17 • Under Oath
WHEN JEROME EISENBERG ASKED TO DEPOSE Waksman in a pretrial hearing before he left for Europe, the judge agreed, but Waksman said he didn’t have time. He was due at an important meeting of the World Health Organization in Geneva, to be followed by several other conferences, and it was not clear when he would be back. The judge was not impressed, and the court issued Waksman a subpoena.
Thus the stage was set for a pretrial confrontation between Eisenberg and Waksman, a rare opportunity for a lawyer to question a scientist about his work. Eisenberg was a seasoned trial lawyer, a fast learner of unfamiliar concepts and obscure, technical terms. Waksman was supremely confident that his superior knowledge of his science would see him through the interrogation. However, he would look back on the day as one of “seemingly endless questioning,” while Eisenberg would see it as one of the most interesting depositions of his half century at the bar. The four-hour deposition began at 10 A.M. on March 25 at Russell Watson’s office in New Brunswick. Present were Eisenberg, Schatz, Waksman, Watson, and their assistant, Samuel Epstein. It was a very tense session, the first of several that would involve various witnesses over the next five months.
Eisenberg began by quickly going over Waksman’s background and then plunging into the main issue of who, exactly, had discovered streptomycin. Waksman’s reply to this question set the tone of the meeting.
“The major part of the work on streptomycin was done with my own fingers,” Waksman said. “No! No!” Schatz would later write in the margin of a copy of the deposition.
At the time of the discovery, Waksman maintained, he was spending 80 percent of his time in the laboratory. “I had several assistants,” he said. “One of whom was Albert Schatz, and another was Elizabeth Bugie, and a third was H. Christine Reilly.”
So, when it came to writing up the experiments and preparing the papers, Eisenberg asked, how much was Schatz involved?
“Very little,” Waksman replied. Schatz’s job was to keep records of his experiments, he said, and he produced a handful of tan cloth-covered notebooks, two of Schatz’s and three of his own.
He would ask Schatz to prepare tables of the data from the notebooks, he said. “And he would prepare them exactly as I asked. He wouldn’t do anything more than my secretary would do, or than any assistant to whom I would give specific instructions. He didn’t do it of his own free will; never took initiative.”
Eisenberg asked about Schatz’s thesis, the one that showed how he had isolated the strains of A. griseus that produced streptomycin. Waksman said he couldn’t remember its title—even though he was one of the examiners.
E: You don’t recall the subject of the thesis?
W: No, it dealt largely with streptomycin, of course.
E: Did it present original and creative work on his part?
W: In a sense, yes, and in another sense, no. You see, the graduate students in my department—Mr. Watson, will you please let me make a simile?
WATSON: Go ahead.
W: Have you watched an orchestra perform and the conductor giving a cue to each musician? The musician himself plays only a very minor role, but together they produce a beautiful symphony ... In a sense that was original work, of course, but that work was as much a part of me and of my work as anything can be.
E: Did you read his thesis?
W: Yes, sir.
E: Did you approve of it?
W: I did.
E: Did you make any changes in it?
W: Probably did, plenty.
Waksman then recounted how his lab had produced the first antibiotics—actinomycin and streptothricin—and then streptomycin.
W: We had all the methods worked out. We knew exactly what the culture was [A. griseus] because I named that culture in 1915. It produced streptomycin in 1915, but at that time we were of course not interested in antibiotics.
Schatz wrote in the margin, “It did not produce streptomycin.”
Eisenberg returned to the actual discovery.
Only seven or eight weeks after Schatz had come back from the army in the summer of 1943, Waksman said, “we observed certain cultures. They looked as if they were active against Gram-negative bacteria ... Since we had all the matters worked out for streptothricin, we at once continued further ... All I needed was hands. The wash girl could have done exactly the same thing. She could have done exactly the same thing, if I put her on that problem. Schatz did nothing original, absolutely nothing original. He followed exact instructions that I gave. He would come up to see me three or four times a day. The girls in the laboratory would make fun about his running. To every little test he would come up to check with me that he is doing the right thing, and thus streptomycin came into being.”
Schatz wrote in the margin, “My Ph.D. required original and creative work.”
Eisenberg pressed the question.
E: You said, in talking about the experiments that led to the discovery of streptomycin, that “we observed cultures that looked good against the Gram-negative bacteria.” Whom did you mean by “we.”
W: I have always bent over backwards in giving as much credit to my assistants and graduate students as I possibly could. I even got so accustomed to it that I would use the word “we” in a general sense. That means if it happened to be Schatz, it was Schatz and I. If it happened to be Miss Bugie, it was she and I. If it happened to be Miss Reilly, it was Miss Reilly and I.
E: I meant what did you mean by “we” when you used it in the sense in which you testified earlier when you said, “We observed cultures that looked good against Gram-negative bacteria”?
W: In this particular case it was Schatz and I.
E: Now, you said that during 1943 there were other assistants of yours who were doing the same thing?
