Twenty miles outside Geneva, beneath the towering magnificence of a mountain called the Rock of Hell, is a long, pleasant road that runs past the Brocher mansion. Set in acres of gentle lawns and specimen trees, on the edge of the medieval village of Hermance, it is a blissful place. My friend Dominic Nutt and I have been trying to break in for years.
La Fondation Brocher is the world’s leading institute for research into “the ethical, social and legal implications of new medical developments”. It’s the bioethics equivalent of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton: only the admin staff and the cleaners are permanently employed here; academic fellowships last a maximum of four months. Billions of pounds’ worth of pharmaceuticals are influenced by the scholarly judgments that emerge from this idyllic lakeside building. Dom and I want to force entry because we’re advocates for patients, and we think we’ve solved a small corner of a major problem that’s holding back the discovery of new medicines. The trouble is, neither of us has a PhD – and in the rarefied world of academic medical ethics, that matters.
