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November 14, 2002

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
T-Gen Update:
A report on the first 100 days of the Genomics Consortium
ASU Professor Alberto Rios
Arizona State University Regents English professor Albert Rios discusses his nomination for one of the most distinguished book awards in the country.
In-Studio Guests:
Dr. Jeffrey Trent, President and Scientific Director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute;
Debra Roubik, Chief Economist and Founder of Visionecon and founder of Governing Star

>> Cary: Tonight on "Horizon," Arizona leaders fought hard for the genomics consortium. We'll hear from the leader of the consortium now called T-GEN about the organization's first 100 days.

>>> A local economist would like to teach lawmakers how to improve their law making skills.

>>> And we'll hear from an ASU English professor nominated for one of the most distinguished book awards in the country for his work entitled "the smallest muscle in the human body." Good evening, I'm Cary Pfeffer in for Michael Grant. It started as the genomics consortium. It's now evolved into T-GEN. By either name it's expected to have a big impact on Arizona's future. T-GEN will focus on curing disease through genetic research. Here to tell us more about the first 100 days of T-GEN is Dr. Jeffrey Trent, president and scientific director of T-GEN, or the translational genomics research institute. Dr. Trent, thank you very much for being here.

>> Jeffrey Trent: Delighted to be here. Thank you.

>> Cary: I guess the first order of business had to be an easier name.

>> Jeffrey Trent: Indeed. We're recognized that transal or even the pronunciation of genomics can sometimes be a tongue twister, but we hope ultimately that T-GEN would be something could that catch on.

>> Cary: Talk a little about the first 100 days, the idea that has become a measure, whether you're talking about the administration of a new president or a new institution in this case it's T-GEN, talk a little bit about what's been accomplished.

>> Jeffrey Trent: It's been a remarkable process the past year has. First stakeholders within the State of Arizona collectively to come together under the governor's leadership, Governor Hull's leadership with the task force they put together to put a place for a resource base to launch this initiative and then about again 100 days ago to be able to say that we'd put this stake in the ground, start this organization and move it forward, but like any start-up, remarkable number of tasks to bring something from an idea into reality.

>> Cary: At this point you don't even have physical facilities yet. You're still -- that's part of one of the things that has to be taken care of, right? You don't have a final home?

>> Jeffrey Trent: We don't have a final home. Actually the architectural process for the City of Phoenix happened today. Not familiar with how it came out, but we anticipate in about two years having a building in the central Phoenix area that will house the research and staff for this new institute. But we're not waiting for two years, thanks to Arizona public service, we were able to get administrative space and space for our computer-based scientists in the APS building downtown that overlooks the site that will ultimately house the researchers. And then banner healthcare has provided us laboratory based space here in Tempe actually where our researchers will begin in about two weeks to do laboratory based research. So we're clearly not waiting the two-year period. We'll be in separate locations but we will be unified shortly.

>> Cary: So there is basically some preliminary work on a research basis even being conducted at this point?

>> Jeffrey Trent: Absolutely. We're beginning to bring in the infrastructure we need to put together such an institute to be able to administer grants, to administer personnel, to bring in the scientific staff, some of our first scientists, including one of them with an appointment here as Arizona State University that was one of the leaders, a gentleman named Dr. Jeff Tuchman, a leader at the national institutes of health.

>> Cary: That's a coup to get somebody of that stature to come as part of what T-GEN is?

>>Jeffrey Trent: I would actually agree completely that someone like Jeff Tuchman is as an example who led one of the top ten sequencing centers in the United States probably would not have looked at Arizona as a logical home prior to the development type of genomics initiative. That's what the hope is, is to help bring some of the brain trust in genomics to Arizona.

>> Cary: We need to take one step back and that's because with every interview that you do, you really have to explain what it is that's happening here and let me sort of start down that road by saying the idea is to take what might be research that's happening separately in a lab and really bring it into the world of where it can help people day to day with their health concerns, correct?

>> Jeffrey Trent: There's no doubt. The excitement of this, the reason we're here s to try to affect human health period, and the excitement of moving from a research institution from the NIH, which is remarkable, to this is the opportunity to try to quickly bridge some of the discoveries in the areas of genomics --

>> Cary: What happens in the labs?

>> Jeffrey Trent: And bridge to that what happens at the bedside and so translational genomics is meant to be that bridge piece between the laboratory-based research and actually the bedside, but it works in both directions because we hope, of course, to take lessons from the bedside, actually using clinical samples, clinical materials, using patient-based studies, to be able to educate us in the lab as well.

