before they were finished, and for most of them we can’t even say for certain what disease it may have been.”
“Those were primitive times,” Geoff shrugged. “Plagues were expected—and accepted. No medicine, and filthy living conditions. Naturally a plague would go unchecked—until it either killed all those who were susceptible, or something like the London Fire came along to cauterize the centers of contagion.”
“More often the plagues simply ran their course and vanished,” Dr Festung went on in a tone of dismissal. “Let’s take modern times, civilized countries, then—after your London Fire (actually it was a change of dominant species of rat) and the ebbing of the bubonic plague. Comes the Industrial Revolution to Europe, and with it strikes smallpox and then tuberculosis. A little later, and you get the picture in this country too. OK, you finally vaccinate against smallpox, but what about TB? Where did TB come from, anyway? Industrialization? No sir, because TB went on the wane at the height of industrialization. And why did it? Biggest killer of its day, and now it’s a rare disease. And you know medicine had damn little to do with its disappearance. Then influenza. Killed millions, and not just because medical conditions weren’t what we have now. Hell, we still can’t do much about the flu. Froneberger tells me his research indicates there are two or three wholly new influenza strains ‘born’ (if you will) each year—that we know about. Hell, we still aren’t really sure what strain was the great killer at the early part of the century. And talk about confusion, why, when you say ‘flu,’ you can mean anything from several bacteria to any number of viral strains and substrains.”
“Well, how about polio?” challenged Metzger, digging for a cigarette. Festung hated tobacco smoke.
“Polio? Exactly. Another killer plague that appeared from nowhere. Sure, this time we came up with a vaccine. But so we know where it went—where did polio come from, though? Each generation seems to have its nemesis. When I was your age, the big killer was stomach cancer. Like bad weather, we talked a lot about stomach cancer, but nothing much was ever done, and it faded into the background just the same. Instead, we had heart disease. Now there’s the number one killer for these many years—the reason for billions of government dollars doled out for research. And what have we really done about it? Dietary fads, a few ghoulish transplants, and a pile of Rube Goldberg gadgetry that can keep things pumping for a few extra years. Sum total: too close to nothing to bother carrying. But that’s all right too, because now heart disease is on the way out, and for now our great slayer of mankind is cancer.
“History and figures tell the story, young man. Cancer is here for the moment. And maybe all your research will do something about it, then more likely it won’t. But it doesn’t matter in the long run, because cancer will have its heyday and fade like its predecessors at the scythe handle, and then we’ll find something new to die of. Wonder what it’ll be.”
“Someone else’s worry, that’s what it’ll be. I suppose, as they say, you got to die of something.” Geoff pushed his chair back from the table. “Meanwhile I’ll chase after today’s problems. And one of the most immediate concerns a scintillation counter run that ought to be gone through by now. See you, Ira.”
“Sure. Hey, how about leaving that paper, if you’re finished reading