The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance by Russell Roberts

Author:Russell Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2014-07-11T12:27:00+00:00

"I have some important news."

Erica Baldwin is talking at the regular Monday morning meeting of the OCR. She has been quiet, listening to Marshall Jackson, the lead staffer on the HealthNet investigation update everyone on the progress of the HealthNet investigation. She is not prone to dramatics. But her announcement and the way she makes it grabs everyone's attention.

"This package came here about two weeks ago," she says, holding up a 9 - by i2-inch manila envelope. She pulls a sheaf of papers out of the envelope. "It came through our P.O. box for anonymous tips. I showed these to some of you when they came in. We knew they had something to do with HealthNet-an employee sent them to us. But we didn't know what they were. No identifying marks. Just some long columns of numbers and letters. I've stared at them for two weeks waiting for some clue to jump out at me. I now know what they are."

Erica pauses and takes a sip of coffee.

"These are the data from a set of clinical trials required by the FDA for any new pharmaceutical," Erica continues.

"How do you know?" someone asks.

"On a hunch, I sent them over to Levine at the FDA-we've talked to him before on clinical trials. He's been there foryears. He recognized them right away and paged me on Friday, while I was at the hearings on Capitol Hill. There's what's called an International Code of Harmonization, or ICH. All trial results have to conform, so they all look pretty much the same."

"So what do they tell us?" Marshall Jackson asks.

"That's where we need some luck. Levine tells me that we only have a partial set of results. Here, take a look."

Erica hands around copies of some of the pages.

"The far left column is a sub j ect number. They go up by ones. The first page we have starts with number 1583. That means we're missing the first 1 ,582 results plus all of the preceding material. The next sixty pages have the same layout. What we have is probably part of the appendix from a report. Unfortunately, we 're missing the summary charts at the end."

"So what do these pages tell us?" Marshall Jackson says.

"We don't know," Erica answers. "The presumption is that if someone wanted to destroy these records, then they're hiding something. But what?"

But there's not even a company name on these. How do we know they're from HealthNet?" a staffer asked.

"We don't. Levine will check that out for us. Some of the numbers at the top identify the company. Every test has to be registered with the FDA."

"So if we only have a piece of a piece of the report, have we learned anything?" Marshall Jackson asks.

"I think so," Erica says, a smile spreading across her face. She leans back in her chair with contentment. "I think I've figured it out."

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