by Regina Nuzzo
Illustration by Tommy Moorman
Science Notes 2004
University of California, Santa Cruz
AT 7:45 ON A FRIDAY MORNING, four young doctors are pawing through a bag of bagels in a staff lounge at the Veterans Administration Hospital down the street from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. As on any typical workday, they are dressed in their blue hospital scrubs. They swap department gossip while they slurp coffee and juice.
But details suggest the hours ahead will not be routine. The physicians have switched off their pagers. The quiet lounge lies in the basement, far from the hospital bustle. And on the table sits a stack of papers to be signed, each labeled “Confidentiality Agreement.”