>> Cary: Talk a little bit about the focus of some of those early studies because they're going to be things that hit home here in Arizona.

>> Jeffrey Trent: There's no doubt. One of the reasons that we're here, and it fits well with president Crow's recent discussions in regards to the new American university, is that we will have regional significance as one of the areas that will drive our research enterprise. An example, the first major research program we'll announce is in the area of melanoma research.

>> Cary: Skin cancer?

>> Jeffrey Trent: Skin cancer and the most deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma, has gone up over 400%, and Arizona is more than double the national average for this disease.

>> Cary: In the world I think we're second to Australia or something like that.

>> Jeffrey Trent: Exactly. Queensland, Australia, which is where several of the collaborators I work with and some of the studies on the genomics --

>> Cary: Right there.

>> Jeffrey Trent: We're right behind them. This is a remarkably troubling disease. It actually is responsible for more deaths of young women under the age of 30 than any other cancer next to leukemia. It's the cancer that has the highest loss of productive life because so many of the people die early from this of any cancer. And it has the highest rate of increase of any cancer in humankind except, unfortunately, lung cancer in women. So we're clearly going to focus on this. We think it's regionally significant. The area of diabetes research obviously is something that's paramount, that's critically important, and that has within the native American population a disproportionately increased incidence rate. Another area that the Flynn foundation supported a study, from the Patel institute, that we agree, because of the demographics of Arizona s important to consider, are some of the neurologic disorders, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. This is a place where that type of research should move forward and those will be the first three areas we'll attack.

>> Cary: Plenty of work to do.

>> Jeffrey Trent: Yes, sir.

>> Cary: Dr. Jeffrey Trent, we appreciate you being here. Best of luck. That's for sure.

>>> A local economist would like to help lawmakers see the forests and not just the trees when making laws. Mike Sauceda tells us more about her efforts.

>>Mike Sauceda: Locally econmist Debra Roubik has a dream. She would like to help lawmakers become better at the law making process. Her desire was born out of her work with legislators through her company, Visionecon, an economic consulting firm which specializes in analyzing legislative and governmental impacts on our economy.

>>Debra Roubik: Every year when I am at the Senate finance committee I sit there going, you know s it going to make a difference this year? I don't think so. The frustration level is just so amazing. So one day I just -- I grabbed a chair and I just sat down and I'm like so frustrated with all these studies that I've done and I remember someone at my church saying, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's what I've been doing. I have been studying and studying and studying and I just feel like something's wrong with my studies because they're not going into action.

>> Mike Sauceda: The action Roubik has decided to take is to create a two-day seminar for lawmakers called governing star to shake them out what has been termed a territorial mind set.

>> Debra Roubik: We need to educate our elected officials. They don't understand venture capital. They don't understand what their policies do to our jobs. They don't understand a lot of things. So governing star institute is going to be striving to give elect officials tools to deal with all these things. There's a disconnect between what voters want, what citizens want and what our government is doing.

>> Mike Sauceda: Law makers had complete the seminar will be able to use the governing star label when campaigning. A second division of governing star will deal with the possible future leaders of our state, teenagers. Roubik plans to start a center for teens. She met with several other groups to make sure they were not filling that role.

>> Debra Roubik: I got them all together and I said, what are you guys doing for teens? Do you have any facilities? Do you have special programs? And all of them were saying, not much. You know, they're focussing on youth. They're not focussing on the most tumultuous years of a person's life is their teenage years.

>> Mike Sauceda: Roubik says she won't start her venture until she reaches a goal of $85,000 in pledges to get her vision off the ground.

>> Cary: Here now to tell us more about governing star is Debra Roubik, chief economist and founder of Visionecon and founder of governing star. Debra, thanks very much for being here.

>> Debra Roubik: It's an honor.

>> Cary: Tell us a little about what you're hoping to get to, because it seems like you've spent enough time in of committees at the legislature, I covered state government for many years and I know that in someways just being there and seeing that process, there can be some frustrations.

>> Debra Roubik: Well, a lot of times a person enters the government sector with a virtuous heart or have a single issue they want to tackle, they know there is problems and they want to tackle those issues and a lot of times they don't have the tool set to deal with budgets or to deal with economic development issues or to deal with zoning. They don't understand everything, all the issues that they never -- that never even occurred to them when they ran for office. So what we're going to try to do is help those officials boost their caliber in terms of their performance by providing a curriculum that's based on generalities and technicalities more than they would get just from being at the legislature.

