He chuckled. “What would you think of having a dedicated scanner at the Body Farm?”
“I’d think it was swell. But those things cost serious money—hundreds of thousands of dollars, even used ones. Our entire annual budget for the Body Farm is less than ten thousand, and we’re looking at budget cuts that might whittle it down even below that.”
“Terrible. A one-of-a-kind, world-renowned research facility, and you’re running it on a financial shoestring. Would you be interested in some research funding? A collaborative project involving the Body Farm, the university’s Biomedical Engineering Department, and OrthoMedica?”
I felt the beginnings of a smile tugging at my face. “Sounds like you have an idea. Tell me more.”
“I need data,” he said. “I need to know more about the human body, and I think you can help me learn. OrthoMedica will manufacture and sell sixty thousand hip implants and two hundred thousand knee replacements this year. We’re the nation’s second-largest source of artificial joints and orthopedic prosthetics. We want to be the biggest, and we want to be the best—the gold standard. To achieve that, we’re targeting breakthroughs in two critical areas. One is materials research. Artificial joints have to be incredibly tough and durable, and they have to survive in a surprisingly corrosive environment. We’re conducting or sponsoring dozens of projects geared toward creating better alloys, plastics, and ceramics for joint replacements and prosthetics.”
“What’s the other area?”
“Biomechanical engineering. Developing ways to customize every patient’s new hip or knee or shoulder implant for a perfect fit. Engineering computer-controlled surgical systems that can install those implants with absolute precision, within a tolerance of a ten-thousandth of an inch. Human surgeons can be remarkably gifted, but there’s simply too much slop, not enough precision, in orthopedic surgery today. Hell, if we put together airplanes with as much variation as we put in artificial joints, the planes would fall out of the sky.” He chuckled—a practiced chuckle, it sounded like, the sort you’d script into a briefing for investors or the board of directors. “What I’m trying to say, not very eloquently, is that if we had more data on the muscular and skeletal systems—if we had access to a shared database of cadaver scans, for instance—we could design better artificial joints, better surgical tools, and a host of other products. We could help a million patients a year achieve better surgical outcomes and better quality of life.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “How do you envision this collaboration with UT?”
“I’m just thinking out loud here, but my thought is that OrthoMedica could provide a scanner and a technician to run it. We might even be able to underwrite some research projects in anthropology and in biomedical engineering.”
I thought of our shoestring budget and of the administrative scissors poised to cut it. I thought of Miranda and the possibility of her losing her assistantship. “Where do I sign,” I said, “and when do the scanner and the check arrive?”
He laughed. “How about we start with a memorandum of understanding next week—a draft, mind you, for the university’s lawyers to look over. I’d be glad to hand-deliver it, if you’ve got the time and the willingness to show me around the Body Farm.”
A week seemed head-spinningly fast; the wheels of progress evidently spun far more swiftly in the world of multibillion-dollar biomedical conglomerates than in the dusty corridors of the ivory tower. I extended my hand. “As we say in the South, y’all come see us.”
CHAPTER 6