W: That’s right ... There were my technical assistants who sometimes rendered higher service to some of the scientific assistants, but whose names never appear on scientific papers ... First: Miss Clara Wark [a lab assistant]. There was Dorothy Randolph [a lab assistant]; there was Mr. Cooper [Aldrage Cooper, a lab helper]. I don’t remember his initial. There was Mr. Adams [who washed glassware and prepared media].
In his first public answer to Schatz’s lawsuit, Russell Watson had said that Schatz was “one of about 20 graduate students” and assistants who had helped Dr. Waksman in the laboratory. Eisenberg now asked how many of the nineteen others had worked on streptomycin.
“Well, it depends entirely what you call worked,” Waksman replied. “Is the one, Dr. Schatz, who was instructed to isolate the cultures and test them, is his work more important than the man who washes the dishes the cultures were made in, to the girl who prepares the media which is used in the preparation of those cultures, to the one who tests the material in animals, to the girl who grows the culture in the flask?”
Eisenberg pressed the question: What was the contribution of each of those nineteen to the isolation and discovery of streptomycin? Waksman replied that “probably the contribution of Boyd Woodruff, who assisted with the isolation of streptothricin ... was, oh, as much as twenty times that of Schatz,” because he had helped in the development of procedures and ideas.
And what about the lab assistants and the glassware washers? Eisenberg asked. What was their contribution?
W: Oh, I suppose [on] streptomycin itself, there again, I suppose, Schatz was an important contributor. I don’t mean to say he has not contributed anything. Don’t misunderstand me. He was an important contributor, otherwise I would not have put his name on these [17] papers. I would like you to go to the universities of the country and show me any university where a graduate student in the period of three years has his name on 17 papers. The others, their names may not have appeared on as many papers, but to evaluate the contribution is rather difficult. Each one fits into a certain, as I said, mosaic. Do you see what I mean? It would be very difficult to say I have made 75 percent contribution, Schatz made 10 percent, Miss Bugie 5 percent, Miss Reilly 5 percent;
it would be very difficult.
Still, Eisenberg pressed the question: What contribution had the other technical assistants made to the discovery?
E: My question is a difficult one and I know that, Dr. Waksman, but I would like you to be as precise as possible ... with the four or five names that you have mentioned.
W: Clara Wark, the technical assistant, it is difficult to say. Their names do not even appear on the papers ... It is very difficult to say they made one percent or 20 percent. It is very difficult because they were concerned with several problems. They were not working exclusively on this one problem, you see, and therefore I could not answer that question.
E: Can you answer the question as to Miss Randolph?
W: No, as I said, she was one of the technical assistants.
E: But she was one of the 20 you mentioned?
W: No, the four or five.
E: I am talking about the four or the five [lab assistants] who worked on streptomycin out of the twenty. [Eisenberg was trying to get Waksman to repeat that Schatz’s contribution had been “important.”]
W: It is difficult to say Schatz made an important contribution. If I would say my contribution would be roughly, let’s say, 75 percent, Schatz’s contribution was perhaps 10 percent.
A few minutes later, Waksman changed his mind again. “As I said, Schatz was the key figure because I depended upon him for many crucial experiments ... As I said, like testing the cultures against bacteria; like production, when I was in a rush and in a hurry to produce material before the Merck people came into the picture, he worked day and night. To be frank with you, I considered him to be one of my bright students”
Eisenberg moved on. He asked about Doris Jones and the parable of the sick chicken. It was he, not Schatz, Waksman stated, who had received the D-1 streptomycin-producing culture from Jones. And it was he, not Schatz, who had selected the culture to be isolated.
W: Dr. [Fred] Beaudette said to her, “Doris, here are colonies of organisms that Dr. Waksman has been looking for and has been interested in. You better take them to him.” She brought the plate [petri dish] ... I turned it over to Schatz and I said, “Now, will you please isolate these colonies and test them?” That was the beginning of the streptomycin story.
Schatz noted in the margin, “NOT TRUE.”
E: When did this conversation between Dr. Beaudette and Miss Doris Jones take place with reference to this plate to your knowledge?
W: Roughly about the middle of August, 1943.
E: When to your knowledge did Miss Jones bring that plate to you?
W: Within a day or two.
Eisenberg made a note: “All this is untrue and Waksman knows it is untrue because he was in Woods Hole in August and not around. Hence everything is ‘roughly.’”
E: When did you turn that over to the plaintiff?
W: Immediately.
E: You turned that plate over to him with certain instructions?
W: That’s right.
E: Where were those instructions given?
W: Verbally.
E: Where?
W: In the laboratory, in the main laboratory upstairs.
Schatz wrote again, “Not True.”
E: Was anyone present at the time besides you and the plaintiff?
W: I doubt it.
E: I asked you what strains produced streptomycin. You have been talking about a culture.
W: That’s right, D-1, that was the beginning of all the streptomycin.
E: Who isolated that strain?
W: Isolated?
E: Yes.
W: Physically?
E: Yes.
W: Albert Schatz picked it up from the plate.
E: Who selected the strain to be isolated and tested?
W: I selected it and I gave him the instructions to go ahead.
“Not true,” Schatz wrote.
