A Fabulous Freak Show
By
Leonard Zwelling
Peggy Noonan wrote this on October 12 in The Wall Street Journal in a piece about the recovery from the Johnstown, PA flood in 1889:
“We did something nobody ever tried before…with people from every country in the world, and ask them to come, build something, get along, and invent an arrangement of rules and rights by which they could operate together. It produced a dazzling, strange and gifted nation, a freak show and a fabulous one.”
She was describing the United States in the late 19th century and how a sense of community among different peoples responded to an emergency. She could have been describing the vision that R. Lee Clark had for the original M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute shortly after WWII.
When I got to UT M.D. Anderson in 1984, it still had its old name. Dr. LeMaistre had replaced Dr. Clark, but the zeitgeist of Anderson was the same. It was a fabulous freak show with outsized personalities and inestimable skill sets in the surgeons, in the radiotherapists, in the experimental chemotherapists, and in the basic research faculty. For a research-based medical oncologist like I was, it was a playground with no ceiling on what could be accomplished.
M.D. Anderson began to change under John Mendelsohn in 1996. It was he who invoked a “salary on grants” policy forcing those in the research labs to generate a portion of their salaries that had previously been paid in full by the institution. Mendelsohn also put in place a new financial oversight system that tended to raise the importance of money at Anderson. That had already been instigated when the state legislature removed the need for patients to be referred to MD Anderson and patient self-referral filled the coffers with money that was subsequently used to construct more buildings. Buildings were described by one executive as “Mendelsohn’s crack.”
Money was also a serious addiction of Dr. Mendelsohn as he became embroiled in two major scandals. First, was his membership on the board of Enron as that company collapsed. Then came his involvement with ImClone whose CEO went to jail for insider trading as Mendelsohn himself made $6 million in one day as Bristol-Myers took a large equity position purchasing part of ImClone. ImClone was the company that was formulating the antibody drug Mendelsohn had developed. He made the mistake of doing the clinical trials of the drug at MD Anderson without telling the patient participants of his large stock position with ImClone who was sponsoring the trials—a huge conflict of interest. That too hit the Houston Chronicle and ImClone not only was the company whose CEO went to prison but also was the company whose famous stockholder, Martha Stewart, did, too.
Things have never been the same at Anderson.
After Mendelson came Ron DePinho who tried to turn MD Anderson into his private drug company while he and his researcher wife aimed to cure five cancers in five years. They didn’t.
Now we have Peter Pisters, a classic oncocrat, with no research credentials and a cast of characters of questionable experience and abilities working for him.
MD Anderson is driving to create a faculty of stamped out “professionals” who do not question the administration but rather crank out patient visits to keep the revenue up. It is no longer a freak show. I miss that freak show.
The United States became great as a melting pot of the talents of the many who came from around the world. This too was MD Anderson under Clark and LeMaistre. Mendelsohn changed that forever. Now it is quickly regressing to the mean of academic cancer centers no longer differentiated by its unique faculty.
This is really too bad.
Even the original Pink Palace, the pink marble edifice that was the exterior of the initial MD Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute is gone from sight. I miss her. I miss her energy. I miss her freak show. Those freaks were some of the most talented people I have ever met and many became my friends. I miss them, too.
In 1984 I ran away from the NIH to join the circus on Holcombe. I fear it is gone forever. Except for the clowns.
2 thoughts on “A Fabulous Freak Show”
A clever reflection on MD Anderson and one that informed me since I have never visited this renowned center. Money does get in the way of good science and medicine sometimes. And, expecting faculty to bow to top leaders is a fatal error of leadership.
I am glad that you contributed when it was your time. Thanks.
It once was an amazing place