Doctor Under Siege by Colleagues

Dr. William K. Summers, the Arcadia psychiatrist under fire from colleagues and federal regulators for his research on the experimental Alzheimer’s drug THA, also known as tacrine, was delivering a paper and slides at a scientific symposium recently when he flashed a cartoon on the overhead screen.

The cartoon, by Gary Larson, was a comment on Summers’ position. It showed a grizzled man in a rowboat, brandishing an oar and encircled by sharks. Just give yourself up quietly, the sharks were suggesting, and get the sordid business over with.

The audience of scientists took it in with stony silence.

“I thought it made some interesting data,” Summers remarked later with bemusement. Asked why his colleagues appeared not to have shared the joke, he said, “It’s not funny. Because it’s closer to reality than I’d like it to be.”

Summers characterizes himself as a man under siege, criticized by colleagues and regulators for, he says, being ahead of his time. He and his allies like to describe Summers as a victim of persecution by narrow-minded, turf-conscious academics and regulators.

One day recently, he said, he turned to the Bible for solace. He found himself reading the story of how Jesus healed a cripple. In the story, the man rose and carried his bed--and Jesus was faulted for making the man work on the Sabbath.

Jesus’ critics, Summers said, were “the equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration.”

Summers, 44, is a big, slightly rumpled man who indulges a dry, gallows humor. Colleagues describe him as bright, unorthodox and impatient with authority--someone who broke with the academic Establishment and set off on his own as an independent researcher.

Critics contend he broke with accepted scientific practice too. They say his research was sloppy and lacked the necessary rigor. Some suggest Summers should have been more circumspect in reporting preliminary results, given the desperation among Alzheimer’s patients and their relatives.

The THA battle has left Summers exhausted and financially drained. He has spent the last year defending his research to the FDA and his critics--the price of what Summers calls going against the herd: “You always find more grass--or hard desert.”