>> Cary: So the idea is in over a couple day period of time kind of give them a crash course on some of those things they are going to be facing when they're sitting in there looking at reams of paper and hearing hours of testimony?

>> Debra Roubik: Right. The first thing we're going to tackle, which is -- the curriculum is going to be based all on research done by Harvard professors or Wharton professors or books that are out there available to politicians that a lot of times they don't have time to read. So our job is going to be to provide them work sheets and cliff notes and rules of thump they can apply in their job every day, that they can use to determine whether a policy makes sense, whether it will work the way they intended it to work or whether it's something that they should just throw to the side and vote against it.

>> Cary: And the idea also, it seems, is to sort of move forward the process because so many times we see that law making process be dragged out because of misunderstandings, because of infighting, because of all those things. At least the hope is some of this could move it along.

>> Debra Roubik: That's our hope. Because what I've seen over all the studies, I have done so many studies for ADOT, I've worked for Maricopa County, I've worked for associations around the state like Arizona association of industries, I've worked for G tech, and we've got so many studies. We've intellectualized what we need to do and then it gets to the legislature and there's an impasse either because of misunderstanding, they don't understand the concepts of venture capital, for instance, or electric deregulation, or it's just because of the fact that we've got a mind-set in Arizona that -- it's called a territorial mind set that we need to work on individuals one by one to teach them that there is a big difference from the forest and the trees. And like you said, you know, during the lead-in, there's a big difference. We're trying to help them see the forest.

>> Cary: That's governing star. Quickly at the end I want to give you a chance to talk about another effort that you have that's aimed at teenagers as well.

>> Debra Roubik: Right. The all encompassing objective of governing star is to provide services that are currently not being provided in the government sector and governing star institute is one of those sectors that we believe there's a need for this in the public arena that's not being provided for now and there's other needs as well and governing star will be constantly evolving in terms of what is not being done in the government sector that should be done by government. So another thing that we've come up with is we did a study for Arizona Department of Transportation looking at the generations and the huge differences between the generations and all the cultural problems and differences in views that -- from between us and our teenagers, and so we decided to set up another division of governing star to work on setting up teen centers that help them, again, improve themselves, and it's going to be a place for them to come and have fun as well as learn life skills that they might not have learned at school.

>> Cary: And people might not necessarily readily understand the lawmaker and teenager connection, but actually there probably are some connections out there. Best of luck to you on both projects.

>> Debra Roubik: Thank you, I'm very excited.

>> Cary: We certainly wish you the best.

>>> Cary: An Arizona State University English professor will be travelling to New York City next week as a finalist for the national book awards. One of the most prestigious awards in American literature. He is English regents professor Alberto Rios who was born in Nogales, Arizona. Earlier I taped an interview with professor Rios. Here is that interview. First of all, professor Rios, congratulations.

>> Alberto Rios: Thank you.

>> Cary: The national book award for those who are unaware is an award that's on par with the Pulitzer, it would be the Pulitzer's less famous cousin, I guess. Talk a little about first of all getting that phone call.

>> Alberto Rios: Oh, that phone call was extraordinary. As you can imagine. They said, when I picked up the phone, sit down, this call is going to change your life. And each though it hasn't been announced yet, it already has. It's been pretty wonderful.

>> Cary: Talk a little about how that has happened, how it has changed your life.

>> Alberto Rios: There is a bothersome part of it there's media attention that wasn't there before and the kinds of things that we all imagine happen to people who get some notoriety. It's true, it starts to happen. And those are distractions, but in a little bit of time n a compressed time period, that's all right. I'm having fun with it.

>> Cary: You don't envision having a long extended time with it and wouldn't enjoy it if that were the case.

>> Alberto Rios: Can't imagine, no.

>> Cary: Talk a little about the book, the book is called "the smallest muscle in the human body." Is it some way different than your previous works? This is something you work on on a regular basis. Did you set out with a particular goal for this book?

>> Alberto Rios: I never start out that way. This is a book of poems and I have written in various genre and I think in all of my books, whether they look like prose or memoirs or whatever, they're all poems, but I don't know what they're going to be before I write them. In this particular book I wrote a great deal about growing up in Nogales. I grew up in Nogales, Arizona. And about childhood and events that made a difference to me. But that which I didn't recognize at the time. So the smallest muscle in the human body gave me a chance to remember things that I didn't know I had to remember.

>> Cary: We can't let any time go by without explaining what the smallest muscle in the human body is.

