Experiment Eleven Page 9

  Schatz said he needed to think it over, and, according to Schatz, Waksman lost his temper: “He told me that he had had enough trouble with my conceited and rebellious attitude and that I had better sign, as he had already done.” Waksman demanded that Schatz sign immediately, as the document had to be returned to the lawyer that very day and sent to Washington before a U.S. Patent Office deadline. It might even be too late, Waksman said. “He said that unless I signed at once there would be no patent,” Schatz recalled.

  According to Schatz, Waksman told him, “Think it over for a few minutes.” Schatz understood that he was cornered, but not by the Patent Office. Also according to Schatz, Waksman told him that his name would be taken off the patent application and that he, Waksman, would use his influence to “kill job chances.” Schatz was afraid that Waksman could hurt his job opportunities by giving him bad recommendations, and he was not sufficiently knowledgeable about the business arrangement with the Rutgers Foundation, or about patents, to challenge Waksman’s assertions. The stakes were too high to refuse Waksman’s request. Shortly, Schatz returned to Waksman’s office and they shook hands, agreeing, again according to Schatz, that neither would profit from the deal; and they signed the papers. At no point did Waksman tell Schatz that he had already made a deal with the Rutgers Foundation to receive 20 percent of the net royalties.

  ABOUT THIS TIME, Waksman stopped introducing Schatz to reporters and other scientists who came to visit seeking information about the discovery of streptomycin. Schatz would learn about the meetings later from newspaper and magazine reports, or from other graduate students who were working with Waksman on the third floor. Invariably, he was portrayed as Dr. Waksman’s “assistant.” But neither Schatz nor his family, especially Uncle Joe, was prepared to accept this downgrade, as they saw it.

  In April 1946, two science publications named Waksman as the discoverer and Schatz as the “assistant.” The trade journal Chemistry published a first-person account titled “The Story of Antibiotics.” The other journal, International Medical Digest, a monthly journal of medical abstracts, did not mention Schatz at all, nor did it reference the two key papers in 1944 with Schatz as the senior author.

  As a dentist, Uncle Joe had access to such journals, and he alerted Schatz, who wrote a letter of complaint to the editor of the medical digest. Schatz did not want to be seen confronting Dr. Waksman in public for fear that Waksman would not give the recommendations Schatz needed for future employment, so, with Uncle Joe’s consent, he signed the letter using Uncle Joe’s name, Dr. J. J. Martin, as his nom de plume. The letter complained specifically about the omission of the two key papers. “Streptomycin was discovered and isolated from the mold Actinomyces griseus by Dr. Albert Schatz,” he wrote, giving references to his two 1944 papers announcing the discovery.

  The editor, not knowing who Dr. J. J. Martin was, contacted Waksman to check on the complaint, and Waksman, instead of informing the editor of Schatz’s part in the discovery and the importance of the scientific papers mentioned, took the opportunity to reinforce his own role and cast doubt on Schatz’s. In a four-page reply, Waksman said that the discovery had come about as a result of “numerous studies,” starting in 1939; these studies were the high point of “investigations of more than 30 years duration” begun by himself in 1915, and in the work he had been “assisted by hundreds of graduate students and research workers.” All the steps necessary for the isolation of antibiotics had been worked out by himself and Boyd Woodruff in 1942, and that was why it had taken two years to isolate streptothricin and only “2 or 3 months” to isolate streptomycin.

  About Schatz’s role in the discovery, Waksman wrote, “The mere isolation of an antagonistic organism does not signify a great achievement, since a large number of such organisms have now been isolated and found to be active.” The fact that he had put Schatz’s name first had no significance beyond his acknowledgment of the hours put in at the workbench. “I can assure you that I would have been more than justified to have reversed the order or even to have used a common procedure used in many other laboratories, namely to place a footnote in the paper thanking the assistants for technical service thus rendered.”

