Experiment Eleven

by Peter Pringle

  It would be his fourth publishing opportunity to address the historical record, but Waksman was still angry about Schatz’s challenge to his authority. Instead of clearing the fog over the discovery of streptomycin, he still wanted to teach Albert Schatz a lesson.

  Waksman sent a draft of the chapter in his memoir describing the discovery to Russell Watson, who spotted many potential libels in Waksman’s portrayal of Schatz as a mere pair of hands. “What are you trying to prove by this chapter?” Watson asked. “The intendment [sic] of the chapter is that his [Schatz’s] part in the discovery was scientifically negligible.” This clearly “opened the door for libel action.” Although it was impossible to say whether Schatz would go that far, in Watson’s view Schatz was “egotistical, abnormal, possessed of delusions of grandeur and ... financially able to prosecute a libel action.” He could charge that Waksman had unduly minimized his part in the discovery.

  “It is impossible to forecast the result of such an action,” Watson continued. The original case against Waksman had been heard by an experienced, impartial trial judge, but a libel case would be tried by a judge and jury, and “the outcome would be unpredictable.” Schatz could bring up such tricky areas as “the financial arrangement” between Waksman and the university, about which “the reading public would be curious.”

  Watson also wondered why Waksman kept bringing up the story of the stolen notebook, supposedly taken by Uncle Joe in May 1946 but, according to Watson’s brother and law firm partner, Dudley Watson, not stolen at all—they had been in the possession of Merck’s lawyers at the time of the alleged theft. Russell Watson insisted that the “missing page” from Schatz’s notebook was “insignificant.”

  The entire chapter about the Schatz case, he commented, would certainly make the book more controversial and increase its sales, but he reminded Waksman that any advice on this matter from his publisher, Simon & Schuster, should be seen as what it was: biased in favor of the marketplace.

  In conclusion, Watson said that the various facts of the Schatz case and the proposed chapter were too numerous, and he suggested a meeting. There is no public record of such an event, but Waksman would eventually cut out all references to Schatz by name and removed the parts that Watson had criticized.

  MY LIFE WITH THE MICROBES was published by Simon and Schuster in 1954. There was no index, and no references to scientific publications. In discussing the discovery of antibiotics in his laboratory, Waksman mentioned the help of many “assistants,” and the discovery of streptomycin itself was described in seventy-five words.

  “On August 23, 1943,” Waksman wrote, “we isolated a culture of an organism, long known to me, Streptomyces griseus. This culture was found, by the methods developed for the production of streptothricin, to produce a similar antibiotic, which we designated streptomycin, a name coined in the laboratory the previous January. Further tests carried out in our laboratory and in the laboratories of Merck & Co, proved it to be a highly desirable substance with potential chemotherapeutic properties.”

  In the antibiotics program, Waksman said, he had been assisted by nearly fifty graduate students. “They were the fingers of my hand ... This teamwork might be compared to that of an orchestra, with the conductor leading and assigning the task to each member, none of which [sic] would have produced any symphony otherwise.” He was not the kind of conductor who picked out his first violin for special recognition and applause. “To name only a few would be a disrespect to others,” he wrote.

  FOR THE NEXT two decades, Waksman continued to promote himself and streptomycin, at home and abroad. New editions of his autobiography were published in Britain (1958) and Japan (1975, posthumously), still with no mention of Schatz. He wrote and edited several more books on streptomycin and on the actinomycetes. Simon and Schuster turned down his next book, The Conquest of Tuberculosis, because, it said, it could not find a market for it.

  The book was eventually published in 1964 by the University of California Press, which insisted on an index. Schatz’s name appeared six times, in journal references. In telling the story of the discovery, Waksman once again repeated his parable of the sick chicken. The chicken had been responsible for the isolation of streptomycin, not Schatz.

