The Kentucky Author Forum has a long and deserved reputation for bringing together subjects and interviewers to talk about relevant, timely issues.
The series' latest season began last night at the Kentucky Center with two marquee names—Dr. Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate who ran on a platform that spotlighted health care reform, and Dr. Harold Varmus, the former director of the National Institutes of Health and a Nobel Prize winner in medicine.
Dean, whose Prescription for Real HealthCare Reform was reviewed in the Courier two weeks ago, interviewed Varmus, whose The Art and Politics of Science was reviewed on the same page. Dean wanted to talk about Varmus' past as an English major in college, then about his views on the state of the Science in the world.
Dean asked about stem cell research and cloning and what it's like to give hat-in-hand testimony before a congressional committee (as Varmus had to do after an internal screw-up at the NIH) with a Nobel Prize to your name.
He wanted to talk about how cells divide to reproduce and how cells can be coaxed to develop a certain way in the body and if cancer is rooted in genetic code. Dean asked why interest in science is so low when, in his words, it “has always been the way of opening new worlds.”
He asked about how to give a Nobel Acceptance speech (Varmus recited part of Beowulf at his).
But he didn't once ask him about health care reform. In fact, it only came up once in the whole hour-plus, when Varmus tacked on a blurb about universal coverage to an answer of his; “Soon everyone will have health care,” he said. The remark drew applause, and Dean said, “Well, that one's next,” seeming to indicate he'd bring up the issue. But he never did.
I don't think I was the only person there wondering when Dean would raise the subject. It didn't take long—three questions from the audience—for health care reform to be asked about in the Q&A session that followed the taping (from which Dean had to excuse himself for a meeting; he wasn't in the room for the health care question).
Maybe he's tired of talking about it. Maybe he felt like he had given the Louisville area enough health care talking points during his chat with the Courier's editorial board yesterday. Maybe he didn't want to date the show (it's airing at the end of December on KET). Regardless of why, Dean did the live audience last night and the TV audiences of the future a disservice in not teasing the subject out.
The Kentucky Author Forum has a long and deserved reputation for bringing together subjects and interviewers to talk about relevant, timely issues.
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John LaFollette