2022-04-25 23:45:24
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The anthrax powder letters had changed both the face of infectious disease research as well as my professional life as profoundly as had the advent of AIDS at the very beginning of my career. Shortly after the attacks, when the Norwegian investors in the genetic vaccine company Inovio we had helped launch pulled back out of fear of US instability, we were left high and dry with neither clients nor academic appointment, and of necessity I had joined a Department of Defense contract management firm called Dynport Vaccine Company (DVC) as Assistant Director of Clinical Research. DVC had recently received the “prime systems contract” for managing all advanced development (clinical and regulatory steps for licensure) of all Department of Defense Biodefense-related drugs and vaccines. Little did I know that DVC majority owner Dyncorp ran one of the two main US-based mercenary armies, that the field of “biodefense” was about to explode, my career path would be transformed forever, and I would be catapulted into the shadowy realm that exists between academic biotechnology research and US government-funded infectious disease intelligence, surveillance and threat mitigation. I came to realize that the world really did not want more “academic thought leaders”, and the true unmet need was for people who understood both the wild west of discovery research as well as the highly regulated world of advanced development – clinical research and regulatory affairs. If I really wanted to help people by enabling development and licensing of life-saving treatments, I should forget about the ivory tower world of academics and focus on learning the skills necessary to help companies navigate the world of the Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. So that became my new career path, and I threw myself into learning and developing all that was required to meet this need. In the ensuing years I exceeded my hopes and ended up winning or managing billions of dollars in US Federal contracts to do precisely that.
Over the years before COVID, Jill and I had developed a modest network of friends and professional colleagues scattered across the globe. This network was built from our consulting practice, from when I was working on US Government-funded biodefense and influenza vaccine contracts, as well as my prior days as an academic teaching Pathology and Molecular Biology to medical students while doing bench research, writing papers, filing patents, and getting involved in various biotechnology start-up companies. And we had our horse friends of course. Linked-in, Facebook, occasionally Twitter and email correspondence allowed us to stay in touch with all of these. We both lived in two very different worlds that rarely touched each other, one involving cutting edge biotechnology and infectious disease medical countermeasure research, and the other one immersed in horses, hay, orchards, farm equipment, construction and the local feed store.
Somewhere between September and December 2019, a novel coronavirus entered the human population, began spreading like wildfire across the globe, and turned my world upside down. Maybe it also transformed your life also? If someone had described my life now to 2019 me, I would have assumed that they were a marginal Science Fiction writer specializing in dystopic cyberpunk.
Looking back, I am struck by how sheltered and naïve I was then (when viewed through the lens of my experiences since COVID struck), and how much both my worldview and my role in the world has been radically shifted by subsequent events.
@RWMaloneMD
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