  23 • The Copied Notebooks

  AMONG THE EVENTS FROM THE SPRING and early summer of 1954 recorded on world-history Web sites are the release of Elvis Presley’s first hit single, “That’s All Right”; the New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe; the sale of the first TV dinners; and the fruition of Selman Waksman’s personal dream, the opening of the first Institute of Microbiology, on the Rutgers campus. Waksman’s Rutgers monument was a $3.5 million neo-Georgian structure with a gleaming white clock tower, and it was built principally from the streptomycin royalties paid to the Rutgers Foundation.

  On opening day, This Week, the nationally syndicated magazine, sent the novelist and playwright A. E. Hotchner to be with Waksman as he stepped out of his “modest Chevrolet” and walked up the steps of the institute for the first time. Before entering through the massive front door, Waksman turned, scanning the campus where he had spent most of his life, and his “eyes began to tear, but not from the wind.” It had taken Waksman “36 years, living on a meager salary, to find the drug which has produced these fabulous earnings. It is believed that this represents the longest stretch of microbiological research in the annals of medicine.”

  The headline on the article would read, incorrectly, HE TURNED DOWN MILLIONS, and when asked why, Waksman gave his practiced answer: “I’m too busy to be a millionaire.” When Hotchner asked why he hadn’t chosen security for his old age, instead of giving his money away, Waksman replied, “The future doesn’t worry me ... I will tell you why I did it. The work was done here. Rutgers believed in me and supported me ... But above all—you’ll forgive if I wave the flag a little—this country has been good to me, and I feel this money should go back to the country and be used for the benefit of all people.”

  Hotchner followed Waksman into his new office, past the new laboratories, “glistening with ultra-modern equipment, ready to receive experiments that Dr. Waksman believes can one day solve the mysteries of polio, cancer and even the common cold.”

  After Waksman had hung up his “worn hat and coat” and sat down at his new desk, a young visiting physician came in desperately seeking the latest batch of streptomycin for his five-year-old daughter, suffering from meningitis. After the doctor had gone, Waksman immediately called his “close friends” at Merck & Co. to discuss finding “a new and possibly more potent strain.”

  Next, two Rutgers officials entered to ask Waksman’s permission to establish a museum room in which all his honors and medals would be displayed. “With reluctance, Waksman agreed but he flatly turned down their request that his portrait be hung in the room. ‘Not while I live,’ he said.”

  Then the phone rang. It was the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., calling about the exhibition they were planning of the discovery of antibiotics. A year earlier, they had approached Waksman seeking laboratory artifacts “unique in the discovery and development of the antibiotic streptomycin.” In an exchange of letters in 1953, the Smithsonian had assured Waksman that the exhibition would name him as the sole discoverer of streptomycin, “as well as donor of any specimens which you have to donate to our collection.”

  Waksman replied immediately by letter, offering an assortment of typical glassware—test tubes, pipettes, petri dishes, and glass flasks used for growing the mold. “The only piece of equipment that is original is our little shaking machine [to shake the microbe cultures during growth] which has since become the model for all shaking machines throughout the world in the screening program for antibiotics,” he wrote. It consisted of a dozen glass flasks on a metal bed that was vibrated by an electric motor.

  He also happened to have a small amount of the first streptomycin produced in his laboratory, a culture of S. griseus, and “numerous photographs o
f the culture and the antibiotic, as well as the various publications, scientific papers, books, all contributing to the story of the isolation of streptomycin.”

  As an afterthought, he added a handwritten note at the bottom of the typed letter: “How about notebook pages, etc?” The Smithsonian had selected three items: the shaking machine, a vial of streptomycin, and “the original notes books and/or pages kept during the initial investigations which resulted in the discovery of streptomycin [emphasis added].” The museum also asked Waksman for a photograph.

  Eager to supply as much as he could, Waksman had packed up the shaking machine and a platinum needle used in “our early work on actinomycetes which led to the isolation of streptomycin.” He sent three vials, one of the “first true” antibiotic, actinomycin; another of streptothricin, “the first water-soluble, basic substance active against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria”; and an example of the standard vials sent out to the makers of streptomycin and to the Food and Drug Administration. He sent four photographs of himself, “two of which are informal and two of which are formal. The larger formal photograph was taken about the time that streptomycin was discovered. You may select from these photographs whichever you would like to use.”

