Col.
Henry Fein '71, M.D., who is involved in the construction of a
$200 million Department of Defense biomedical facility in
Silver Spring, Md., recently returned to campus to
deliver a lecture on “Keeping the Bad Bugs at Bay:
How to Live and Work in a 21st Century Biomedical
Laboratory.” During two days of conversation, his
comments ranged from how he got interested in science to
biological warfare.
The
road to research
Henry Fein became
interested in science sometime in high school — after
his parents discouraged him from his dream of becoming a
jet pilot, and he discovered that he needed glasses. His
science classes had always interested him and he had
great admiration for his “wonderful old-fashioned
family doctor.” By the time he was looking at
colleges, he knew that he wanted to study medicine.
The summer after his
junior year of high school, Fein attended a National
Science Foundation summer course and met the chairman of
Union's chemistry department, Professor George Reed.
Later, after Fein's campus admissions interview, Reed
spent the afternoon taking Fein to every laboratory.
“He impressed me immensely with what a wonderful,
enthusiastic, friendly guy he was,” Fein says.
“I was sold; I knew that I wanted to come to
Union.”
Fein entered medical
school at Columbia University immediately after
graduation and became interested in endocrinology, again
influenced by a faculty mentor.
“I hadn't given
research any thought,” Fein says. “I had done a
small amount of research at Union that was not very
successful.” (In the midst of his senior thesis, he
had to move his equipment from Butterfield Hall to the
new Science and Engineering Center, which affected his
data.)
He decided to work in his
professor's endocrinology lab, loved it, and went on to
the National Institutes of Health in endocrinology. From
there he joined the clinical staff in Internal Medicine
and Endocrinology/Metabolism at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center, accepting a commission with the U.S. Army Medical
Corps.
At
Walter Reed
Established in 1893, the
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research employs scientists
who investigate and prepare treatment for infectious
diseases and, in recent years, the cousins of infectious
diseases — biological warfare (Fein explains that
biological warfare is merely infectious diseases
introduced to an environment through unnatural means).
Dedicated to keeping
soldiers safe, scientists at Walter Reed investigate
medical hardships that soldiers might encounter
throughout the world, including infectious disease,
stress, and combat and training injuries. Approximately
eighty percent of the scientists at Walter Reed
investigate infectious diseases, according to Fein,
because they present the greatest threat to the lives of
U.S. soldiers. “For example, there were more U.S.
casualties from malaria than from Japanese bullets on
Guadalcanal.”
One of the great
advantages of Walter Reed, Fein says, is the fact that
scientists there can carry an idea from its initial
phases to product development. “We have a very
specific mission, which is to identify hazards to the
training and deployment of young men and women in the
world,” he says. “Our people and our
institution have the ability and the interest in running
the entire gamut from when the call comes in of an
outbreak of sickness anywhere in the world to
epidemiologists collecting samples, doing research, and
finding therapies.
“The Army is doing
this work to keep soldiers safe, but really, the end
result of much of this is that the research benefits
everyone,” Fein says. “Infectious diseases are
out there, and we still have major work to do in a number
of areas. In addition, our society, with its incredible
mobility, exposes us to things we would otherwise never
encounter.”
Currently located in a
building built for the Army Medical School between 1928
and 1931 and renovated to a laboratory by the mid-1950s,
the Walter Reed Institute has long been in need of new
facilities, Fein says. “In order to do biomedicine,
you have to do it right,” he says. “We are
barely able to do it right.” The old building, while
generally safe, has no central air conditioning and is
deficient in a number other ways, he says. “We have
an incredibly dedicated and hardworking staff of
scientists and technicians who struggle with the building
and its systems everyday.”
Understandably, the
scientists are delighted with the prospect of a new
building, but getting the funding for the new building
has not been easy, Fein says. In this time of budget
constraints, Department of Defense officials have
consistently asked whether the Army needs to be doing
biomedical research. The fact that the new building is
well underway and expected to be completed in the winter
of 1999 indicates that the answer is yes. But why?
The
spector of biological warfare
Fein says that he believes
the increase in the threat of biological warfare in the
last several years makes the research at Walter Reed more
important than ever.
He quickly points out that
biological warfare is not new. Its first use in North
America occurred during the French and Indian War when
Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the British forces,
gave to the native population blankets that had been used
by people suffering from smallpox. The tactic was
devastating.
“It is hard to
develop nuclear weapons,” Fein says. “It takes
time, a lot of experience, and it is difficult to hide.
Virtually none of those things occur with biological
warfare. Whether Saddam Hussein was making powdered milk
during the Gulf War, as he claims, or biological weapons,
as the American military claims, points out the need for
better methods of monitoring. There is good evidence that
many countries around the world — including Libya and a
number of countries near the Persian Gulf — have active
biological warfare programs.
Biological agents are
simple to make, and Fein says that they require the same
tools as those used in making beer (in Japan, the
biotechnology industry began as an offshoot of the
brewery industry). “A brewery making beer is more
than big enough to make anthrax or botulism or a whole
bunch of other things, if you have the right
equipment,” he says. “And that's the
frightening thing, because every country in the world
makes beer.”
Still, Fein seems to
suggest that the threat of biological warfare is perhaps
not as great as the media have suggested. He says the
greatest threat to U.S. soldiers is naturally-infectious
diseases, especially malaria and diarrheal diseases such
as cholera. When asked about the chances of “bad
guys” dropping an unknown agent, he says that the
most likely agents are botulism and anthrax, and for both
there are “reasonably effective” vaccines.
Involved
from the beginning
Planning a $200 million
laboratory building and the transport of its contents —
scientists (from Walter Reed and its sister lab, the
Naval Medical Research Institute), their equipment, and
thousands of animals for research — is quite a stretch
from endocrinology, and Fein says that he just stumbled
into his new role at Walter Reed.
After building an addition
to his house in the early 1990s, Fein became interested
in architecture and construction. He had just finished a
short tour in the Administrative Liaison Office for
Medical Research Command at the Pentagon when he heard
rumblings of plans for a new building and volunteered to
be a member of the oversight committee. Then chief of the
Clinical Physiology Department, his volunteer committee
work soon was transformed into a part-time, and then a
full-time, position. In 1995, he finally gave up his
research as the administrative duties of his new position
demanded all of his time.
Fein finds his new
position challenging and fulfilling. “I think that
what I like best is not just the challenge but the whole
process of this huge, immensely complicated undertaking
that I have now seen from the glimmer in someone's eye to
reality,” he says. And it has been a lengthy
undertaking; Fein predicts that by the time the project
is completed, he will have spent ten years working on it.
Clearly, those ten years
will be exciting ones for Fein. Though he says that he
misses his research, he loves what he is doing now, and
perhaps will continue in some administrative role for the
Army or some other organization when the new Walter Reed
Army Institute of Research is finished. For now, he is
concentrating on answering the hundreds of questions a
day he faces from scientists, architects, builders,
technicians, and military officials.