>> Alberto Rios: It's in the ear and it's its real function is to keep us from hearing ourselves eat. If we heard ourselves eat, we would be devastated by that sound. And it occurred to me, I wanted to say something about listening. We're so busy talking, all of us are talking all the time, that our true first language and I think it's the first language we all share s the language of listening. It's 50% of the deal and that's what I wanted to write about.

>> Cary: In putting something down, putting a work down in print, you can't know what's going to happen. Did you have a sense when you were putting this book together that you were really clicking, that this was going to turn out to be a book of renown?

>> Alberto Rios: No, I don't think anybody sets out thinking that.

>> Cary: We appreciate your honesty.

>> Alberto Rios: I think the delights were page, they were not projective. I didn't think ahead. But I had a lot of fun writing the book and I'm guessing, I'm hoping, that that shows through.

>> Cary: Talk a little bit about the process now. The national book award, the official announcement is made next week. Talk a little about the process because this is something akin to the run-up to the academy awards. You learned how long ago?

>> Alberto Rios: I learned about three or four weeks ago.

>> Cary: So you have a full month of this anticipation.

>> Alberto Rios: their idea is a generous one in that they want to have the world concentrate on the group, not just the winner, but if you're in the middle of that group, it's kind of nerve racking. So you've got a month of torture, really. But it's a good problem. I mean, I think it's all right.

>> Cary: So you'll head to New York.

>> Alberto Rios: Head to New York and they said on the phone, by the way, you will be coming to New York during the week of -- I got off the phone and thought, how did they know I didn't have something scheduled and then I laughed, no -- they can talk that way. But they have got us scheduled for readings. We're doing a big set of readings, book signings and a bunch of whole things, literary kind of of things in New York before the evening of the 20th where they'll have a big thousand-person kind of dinner in the middle of times square. Steve Martin is hosting it.

>> Cary: Another author.

>> Alberto Rios: He's quite a good writer and I have enjoyed his work for years. I am looking forward to meeting him. And they make the announcement the same way they do at the academy awards and they don't actually know who the winners are yet. They don't decide that.

>> Cary: That was amazing. We talked about that a little bit before the interview. The decision is made basically within hours of the award being -- the final awards being given.

>>Alberto Rios: Yes, it is. They send the committees out to secret places to have lunch and battle it out. So nobody knows, even as we speak.

>> Cary: But that's also part of the excitement.

>> Alberto Rios: Yes.

>> Cary: If I handed you the book, would there be maybe just a few words, something that you can flip to that you can read for us and also maybe chat a little about writ came from.

>> Yeah, it's out of the title poem, the smallest muscle, and I'll tell you when I wrote these few lines, thanks poem dedicated to my father who died during the time period I was writing these poems, and the poem is called "some extensions on the sovereignty of science," and there's one little section, just a few lines, and when I wrote it, I didn't set out to say this, and yet nothing has stayed with me more. "the reason you can't lose weight later on in life is simple enough. It's because of how so many people you know have died and that you carry a little of each of them with you."

>> Cary: That's a line that really came to you sort of as it was -- as it was unfolding before you?

>> Alberto Rios: It really did. I thought about it in terms of my father and beyond.

>> Cary: Right. People don't necessarily think of an urban area like Phoenix, Arizona, as a place that you're going to find inspiration. Talk a little about that.

>> Alberto Rios: That's exactly why this is where I want to be. I've always thought that my job is to go where I was best needed, and as an Arizonan, growing up in Nogales, Phoenix was the last place on earth I thought I would end up, and when I heard myself say that so many times and I at any time come to Phoenix but once in my childhood, I came to legend city and saw pat McMahon when he was hubcap and the wheels, when I heard my say Phoenix was the last place I Weaver come to for so many reasons, I knew that's where I needed to be. And inspiration is where you not simply find it but where you look for it, and I think there's some honest work in that, and it's also something I try to teach people to do as well.

>> Cary: The book is called "the smallest muscle in the human body." Professor Rios, again, congratulations.

>> Alberto Rios: Thank you very much.

>> Cary: If you would like to see a transcript of tonight's show or find out what's coming occupy "Horizon," please visit our website and you can get there by typing www.kaet.asu.edu and then when you get there, click on "Horizon" and follow the links. Tomorrow on "Horizon," join us for another edition of the Friday journalists roundtable. Three local reporters will gather around this very table to talk about governor in elect Janet Napolitano's preparations to take over as governor. They also discuss efforts by law makers to solve the state's current deficit. And I should mention that it will also be Keven Willey's final appearance here at the roundtable, and we certainly wish her the very, very best. Michael Grant will be back next week. I'm Cary Pfeffer. Thanks very much for watching.