McSweegan and the Barry Goldwater Letter

"It was the first President Bush who once described anyone who exposed
intelligence assets as "the most insidious of traitors."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/25/rove.problem.tm.tm/

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"Dr. Edward McSweegan
Naval Medical Research Institute
Bethesda, Md. 20814
202-295-0328 (lab)
301-654-6614 (home)
August 13, 1986


Sen. Barry Goldwater
363 Russell Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Sen. Goldwater,

I am a Naval Research Council Fellow currently attached to the Naval
Medical Research Institute (NMRI) in Bethesda. I have been engaged in
post-doctoral research for this institute for the last 22 months. In
that time I have come to conclude that the Navy'[s in-house research
efforts are seriously misdirected, and that the funds consumed in these
efforts could be better utilized in other places. I decided,
therefore, to write to you about my observations and conclusions.

The Naval Medical Research Institute is engaged in a variety of
research programs. These include everything from "biotechnology"
and schistomiasis to diarrheal disease, malaria, and hyperbaric
physiology. Much of this work is basic science. This type of research
is essentially identical to that being done in any number of
universities, federal civilian institutes, and biotech companies. So,
in the face of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-cutting program, one
has to ask why it is that the Navy is engaged in attempting to
duplicate the research efforts of the private federal civilian sectors?

Nothing that is now being done at NMRI is not being done somewhere
else. For example, less than 5 miles from here is the sprawling Walter
Reed Army Medical Center. They are engaged in essentially the same
vaccine development, and malaria and diarrheal studies that we are
working on. (Interestingly the Army is funding most of the research
that we are doing.) Across the street from my office is NIH. NIH does
some of the most important AIDS research in the world. Yet, the Navy
has determined that it must have its own, independent AIDS research
program. This program will be at least 5 years behind the NIH effort,
and will serve only to send NMRI personnel and taxpayer money down a
road already well-travelled by researchers in Boston, New York, L.A.,
Paris, and Bethesda.

This is not to say that the Navy, and the rest of the DoD, do not have
legitimate interests in AIDS, or vaccines, or other biomedical
research. My concern is that they themselves do this type of work so
poorly, so redundantly, and so expensively.

The main reason for the poor research performance is undoubtedly due
to a lack of management. Let me give you some personal examples of an
institute in managerial decay. ........ (more)


......"I'm certain that the DoD would attempt to make a clear case for
its
continued in-house research programs. Yet, the defense department does
not feel the need to make its own fighter planes, or Christmas
fruitcakes,
or nerve gas, or acetylcholinesterase. Why then do they feel the need
to have
their own programs to study the mechanisms of campylobacter diarrhea,
or
lectin-ligand interactions, or the cloning of rickettsial surface
protein genes? [OspA] These are projects for university graduates, not
Navy and Army
lieutenants. If the DoD thinks that these are topics of military
importance they should be willing to fund the research in the form of
grants to universities, and contacts to businesses. The end result
will be a leaner, cheaper defense department and stronger universities
and biotechnical businesses. Everyone would benefit...."

.... (more)...


Sincerely,

Dr. Edward McSweegan


P.S. Copies of this letter have been sent to 20 other
senators and representatives. A list of recipients is
available upon request.
I apologise for the quality of the printer and the
paper, but it was all that I had available."
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