Tuesday, November 5,
2002.
The good
news: I am on vacation for two weeks!!
The bad news: I don't care because I am on vacation for two weeks!!
Next conference is on: April 1st, in San Diego.
It's Not Easy ... To
Be Her Oppa.
NONCOMMITTAL
THE KOMMANDANT (boss): "So you're going to the conference this Saturday, right?"
ME: "…Yeah, … I'll be there."
THE KOMMANDANT: "Great. Are you interested in running for the commi--"
ME: "NO."
THE KOMMANDANT: "-ttee again?"
(Hmm. I probably should have let him finish the word "committee" before answering his question.)
No more committees for me. I was really excited a while back in joining the first Michigan hospitalist committee. I thought it would be neat to get "involved" on the ground floor of a budding power organization for my profession. See how that part of the world works from the inside, I guess.
But sometime during the second meeting, in between the mahi dinner and tiramisu dessert, while watching Dr. Redface overbear and overbore us for an hour or two with his nebulous and impractical ideas of alpha-dog grandiosity (he wasn't even the group leader), as I swirled the ice cubes in my exquisite water goblet, I realized,
"I don't belong here."
Who am I kidding? I have nothing to contribute. No ideas of national interest for us. I don't even know what 90% of the things on this menu are. And if I have to waste another hour of my life listening to this redheaded blowhard wannabee-leader, I am seriously going to lobotomize him. With this water goblet.
But I did decide to go to the big meetings to lend my moral support. I took the tiramisu home for Amy too.
VERY BAVARIAN
Eighty miles later this past Saturday morning, I was on my way to the hospitalist conference in a place I have never been to, never wanted to go to, and never thought I had to go to. A place called Frankenmuth. I'm not kidding. Franken-fuckin'-stein-muth.
It's some sort of Bavarian themed touristy city in Michigan. I'm sure it's a great place but personally, I would rather be in the magazine section of Meijer's than some eclectic Michigan donut-crème-making fantasy villa.
I admit, I'm weird in the sense that I just don't care for travel. If it's not Corea, or Corea-town, I'd rather stay home. I have self-contained worlds (plural) in my own room.
The first thing I saw in Frankenmuth were cornfields, barns, and "live game" restaurants. I kept my eye out for UFOs and low-flying cropdusters too. "Oh my God," I thought, "I was wrong. There IS a Hell." (Actually there really is a Hell, Michigan).
Then I entered Little Bavaria itself. The German Christmas decorations actually fit quite well with the K-pop dance music shaking the little Pucca doll in my Hyundai Tiburon. Fin.K.L is just naturally Christmassy.
The invite said the meeting was at "The Bavarian Inn." Looking around, just about every sign and locale started with "Bavarian" though. The word "Bavarian" showed up on more signs than the word "Corean" shows up in this journal. Cultural showboats, how dare them.
I stopped off at the biggest Bavarian inn I could find. It even had a young pretty lass in one of those St. Pauli Girl dresses. She was whisked away though, and replaced with a German wrestler of a grandmother in the same kind of dress. Talk about fetish aversion therapy.
She abruptly directed me over to a wooden bridge toward the Bavarian Inn LODGE. I was expecting gingerbread signs and perhaps a guide in a red riding hood, but I managed.
What monsters would await me in Little Bavaria, I would soon find out. Vampires? Doctor Frankenstein's abomination? Werewolves? Oh my.
... God.
MAN MADE MONSTERS
"Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration ... concealed the door to a hidden chemical laboratory...." (Regarding the Japanese bioterrorist cult of Asahara)
The other physicians were still networking and talking when I arrived. (An hour and a half and three minutes late. The extra three minutes were because I had to check out their ghetto little arcade room. Give me a break -- I'm half-Corean.)
Despite being an "attending" physician, I'm still a bit intimidated by these doctor conferences. I always have this feeling that these people are way smarter than I am, lead really important doctorly lives, discuss medical articles over dinner, golf on Saturdays, network with the big shots, are part of ultra-secret omni-organizations, etc.