  However, Waksman suggested, it might “have been desirable” to have mentioned two papers. One was the original 1944 paper announcing streptomycin, with Schatz as the senior author. But in place of Schatz’s second key paper, dealing with the tests on H37Rv, he substituted his own paper that he had given at the Mayo Clinic, on which he was the senior author. Those two papers, one of Schatz’s and one of his, Waksman wrote, “would have taken care of any criticism of incomplete references.”

  Then Waksman addressed the “more important view touched upon by Dr. Martin: Who discovered streptomycin?” For the first time, he concocted a story—“a parable,” he called it—about the chicken strain, D-1, that Schatz had isolated from a petri dish of A. griseus given to him by Doris Jones. Parables are narratives of imagined events used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson. They are not factual. But Waksman used this “parable” in his reply, and would use several different versions of it later, to rewrite one essential act of the discovery.

  The story he told began with a farmer bringing a sick chicken to Dr. Beaudette, the poultry pathologist at the Rutgers School of Agriculture. The chicken was said to be suffering from a peculiar bronchial ailment. At that time, Doris Jones was working under Dr. Beaudette trying to find an antibiotic effective against chicken viruses. After examining the chicken, Dr. Beaudette told Jones to swab the chicken’s throat and put the sample on a petri dish to see if she could find any of the “antagonist organisms that Dr. Waksman is so interested in.” Jones saw several colonies of actinomycetes and took the dish to Albert Schatz, suggesting that he should test them for the antibacterial properties. Schatz found one culture was active against Gram-negative bacteria. He brought the culture to Dr. Waksman, who identified the species as Streptomyces griseus. Waksman then instructed another assistant, Betty Bugie, to carry out certain tests that led to the “isolation and identification of the antibiotic.” Later, he called in other assistants to make further tests and “thus streptomycin came into being.”

  So, Waksman asked in his parable, who was responsible for the isolation of the streptomycin-producing strain? Was it Schatz, was it Jones, was it Dr. Beaudette, was it the distressed farmer, was it the sick chicken? His answer: “No doubt it was the chicken, because it was she that had picked it up from the soil and started the chain of events that led to the isolation of streptomycin.”

  In a P.S., Waksman wrote, “I would appreciate it if the contents of this letter are not published except with specific permission.”

  In the years to come, Waksman would revise his “parable,” each time turning it a little more to his advantage, until it became the official version of what had happened.

  IN MAY 1946, a second story cast further doubt on Albert Schatz’s character. Waksman complained to his deputy, Robert Starkey, that there had been an unauthorized visit to the laboratory where Schatz and Jones were working, and that a member of Schatz’s family had carried off Schatz’s crucial lab notebook of the streptomycin discovery. For the first time, Waksman put locks on the lab doors. According to a letter in Waksman’s archives at Rutgers, Schatz explained that he had been having trouble with his back and was in bed that day, and his paycheck was due. The checks were left in the laboratory building, and he had asked Uncle Joe to pick up his. Apparently, a staff member had seen Uncle Joe and reported him to Waksman. Schatz promised it would not happen again. That was the beginning and end of the story, as far as Schatz was concerned. As to Waksman’s accusation of a missing notebook, Schatz’s notebook of the discovery was not in the lab at the time of the alleged “break-in.” Waksman had sent Schatz’s notebook and his own to Merck, at the company’s request, because it needed them to present the streptomycin patent application. The matter was dropped—but only for the time being. Waksman would bring it up again, much
later.

  IN YET ANOTHER incident that spring, Waksman would admit that he was deliberately keeping Schatz away from the publicity gathering around streptomycin. Doris Jones went to see Waksman on an entirely separate matter. She wanted to complain about Schatz’s domineering presence in the lab where they were searching for antibiotics against viruses. He was so alert and active that she sometimes worried he might “squelch” her own ideas, she said.

