The equipment — well, that was its own story. American medicine is littered with machines designed for testing. But they lay idle because the companies that made them were failing to supply the reagents they needed to work. UCSF itself had a machine, called the Panther, capable of processing 1,400 tests a day, but it was just sitting there unused for this very reason. “Big clinical testing machines are designed on the razor/razor blade model,” says DeRisi. “You can’t use them without their razors.” His graduate students either built the machines they needed themselves or grabbed wherever they could find that might be adapted. “Here is the frightening aspect of the global supply chain,” says DeRisi. “When there is a surge in demand, inventory goes to zero.”