THE research institute formerly known as the National Institute of Dental
Research has fallen foul of the law of unintended consequences.
For years, NIDR officials felt they were in the same plight as comedian
Rodney Dangerfield鈥攖hey didn鈥檛 get any respect. They worried that most
people would think that dentistry somehow didn鈥檛 belong in the big leagues of
the National Institutes of Health, alongside agencies such as the National
Cancer Institute or the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. So NIDR
officials came up with a plan. Let鈥檚 change our name to the National Institute
of Dental and Craniofacial Research. That better reflects what we do, they
reasoned. And besides, it sounds lots more impressive.
So they started a campaign to get the name changed. To do that required an
act of Congress, and Congress hasn鈥檛 shown much inclination to pass laws
changing the names of NIH institutes. So instead, NIDR officials managed to get
the name change written into the bill appropriating money to the NIH. Such
鈥減olicy鈥� changes don鈥檛 belong in spending bills, but desperate times call for
desperate measures. The House of Representatives and the Senate passed the
spending legislation, the President signed it, and now the NIDR has a new
name.
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And a new set of headaches. In addition to having to print new stationary,
new signs, new business cards and new telephone directories, NIDCR officials
have found the old name turns up on the Internet a lot. A whole lot. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like
the year 2000 thing in a way,鈥� says one institute official. They鈥檝e had to
revise Web entries and links all over the place. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an unanticipated pain for
us to do that stuff.鈥� But then, given the law of unintended consequences, what
else would you expect?
PRESIDENTS always like to compare themselves to their predecessors. Not just
any predecessor, mind you鈥攜ou don鈥檛 gain much from standing on the
shoulders of Herbert Hoover (in office when the stock market crashed in 1929) or
William Henry Harrison (who caught pneumonia at his inauguration and died four
months later). It鈥檚 the greats such as Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson who,
like seminal scientific papers, get quoted again and again.
Bill Clinton has been known to quote Jefferson鈥攁s worthy a claimant to
the title 鈥渇ather of our country鈥� as any American who ever lived. Clinton won鈥檛
be doing that for a while, though . . . at least not in public speeches. In a
scientific tour de force, geneticists have located a genetic sequence
peculiar to the Jefferson lineage and traced it in the descendants of one of
Jefferson鈥檚 slaves, Sally Hemings (Forum, 21 November, p 60). The 200-year-old
rumour, often rubbished by historians, had been proven: Jefferson fathered at
least one illegitimate child with his slave.
The parallel sexual misadventures of the two presidents has not gone
unnoticed in Washington. Yet, given Clinton鈥檚 resurgence in public opinion
polls, one wonders whether the Jefferson revelation didn鈥檛 actually help
Clinton. His defenders can now say: hey, he鈥檚 no worse than the founder of
American democracy . . . and Monica Lewinsky, unlike Sally Hemings, at least had
the power to say no. As for Jefferson, it sets the mind to wondering whether the
man who wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence would have been
as adept as Clinton was under oath in arguing that what he and Lewinsky did was
not technically 鈥渟exual relations鈥�. Perhaps it鈥檚 not historians who should be
interpreting presidential history, but Freudians.
BY means of our century鈥檚 finest inventions鈥攖ape recorders and the
electronic computer鈥攚e have been able to read and even listen to private
conversations by and about two of the country鈥檚 most powerful men. What a
revelation it has been! Guess who is being discussed in the first
transcript.
鈥淚 never even came close to sleeping with him.鈥�
鈥淲hy? Because you were standing up?鈥�
鈥淲ell, you know, sex, Linda. We didn鈥檛 have sex.鈥�
鈥淲ell what do you call it?鈥�
鈥淲e fooled around. Sex is having intercourse.鈥�
鈥淵ou鈥檝e been around him too long. That鈥檚 his rationale.鈥�
鈥淣uh-uh. That鈥檚 my鈥攖hen I鈥檝e had sex with a lot more people.鈥�
And who鈥檚 talking in these electronic mail transcripts:
- 鈥淗ow do we wrest control of Java away from Sun? How do we turn Java into
just the latest best way to write Windows applications?鈥� - 鈥淒o we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine
厂耻苍?鈥�
For Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, the benefits of electronic technology may no
longer seem so clear.