I was all set to write about disaster response and the ways we should prepare for cataclysms both natural and manmade, but another subject came up, so I have to cut that sermon-ette down to a single piece of advice: the more time you spend blaming other people for not helping you, the less time you have to help yourself.

What subject could possibly have been more important to me than the opportunity to pontificate about the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast and the good and the bad of our responses to them? Longtime readers of this space know about my unhealthy preoccupation with sports, thanks to my repeated attempts at bridging the gap between that world and the Pharma business. Now my favorite pro sport has run headlong into my pro life as we finally achieve the intersection of biomarkers and basketball!

Last March, late in the season, Chicago Bulls center Eddy Curry experienced heart arrhythmia before a game. Doctors began testing him, and he was benched for the rest of the season and the playoffs. The tests were inconclusive, and Curry planned to come back this season, angling for a long-term contract before training camp opened. However, the NBA’s insurance company considered him too much of a risk and refused to cover any contract for Curry.

Eventually, at the behest of a top cardiologist, the Bulls asked Curry to take a DNA test to see if he was predisposed to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition. This way, the team would know if there was a significant risk both to their investment in Curry (which would’ve added up to around $70 million, given the market for young centers) and to Curry’s investment in the first 22 years of his life. Curry refused to take the test, citing medical privacy issues and advice from his own cardiologist. The NBA commissioner backed up the Bulls’ request for the DNA test, but the players’ association supported Curry, evidently under the logic that the right to die on the basketball court is protected by the union. Or at least that it should be negotiated.

The two parties were stuck at an impasse right up until the deadline for offering Curry a one-year deal was about the expire. At that point, the Bulls gave up and traded Curry to New York, where he’s been offered a long-term deal and will undergo standard medical tests, but not the DNA exam for the biomarker that Dr. Maron was concerned with. At the press conference to announce the trade, Bulls general manager John Paxson revealed that if Curry “failed” the DNA test, the Bulls had agreed to pay him $400,000 annually for the next 50 years. It wasn’t real-world, lump-sum dollars, but it was $20 million to carry him into his 70s.

So now he can go to New York, play center for the Knicks, and pray that his cardiologist was right. After all, Curry’s people argued, there’s no assurance, even if he does possess that biomarker, that he’ll have a fatal heart attack during the years of his

contract. Alan Milstein, a lawyer representing Curry, remarked, “If employers could give employees DNA tests, then they could find out if there’s a propensity for illnesses like cancer, heart disease or alcoholism. They will make personnel decisions based on DNA testing.”

Now, I’m all for privacy rights-tattered though they may be-and I don’t want to see an age where biomarkers for long-term diseases are used by employers to discriminate. That said, I also watched the 1993 playoff game in which 27-year-old Celtics forward Reggie Lewis keeled over from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (he survived that episode, but died a few months later when trying to come back to the Celtics). Eddy Curry wasn’t asking for a $7.50/hour job greeting people at Wal-Mart. He was trying to get guarantees of $70 million or so for demanding physical activity, but was unwilling to assure his employer that he’d be medically fit to, um, survive the contract, much less perform at a high level during its span. Trying to make this kid-who jumped straight to the pros from high school-into a poster boy for genetic discrimination is a near-criminal act.

Gil Roth
Editor
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