There's actually a word for turning biological agents into bioterrorism weapons … "weaponize." The first speaker used that word a lot.
She had worked with local biowarfare defense groups. She also worked with Russian scientists who defected and spilled secrets about the world's once largest bioterrorism program, in former USSR.
"The more I talk to him (The Russian Defector), the more he scares me," she said, and she was in charge of the local biodefense program.
(I did NOT draw this, by the way.)... Chimera virus hybrids made of small pox AND Ebola, resistant to all vaccines of course. For those times when spontaneous hemorrhagic death just isn't enough.
... Contagious "prions" (infective proteins smaller than viruses ... with neither DNA nor RNA) with rapid and lethal effects. Like Mad Cow Disease, minus the cows.
... How a gram of an easily obtainable substance and a single-engine airplane could take out an entire city.
There were dozens more of these "weaponized" microbial agents. When the USSR "broke up," it is thought these strains went to the highest bidder.
She talked about other "failed" bioterrorism attempts, like the cult led by Shoko Asahara in Japan who Saran gassed the subway. Their previous dozens of attempts all failed so miserably though, you'd think they were the inspiration for the bad guys in Home Alone. For instance, once they tried sprinkling Anthrax from the top of a building, on a sunny day. The sunlight inactivated the anthrax before it hit the ground.
She talked about how the CIA had been trying to poison Saddam Hussein with botulism toxin for years. Sneaking it into his food, drinks, and even his scuba gear once. But he didn't like the color of the scuba suit, so that didn't work. Those poisoned fruits did wonders for that nasty crow's feet he had though.
(Possible James Bond movie titles in the works:
DR. NO-MORE-FROWN-LINES,
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET ANTI-AGING FORMULA SERVICE,
FROM WASHINGTON WITH BOTOX,
FOR YOUR DROOPY EYES ONLY,
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME MORE AFTER I LOST ALL FACIAL CONTROL,
LIVE AND LET'S JUST SIGN THE CONSENT,
BOTOXOPUSSY,
DYSTONIA-EYE,
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH ... YOU HAVE TO BE WRINKLE-FREE TOO)
Most of the world's bioterrorism agents were either bought from Russia or stolen from the United States. Clinton was very big on eliminating our biowarfare programs though. But not before the CIA took the top twenty most lethal strains for themselves. And where did that anthrax come from, in the first place? Hint: After much investigation, the U.S. government does not think it came from anywhere over there. They don't want to talk about it.
Neither post-Cold War superpower started the fire. Biological warfare dates all the way back to the Medieval ages, when plague victims (dead or alive) were literally catapulted into walled cities during sieges.
The greatest concern is smallpox now. She showed us pictures of victims of smallpox. Covered in pustules and blisters as if someone poured puffy rice over their faces and bodies. The vaccine we got as a child does not give any of us immunity to it now. Smallpox is supposed to be dead, but you know people are always trying to resurrect dead gods.
The speaker told us that the Russian Defector also said Iran and Iraq were frequent customers of Russia's germ store as well.
Overall, the U.S. is frantically scrambling to put emergency smallpox measures into place, because we're not ready yet. Each state district is working on emergency counter measures in case of biological attack. The scenarios are meticulous, right down to "so where do we put all the contagious dead bodies?"
"Luckily, that town had a skating rink," she smiled morbidly.
As I left for lecture break, a couple of little kids were running down the Bavarian decorated hall ahead of their mother. Frankenmuth tourists. The charm of this quaint little celebration of German heritage was a little more obvious to me then. But still, it wouldn't exactly kill them to get a bulgogi burger joint around here.I left the conference after lunch. Missing out on the committee voting.
On the way home back to my little boy and Amy, I kept an eye out for low-flying cropduster planes again. Only for different reasons this time.
