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Dr. Morgan is on the phone to a colleague, discussing a fellow
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I know he feels he deserved the Nobel., Stan. But frankly he might be glad he didn’t get it, at least, not yet. I know from experience, Stan. They hang the damn thing around your neck and you become a poster boy for the Nobel Prize. From then on, you’re known as a Noble Laureate, instead of for the work you did that earned it. I’ve been fighting the battle since the morning I heard I won it... Well , remind him they didn’t give it to Ray Damadian for the MRI , either. Do you know the whole story?... Well, the man had the original concept for a nuclear magnetic resonance body scanner and did the landmark experiments with mouse tumors that demonstrated the signals from cancer tissue and healthy tissue are different and the signals from different types of normal tissue differ, too. He went on to achieve the first magnetic resonance scan of a human body and the first scan of a human body with cancer.... Yeah, all that. Then a couple of NMR chemists look at his research, apply the gradient, in use by them since way back in the 50’s, to the signals from tissue and improve the image. They get the Nobel Prize, while our physician and friend, Raymond, is intentionally excluded. Why? I dread to think it’s because he’s an evangelical Christian.... Unfortunately, there’s no other credible explanation. But what the hell does having stupid ideas in one area have to do with science -- and inventing a medical device that benefits thousands of people around the world every day? Once that shameful wrong happened, I’ve seen the toll. I can’t tell you how many physicians doing medical research or med students considering going into it have been discouraged by that asinine decision.
[Bret enters. Dr. Morgan looks at his watch. Waves him in and tells him to have a seat.]
Let me know if you want to get together with him and see if can cheer him up. We wouldn’t want him to go off the deep end like Oldendorf,... Well, unlike Raymond, he just couldn’t take it. Imagine if you were the physician who invented the CT scanner and you had to stand by and see other people win it whose contributions can’t compare with yours.... OK. Bye now.
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