Dr. Duane Gubler is director of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases. He's also chairman of the Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine.

At the same time, he's director of the Program on Emerging Infectious Diseases Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore.

He's a scientist of international repute, a global thinker and a complete overachiever. But is he happy?

THE CADMAN VISION

Gubler was recruited to come to University of Hawai'i in 2003 by the then dean of JABSOM, Ed Cadman. And come to Hawai'i he did, in January 2004, with visions of world-class infectious disease research dancing in his head.

Cadman showed him that Hawai'i was the ideal place for that research. Hawai'i had huge air traffic and was (a) highly vulnerable to infectious diseases, like SARS and bird flu, coming from Asia, and (b) a great place to study and develop vaccines for these diseases.

They joined in a grand vision, and looked forward to a brilliant and proximate future for Hawai'i in this area. The energy was infectious, excuse the expression. But it was not to be as simple as that.

SLOW BALL REALITY

Gubler and his colleagues demonstrated Hawai'i's value to the National Institutes of Health, and in 2005 NIH designated Hawai'i as one of only 15 Regional Biosafety Laboratories in the country. This was a great honor and very exciting prospect.

The Hawai'i RBL would be located on Waimano Ridge over 'Aiea. It would be part of JABSOM and work with the labs at Gubler's Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases in Kaka'ako and the Hawai'i Department of Health facility at Waimano.

NIH awarded $25 million for the project, and the Legislature gave another $12.5 million. At the time this seemed enough, and after all $37.5 million is not chump change.

But things got bogged down. In 2006 a bill was introduced to delay any new construction at Waimano until a "master plan" was developed. The bill passed, the governor vetoed it, the Legislature overrode the veto and the RBL was stopped. A year was lost while construction costs went through the roof. Aloha, Dr. Gubler. Welcome to Hawai'i.

WORSE THEN BETTER

NIH still believed in the Hawai'i RBL and approved a relocation from Waimano to the JABSOM campus in Kaka'ako. However, to the amazement of the biotech community, and to NIH itself, and despite the support of UH Research Chief Jim Gaines, in 2007 the University decided to throw in the towel and summarily cancel the project. You can imagine the reaction in Washington.

In further support, and with the help of Sen. Dan Inouye, NIH upped the ante with another $7.5 million. Dr. Gaines then went to the Legislature and got another $2.5 million, and the RBL was on again.

But another year had been lost, and this inexplicable and leaderless delay had been profoundly frustrating to Gubler, a man dedicated to action and who in an illustrious 40-year career had never seen bureaucracy so challenging. Somehow, it changed things.

CALL FROM THE EAST

Duke University was establishing a graduate medical school in Singapore. Duke and Singapore had been trying to recruit Gubler to do his infectious disease research there.

He had resisted at first, but after four years of delay in Hawai'i he decided that it was an offer he could not refuse. They offered him an RBL, with enormous and immediate resources in Singapore. That's the way Singapore works. They get their man, they support their man, and they keep him and the science he represents.

Soft on Hawai'i, he insisted that the Hawai'i RBL be a "full partner" of the RBL in Singapore, and it was agreed.

Things moved briskly in Singapore. They are building a large laboratory building for him there and giving him all the support he needs to hire world-class medical researchers, and he is doing exactly that. He's hired seven so far. Each will have half a dozen technicians and graduate students, jobs that could have been here.

Things are going well in Singapore, but how is the Hawai'i RBL doing? Can it be the "full partner" he wanted it to be?

PLAN UNFOLDS, SLOWLY

A laboratory design by Townsend Capital did not meet NIH requirements and had to be scrapped. That cost another four to five months. Gubler and his team started working with CDS, a local architectural firm, on a new downsized design.

In June, the RBL team held a "public meeting" at JABSOM. It went pretty well, despite the fact that some people still apparently object to the research. It would be better if we could all get behind this project. Squabbling never helped Hawai'i, and certainly won't help it now.

Going forward, Gubler hopes to finish the design and begin construction in 2009, then complete construction, get NIH certification and open for research in 2011, barring further obstacles.

By then the RBL in Singapore will be long done, and the Hawai'i RBL will have to hustle to catch up. It will also have to cope with the additional barriers to importation of research organisms handed down by the Intermediate Court of Appeals in the Ohana Pale case this past May.

That case will make it even more difficult to do research in Hawai'i, and from all indications the Department of Agriculture will still be locked in its headlights when the RBL opens. Given a $47.5 million public investment, these delays are going to get very expensive.

Further delay would be a great tragedy for the RBL, as well as other research initiatives in Hawai'i. Can it be avoided? The jury is out, but the possibility looms. You're in our prayers, Dr. Gubler.

KAKA'AKO CONFLUENCE

In August, an op-ed piece appeared in The Advertiser warning us of the research race against bioterrorism and suggesting that the risk of infectious disease in the world is more threatening all the time. And that includes Hawai'i.

Do you think because we haven't had global bioterrorism yet, the threat is over? Do you think that because we haven't had infectious epidemics in Hawai'i, we are somehow immune? Think again. It's not a question of whether, but when. Complacency is ill-advised.

The RBL is our hedge on these risks. It makes us a biotech center, with obvious secondary benefits. It will be a rich source of jobs and training in one of the most advanced and important areas of medicine. This is exactly what Hawai'i needs.

The RBL is a huge asset, but it's a wasting asset. If we don't stay on course after all these delays, we stand to lose it all together. That would be crude justice, cruder still by the fact that we really ought to know these things already.

Gubler is now spending more than half of his time in Singapore, where he is sure he can get something done. If the RBL in Hawai'i fails, all he needs to do is increase his time in Singapore. But what will the rest of us do? Let's not screw this up.

Jay Fidell is a business lawyer practicing in Honolulu. He has followed tech and tech policy closely and is a founder of ThinkTech Hawaii. Check out his blog at www.honoluluadvertiser.com/blogs.