ouston is home to the Texas Medical Center, one of the nation's most prestigious medical research and treatment complexes. Its forty-two member institutions treat 4.5 million patients annually and spend more than $550 million every year on research. Yet very little of this money ever goes to investigate the health effects of local exposures to toxics. "There isn't very much going on in Houston," admits John DiGiovanni, director of the Center for Research on Environmental Disease at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, a premier research institute.
More than two dozen medical specialists interviewed for this article agreed: The Texas Medical Center has taken a hands-off approach to community toxics exposure. This see-no-evil attitude stands in contrast to that of other medical research institutes around the country, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Columbia, all of which have undertaken significant research programs in the urban and toxics-exposed communities that surround them.
Asked why the Texas Medical Center doesn't do community-based toxics research, all DiGiovanni will say is: "That's a good question." But there are plenty of critics, including many who work in the medical center itself, who think they have a pretty good idea. One of the main reasons, they say, is that in Houston, petrochemicals still rule. Not only do the plants and their pollution dominate the physical landscape, but the influence of the oil and chemical industries permeates almost every political and economic institution in the city -- the Texas Medical Center very much included.
In this environment, delving too deeply into pollution issues can be bad for business. "You're not going to get too many investigators to risk both their jobs and their careers by doing anything along those lines," says Lovell Jones, a researcher at M.D. Anderson who also directs the federal Center for Research on Minority Health. "There are those who would love to do such [research], including some in industry. But they fear for their careers."
ust a few minutes' drive from downtown Houston, the Texas Medical Center rises like a city unto itself. One of the most lavish medical complexes in the world, the center's 675-acre campus is striking for its glass-walled skyscrapers and lushly landscaped grounds. Elegant wood paneling, plush elevators, and valet parking put the newest buildings on a par with Houston's toniest office properties. Methodist Hospital's vaulted main hall is bigger than the average auditorium. Marble lines the walls of some M.D. Anderson buildings, and a pianist serenades passersby in the main lobby at lunchtime.
The quality of the research done here -- principally at M.D. Anderson, the UT School of Public Health, Baylor College of Medicine, and the Texas A&M Institute of Biosciences and Technology -- lives up to the appearance of the place. Texas Monthly has called the Texas Medical Center "the largest and one of the most successful medical care and research facilities in the world." In 2000, U.S. News & World Report ranked M.D. Anderson as the number one cancer institute in the nation. "Cutting-edge research" is one of the center's proudest boasts.
As with so much else in Houston, the fingerprints of the oil industry are everywhere.
Houston's evolution from a cotton and cattle center to the oil capital of the Western world started in 1901, when the Spindletop gusher erupted outside the east Texas town of Beaumont. Spindletop was followed by many more, and by 1906, more than thirty oil companies were headquartered in Houston. With the oil boom came the oil barons: Eddy Scurlock, Robert Welch, Hugh Roy Cullen ("King of the Wildcatters"), and others. Joseph Cullinan's Texas Company eventually became Texaco. Walter Fondren and Ross Sterling founded the company now known as ExxonMobil.
The barons were generous, both in their hometown and throughout Texas. Cullen was instrumental in the birth of the University of Houston, the Houston Symphony, and other cultural fixtures. Welch's foundation has disbursed millions to local schools and universities. The first institutes of the Texas Medical Center were also built with oil money: Three buildings of the Methodist Hospital carry the Cullen name, and Eddy Scurlock is memorialized in Methodist's Scurlock Tower.
The next generation of oil magnates has carried on the tradition. "Go through the medical center and you see donated wings, donated equipment, underwritten facilities," says Pamela Berger, a former faculty member of the UT School of Public Health. "Those relationships are very pervasive." Baylor College of Medicine dedicated its new Shell Center for Gene Therapy last year. The graduate school of biomedical sciences at Baylor College of Medicine and the institute of biomedical sciences at Texas A&M are named in Albert Alkek's honor. In September, George Mitchell announced a gift of $20 million toward a biomedical research facility at M.D. Anderson. And the list goes on.
Direct personal connections between the oil companies and the medical institutes keep the money coming. Two retired Shell executives serve on Baylor's board of trustees. Oilman Jack Mayfield sits on the UT-Houston Development Endowment Board. Industry also contributes millions in research money to medical center institutions every year. Welch's foundation has poured money into institutes for chemical research, including $7.2 million in 1999 alone. The UT School of Public Health took in almost $4 million from various industry sources in fiscal year 2001.
Administrators at the medical center are happy to acknowledge their debt. "Our program depends in part on contributions from local industry," says UT's Chip Carson.