  He told the Smithsonian that he had three of his own laboratory notebooks, with relevant pages marked. He was careful not to say that they were “the original notes,” as the museum had requested; instead he wrote that they “comprise my various notes dealing with the production and isolation of antibiotics leading to the discovery of streptomycin.” Because of their “extreme value,” Waksman proposed sending them by special registered mail. These might take some time, he warned, because they had not yet decided whether to have photostats made of the pages before sending them out.

  The Smithsonian wanted Waksman to choose “the most significant notebook” for the collection. Meanwhile, they had selected one of the photographs and returned the other three. There was no hurry to send the items; the antibiotic collection would not be ready “for some time yet.”

  Waksman had a problem. The “most significant” laboratory notebook dealing with “investigations which resulted in the discovery of streptomycin,” as the museum had requested, was not his, but Schatz’s. And the most important experiment in Schatz’s notebook was Experiment 11. So Waksman told one of his stories.

  He wrote the Smithsonian, “It occurred to me that rather than send you the most important notebook in our collection (since there is always the danger that it might be lost somehow) I have selected the four original experiments which deal with the isolation and production of streptomycin.

  “I have re-copied these experiments from my notebook on paper very similar to that used in my notebook and in my own handwriting and as close as possible to the way the data are presented in the notebook. As a matter of fact, the data will be somewhat more readable now since the notes in the notebooks are in pencil and frequently somewhat smudged after constant usage over the past years.”

  Waksman duly copied four pages of his experiments from his own 1943 notebook, in pencil just like the originals. The first two of these pages—Experiments 55 and 56 (September 15, 1943)—came a full three weeks after Schatz had begun Experiment 11. Waksman’s experiments dealt with the type of nutrient used in producing several antibiotics, including those produced by Schatz’s D-1 and 18-16 strains, and how six of them had tested against known potentially harmful germs, including E. coli.

  As he was copying, Waksman made one notation that was not on the original. At the bottom of the page for Experiment 55, he added a “postscript.” It read, “D-1 and 18-16 were the two streptomycin-producing cultures, D-1 being the culture isolated from a chicken’s throat and 18-16, two days later, from soil.”

  In addition, Waksman prepared a four-page summary of his life’s work on microorganisms. He mentioned his various books, how he had been encouraged by the work of René Dubos in 1939, how he had invented the word “antibiotic,” and then the three antibiotics that had been discovered in his laboratory: actinomycin, streptothricin, and streptomycin. In each case, he mentioned, but did not identify, the “numerous assistants” who had helped him.

  “The progress of these investigations,” Waksman conceded, “was recorded in a number of notebooks. Some of these books are my own and are in my own handwriting. Three of them, marked ‘Antagonistic Studies,’ have been selected because they contain most of the data on the work which tells the story of the production and isolation of antibiotics leading to the discovery of streptomycin in 1943.” Schatz was mentioned by name only in the final paragraph, where he wrote, “Other records, usually more detailed and supplementing my own, are found in several notebooks of my students, notably, H. Boyd Woodruff, Elizabeth S. Horning, Maurice Welsch, Elizabeth Bugie, Albert Schatz, and H. Christine Reilly.” All these notebooks were available for anyone to see in the files of the Department of Soil Microbiology, he said, and would later be deposited in the Museum of the Institute of Microbiology—which was being erected in his new building.

  The Smithsonian exhibition was eventually installed and opened to the public. Titled “Antibiotics: The Wonder Drugs,” it listed five discoverers: Alexander Fleming, penicillin, 1929; Selman Waksman, streptomycin, 1944; Paul Burkholder, Chloromycetin [a trade name of chloramphenicol], 1947; Benjamin Duggar, aureomycin, 1948; and A. C. Finlay et al., terramycin, 1950.