  In the course of conversation she referred to Schatz’s “bossiness,” and Waksman, to her surprise, suddenly launched into an attack on Schatz’s “immaturity.” It was the reason, he said, why he had decided to keep Schatz out of the story of the discovery of streptomycin. All the publicity would “go to his head.” That was why he was keeping him away from reporters. He told her this “confidentially” as a way, apparently, of helping her resolve her problem with Schatz.

  Jones was stunned. In her view, no one could have failed to notice how Schatz had been sidelined. Schatz himself had complained directly to Jones about “Waksie” hogging the publicity. But here was Dr. Waksman, her wonderfully erudite and supremely confident professor whom she admired so much, apparently needing to explain his actions to her, a mere graduate student. It was most out of character. It was as though he had some “hidden guilt,” she thought, as if he were trying to “justify his actions to little old Doris,” who could be relied upon, despite the “confidentially” admonition, to pass the information to others.

  She would never recall the conversation precisely, but neither would she ever forget the incident. In fact, she did not tell Schatz for several years. Their problem was sorted out quite amicably between the two of them.

  FOLLOWING THESE INCIDENTS, and with Vivian about to graduate, Schatz was ready to leave Rutgers. Waksman found him a job, almost immediately, as a senior bacteriologist at the New York State Department of Health in Albany, and gave him a glowing recommendation, quite the opposite of the confidential assessment of Schatz he had just given Jones. He told his new employer, “He is still relatively young (about 27) but he has a mature [emphasis added] judgment and can plan and carry out his work. I have full confidence that he will justify himself in any position of trust which will be given to him. He has been associated with me for a period of nearly 4 years ... He has made an important contribution to the subject of antibiotics. Although he is primarily a bacteriologist, he has had sufficient training in organic chemistry and biochemistry to be able to carry through his own chemical investigations.”

  Schatz accepted the job and was due to depart Rutgers after four years in the graduate program. One day, however, he was talking with Waksman in his office and took the opportunity to complain, “as diplomatically as possible,” that Waksman had been getting all the credit in articles about streptomycin. Schatz recalled that Waksman “became incensed and started shouting at me that he would never tolerate another Joffe”—a reference to Waksman’s earlier spat with Jacob Joffe over the order of names on a scientific paper. “He then had his secretary type a letter from me to him dated May 21, 1946, telling him that I had worked under his supervision etc [and] he insisted that I sign [the letter]. I signed because I needed letters of recommendation from him when I applied for jobs.”

  On the morning of May 21, Waksman discussed with Russell Watson, the Rutgers Foundation lawyer, what Mr. Watson described as the “Schatz claim.” Although the content of this discussion was not recorded, Watson apparently advised Waksman to get Schatz to clarify his assistant status. The result was a letter typed by Waksman’s secretary, thanking him for his guidance and advice and narrowly defining his work in the discovery of streptomycin as that of an “assistant” and no more.

  In the letter, Schatz expressed his “appreciation for all that you have done for me both in my undergraduate, graduate and post-doctorate work.

  “I feel particularly proud to have been associated with your group in the work on antibiotics, a subject which has raised the status of microbiology to a science second to none.

  “In assisting you with the isolation of the streptomycin producing organism and in the isolation of streptomycin itself, I feel that I have rendered my own contribution, no matter how small that may appear, to building and developing the science of antibiotics. I hope that the work on streptomycin, carried out under your guidance and continuous active participation, and in which in addition to myself also Miss Elizabeth Bugie and Miss H. Christine Reilly, have contributed to the best of their ability, will stand as a symbol to cooperative work under your wise and able leadership.”

  Schatz signed the letter, never imagining that one day it would be used against him as evidence that whatever experiments he had carried out in the basement laboratory had not really been his experiments, but had always been under the direction of Dr. Waksman.