E: Who tested it?
W: Albert Schatz, the first test; that is why, as I said, he was physically the agent that happened to do that, and that is why I recognized his contribution.
Eisenberg then picked up the money trail. Waksman said that at the time of the discovery of streptomycin he was being paid $10,000 a year by the university. In 1939, he had a verbal agreement with the Rutgers comptroller that whatever developed of a practical nature in his and Rutgers’ deal with Merck, he would get a “certain small commission” for managing the affairs. It was a “loosely worded” agreement, nothing on paper. It was assumed that he would use the money for research work. He could put it “in my own pocket or give it for fellowships or assistants. It was up to me.”
Eisenberg asked, “How much?” And Waksman hesitated.
WATSON: Tell them ...
W: In 1949... about $80,000, roughly.
WATSON: Give the total for the whole thing.
Waksman then gave the total. It was about $350,000, he said. He said he paid $180,000 in taxes. That left him with $170,000.
CORNERED, WAKSMAN WENT on the offensive, a totally new attack that caught Eisenberg by surprise. Still under oath, he claimed, for the first time, that Schatz’s 18-16 strain of A. griseus might not have been an original discovery, but rather a mere laboratory contamination from Jones’s strain, D-1. He also suggested that Schatz had falsified his lab notes. The “evidence” was a missing page in Schatz’s laboratory notebook.
E: You have given us to understand that in August 1943 there was only one strain that produced streptomycin?
W: That’s right. 48 hours later—
E: I want to know whether my statement was correct ... When, to your knowledge, was the next strain found which produced something that later was called streptomycin?
W: Two or three days later. Albert Schatz came up and brought another culture which was called 18-16. He said he isolated that culture from the soil. I assumed that was so, but it is quite possible that that culture could have come, because 48 to 72 hours is a long enough period of time. It could have come willfully or un-willfully from the first culture [which] could have contaminated the soil [samples]... As I said, we gave credit in my report that 18-16 was another culture producing streptomycin. We have recently shown that the second culture could have easily been derived from the first culture.
E: When was that shown? You say “we have recently.”
W: I mean I had one of my assistants purposely do that.
E: When, approximately?
W: Last spring.
E: You mean by that the spring of 1949?
W: Yes, I have personally, myself, taken the culture of Streptomyces griseus and transferred it, not being very careful about handling it, and then plating out the soil that was standing around the laboratory, and I picked up that culture from the soil; so it can be done.
Schatz wrote in the margin, “Nonsense. Never done.”
THIS WAS AN entirely new allegation. Waksman had always concluded that the two strains were entirely separate, that there had been no contamination. In a joint article with Schatz in 1945, he had written, “The almost simultaneous isolation of the two cultures and the appreciable difference in the activity between the cultures at the time of isolation constitute evidence that they were independent isolations, rather than that one was obtained as a spore contaminant of the other.”
In a collection of articles about the discovery titled Streptomycin, published in 1949 but actually finished in the fall of 1948, Waksman had been quite clear on the origins of the two strains. “Two cultures of an organism were isolated by Schatz and Waksman in September 1943... They were designated as 18-16 and D-1, were identical both in their ability to produce the same type of antibiotic substance and in their morphological characteristics. They were isolated in different rooms, in different buildings on the campus, and within two days of each other, thus excluding the possibility of one’s originating from the other as a contaminant.”
Now, in an effort to bolster the contaminant story, Waksman introduced another, more serious doubt about Schatz’s experimen
ts. During cross-examination toward the end of the deposition, Watson deliberately led Waksman into a story about a missing page from Schatz’s lab notebook. Eisenberg made a note: “Funny business.”
WATSON: With respect to this [notebook] No 2, Dr. Waksman, in this book marked Exhibit P-8 for identification, one page is torn out. It is between the page marked 52 and 53, and the page marked 54 and 55. Will you please state what your knowledge is of that missing page, if any?
W: Yes, that has a very interesting story behind it, Mr. Watson. Schatz, just before he left the laboratory, I began to get certain rumors that something is happening. Somebody is spreading rumors claiming a major portion of the credit for the discovery of streptomycin. One fine day, one of my assistants reported to me that a gentleman by the name of Martin, presumably a cousin or uncle of Schatz, broke into the laboratory and carried off Schatz’s notebooks and kidnapped Schatz himself. I could not understand what was happening.
“Nonsense,” Schatz wrote.
W: 48 hours later, or thereabouts, Schatz appeared with the notebooks. I asked him, “What is going on here, anyway?” He said, “My family has been persecuting me. They have been after me that I should try to get more credit, that you are not giving me enough credit for my work.”
“Not true, not true,” wrote Schatz.
W: I said, “Now, look here, have I not given you enough credit? What do you think? If you feel in any way that I have not given you enough credit, why didn’t you come to me? You knew very well that I bent over backwards to give you all the possible credit.” He said, “Yes, I know, but my family, I will have to leave them. I will have to run away from them. I will have to run away because they are controlling me. They are forcing me to do things that I do not like to do.”
Experiment Eleven Page 16