  THE RUTGERS PUBLIC relations team saw another opportunity to promote its first and only Nobel prizewinner. On July 1, 1953, Rutgers had announced that “historic hand-written notes” and pieces of lab equipment “relating to the discovery of streptomycin” had been presented to the Smithsonian by Dr. Waksman. The objects had “played significant roles” in the development of streptomycin. The notes described “four original experiments dealing with the isolation and production of streptomycin.”

  The local New Jersey papers ran the press release almost word for word on July 2. Somewhat more circumspect, the New York Times gave Waksman the benefit of the doubt as to whether his notes were original. The Times story began, “Four pages of handwritten notes describing the original experiments dealing with the isolation ...”

  The items eventually chosen for the exhibition were labeled as follows: “The pages of Dr. Waksman’s notebook show how antibiotic properties of Streptomyces griseus were discovered from two different samples: 18-16 from the soil of a heavily-manured field; and D-1 from the throat of a chicken; Inoculating needle used by Dr. Waksman to isolate antibiotic-producing molds and to transfer the first strains of Streptomyces griseus which produces streptomycin; Dr. Waksman used this shaking (agitating) machine in his research which resulted in the discovery of streptomycin (to allow larger amount of oxygen in the liquid culture).” Albert Schatz was not mentioned.

  PART V • The Restoration

  24 • Wilderness Years

  IN AN EFFORT TO CHEER UP his nephew after the blow of the Nobel Prize, Uncle Joe campaigned in his local New Jersey branch of the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce for Schatz to be named as one of America’s Ten Outstanding Young Men. The campaign worked. The 1953 citation referred to Schatz as “co-discoverer” of streptomycin, and as the author of more than fifty scientific articles and a popular book on microbes. He had demonstrated “his devotion to science by relinquishing, at the age of 26, all personal gain from streptomycin. His intent was that all royalties should go for scientific research. Only when he discovered later some of the profits were going into private pockets did he take steps to rectify the situation.” It marked the beginning of a sad odyssey into scientific obscurity. He would never again find a research position in a microbiology lab that was part of an academic institution.

  The ever-vigilant Rutgers PR Department spotted a news story about the award ceremony in the local Bergen Evening Record, under the headline “Schatz, Streptomycin Discoverer, Is Honored.” The PR team cabled the judges. The attribution was a “gross exaggeration.” They hoped the judges would not “knowing
ly lend their name to the circulation of these untruths.”

  When Waksman heard about the honor, he was finishing his memoir, My Life with the Microbes. The award to Schatz was “a sad commentary on the morals and manners of these times,” he had written in a draft of his manuscript, prompting Russell Watson to warn Waksman yet again that his comment was a “wide open door” to a libel action.

  If Rutgers and Waksman had known that Uncle Joe had vigorously campaigned for his nephew they would probably have been even more upset, seeing it as yet another subversive maneuver to grab the spotlight. But the citation actually made no claims for Schatz beyond the “co-discoverer” status and had fairly summarized the state of Schatz’s career following the lawsuit.

  After the Nobel, Schatz stayed on for two years at the small National Agricultural College, covering a “wide variety of problems” to do with “soil fertility, plant diseases, hormones, and a way to diagnose and treat multiple sclerosis.” These were vital pursuits, but they lacked the kind of focus one might expect from a researcher who had made a big discovery. By then Schatz was receiving about twelve thousand dollars a year after taxes from the streptomycin royalties, allowing him to move from one new passion to the next—the kind of basic research he literally “loved to do.”

  He campaigned against the desirability of fluoride in drinking water, studied the effect of bacteria on dental caries, and developed an interest in water diving and the paranormal. Schatz was also fascinated by the feeding habits of mosses and lichens, by how they use a mysterious chemical action known as chelation (from the Greek chela, meaning “claw” or “pincer”), a mechanism whereby microbes break down the minerals on rock surfaces. He published a series of papers on chelating in the Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Academy of Sciences, and he wrote an eight-page paper on copper mosses, which feed on rocks containing copper, for the Bryologist, a journal devoted entirely to liverworts and mosses. Schatz wanted to know how these creatures survived on copper, which is toxic to most microorganisms.