  10 • Mold in Their Pockets

  NEWS OF STREPTOMYCIN’S POWER GAVE WAR-WEARY Europeans hope that they might be able to counter the sudden rise of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis. A number of factors had contributed to the increase. During the war, the TB hospitals and sanatoriums had been cleared to make room for air raid casualties, and the disease had spread more easily in overcrowded homes. Evacuations of cities to the country had introduced a whole new generation to unpasteurized milk. Workers who were desperate for jobs concealed their infections to keep working and spent longer hours in factories, reducing their levels of resistance.

  All over the world, doctors were scrambling to find antibiotics to fight infectious diseases caused by Gram-negative bacteria, including urinary tract infections resistant to the sulfa drugs, various types of pneumonia, typhoid, Salmonella infections (also known as paratyphoid), acute brucellosis, and tularemia. Patients suffered and died for the lack of a drug like streptomycin. America’s closest ally, Britain, was desperate for supplies of it.

  As the world war had played a key role in the discovery of streptomycin, so now the cold war was playing a role in its development. The U.S. and British governments would continue to seek antidotes to a possible biological weapons attack, but this time from the Soviet Union. The British knew firsthand of the potential of streptomycin through secret trials at the chemical and biological warfare establishment at Porton Down. Those had shown that streptomycin was effective against the plague, endemic in some of the British colonies, and especially effective against tuberculosis. But for the moment, the U.S. government was keeping tight control over the distribution of streptomycin, as it had with penicillin, which was still available only in Allied army hospitals. In Europe, a black market of vials of penicillin flourished, including many fakes. The Russians, who went through the war with only their version of René Dubos’s gramicidin, had started to produce a crude penicillin from a mold lifted from the damp wall of a Moscow air raid shelter.

  As the world learned more about streptomycin, including the sweeping claims that resulted from interviews with Dr. Waksman in the popular press, American and British authorities raced to separate out the truth of what streptomycin could do before it spread into the market. For responsible scientists, the drug was still in the testing phase, but that caution did not stop desperate efforts to find supplies. It might be easier, one British official suggested, if “our people” visiting Washington were asked to bring home tiny gram amounts “in their pockets.” The British ambassador in Washington, Lord Halifax, managed to find a private supply through an American doctor “well-known to this embassy,” but he warned Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s new Labor government that American doctors were skeptical about some of the more extreme claims. Halifax cabled London that American physicians were concerned that there had been “a great deal of erroneous information about the efficacy of this drug with the unfortunate consequence that many doctors in England who have not had the opportunity to get first-hand knowledge ... still appear to be under the impression that the drug has far wider uses than has actually been proved to be the case in recent tests.”

  Streptomycin was unavailable even
to some officials in high office with the right connections. Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey, who with Ernst Chain had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery and development of penicillin in 1945, had difficulty finding supplies. American doctors and officials became increasingly troubled by the desperate calls from across the Atlantic.

  There was another emerging problem: Streptomycin had uncharted side effects. In addition to temporary dizziness after prolonged administration, there were some cases of kidney troubles, and it was not clear whether these effects were due to impurities or to the drug itself.

  William Feldman and Corwin Hinshaw continued to urge caution in their reports. Although it was the “most promising drug” of natural or synthetic origin against TB, they did not yet know whether a patient could be completely cured. Moreover, it was expensive. It was generally agreed that the minimum dose was four grams a day given in six separate doses and that the treatment would probably have to continue for six months, for a total cost of nine hundred dollars, a prohibitive amount for too many patients.

  Selman Waksman (far left) in front of one of the fifteen-thousand-gallon fermenting tanks for mass production of streptomycin at Merck’s Elkton, Virginia, plant in December 1945.

  (The Merck Archives, 2011)

  The London Times medical correspondent was also cautious: “Great things are hoped for with streptomycin, but early optimism must be guarded. In any case, its use entails considerable discomfort for the patient, with six or so injections each day for possibly weeks ... Streptomycin, which is similar to penicillin, the product of a mold and equally harmless to human beings ... It is especially with regard to tuberculosis that experiments now made possible in this country will be watched with interest.”