On March 2, I reported to Suffolk County Superior Court for jury duty, certain that I’d be let go after my day of service or excused, just like every other time. So it was a bit of a shock to find myself seated, by the end of the day, as Juror No. 14 on a medical malpractice trial that, according to the judge’s prediction, would take until March 23. (She was exactly right, as it turned out.)

I won’t dwell here on the irony of being forced to spend most of Mass Mobile Month immobile in the jury box, separated from my laptop and unable to use my cell phone. Being part of the 14-member jury on a three-week civil trial was no more of a hardship for me than it was for the other jurors, so I’m not going to complain. But I do want to share a few observations from the experience—some encouraging, some not. I’ll try to restrict myself mainly to talking about subjects related to technology and medicine, which were the big themes in the case.

The trial, in a nutshell, was about a health emergency that went undiagnosed far too long. The plaintiffs were an elderly church pastor from a Boston suburb and his wife. (I’m not going to use their names.) The pastor had a history of back trouble, but nothing incapacitating. The weekend before Thanksgiving in 2003, he began to experience unbearable back pain, and was taken to the ER of a local hospital (which I also will not name—if you want to go dig up the details, I’m sure there are public records).

Doctors there quickly determined that the pastor had a streptococcal infection in his bloodstream and started him on the appropriate antibiotics. They began a series of tests intended to locate the source of the infection and the pain. But the agony continued, and it wasn’t until five days later, after the pastor had been transferred to a prominent Boston hospital, that its true source was discovered.

An imaging study showed that the infection had taken root in the pastor’s spine in the form of a large epidural abscess, a pocket of pus inside the spinal canal between the bone and the dura, the outer lining of the spinal cord. As soon as the abscess was detected, surgeons operated to drain the pus. But by then it was too late. The abscess had pinched off the pastor’s spinal cord, causing permanent nerve damage. The pastor, now 75 years old, can’t walk on his own and suffers from a range of other disabilities.

The plaintiffs’ attorney was an outstanding Boston trial lawyer and medical malpractice specialist named Gregg Pasquale, of Keches Law Group. I’ve since learned that in the 1980s Pasquale was an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, where he prosecuted murder cases. His fiery zeal was evident every day in our courtroom. Pasquale argued that the defendants in the case—a radiologist from the suburban hospital and two doctors from the Boston hospital—should have done more to diagnose the pastor’s problem.

One of the many difficulties in the pastor’s case was that the abscess didn’t appear on the standard MRI exam ordered by the ER doctor at the suburban hospital. But Pasquale argued that … Next Page »

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Paul Allen gave researchers a map of the mouse brain first, and now comes the spinal cord. The Allen Institute for Brain Science, a Seattle-based nonprofit backed by the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, said today it is releasing a cellular map on its website that shows 2,000 genes at work in the mouse spinal cord for the first time.

The full map, of an estimated 20,000 genes, won’t be available to researchers until year’s end, says Allan Jones, the Allen Institute’s chief scientific officer. So, why exactly is it making such a big deal with a press conference on Capitol Hill with Washington state’s senior U.S. Senator, Patty Murray?

Sometimes innovation needs strong financial partnerships to thrive, even when one of the world’s richest men is involved—that’s why.

Standing alongside Murray, who has an interest in veteran’s issues, will be representatives from the Paralyzed Veterans of America and the ALS Association, who all want to see progress in spinal cord research, and are contributing to it. Along with other groups who want the groundbreaking tool to become a reality—including Wyeth Research, Pemco Insurance, and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society–have agreed to kick in about $600,000 of the estimated $2.3 million cost of the project, Jones says.

It’s the first time the Allen Institute has brought such a group together to fund a project, and a model that the Institute hopes to duplicate in the future, to become like other research institutions that depend on a mix of philanthropy, government grants, and corporate sponsorship to sustain their work. The message: Paul Allen isn’t going into poverty anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean he should have to write all the checks himself either.

“If you look at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which is affiliated Weill Cornell Medical College, Sandy Weill gave them a mountain of money,” says Elaine Jones, the Allen Institute’s chief operating officer. “Did they still go out and fund-raise for more? You bet. No one person can do it all. If these projects are useful, others really should step up to the plate.”

Allen committed $100 million of his fortune to start the Institute in 2003, and personally anted up for the full $41 million cost to start up the Institute and put together the 3-D cellular map of the mouse brain by 2006. Yet the Institute, with 120 employees along the ship canal in Fremont, has made it clear that it needs other sustainable sources of cash to accomplish its future goals. That includes a cellular map of the human brain that’s estimated to cost $55 million over four years. Another project moving in parallel will provide cellular snapshots of mouse brains at various stages of development. That’s estimated to run two years and cost $15 million.

No one can say for sure what discoveries will come from assembling a genetic map of the spinal cord, although at least a few researchers are eager to get their hands on the full data set. “We know very little about the genes that control different functions in the spinal cord,” said Jane Roskums, a spinal cord researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, in a statement. “This atlas will help researchers advance their work in quantum leaps.”

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