With an M.D. and Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Zurich in his home country of Switzerland, Weissmann has received a host of scientific honors. -- Mike Vogel
In 2000, Weissmann was interviewed in London by Istvan Hargittai, of Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary, for Hargittai's book "Candid Science II." "Candid Science II" is Hargittai's second in a series of extensive conversations with famous scientists, many of them Nobel winners. Hargittai succeeds in getting scientists to open up because he asks questions that require a base of knowledge beyond that of most journalists. Following is an excerpt of Hargittai's interview with Weissmann, which is used with the permission of Hargittai and the book's publisher, Imperial College Press.
Istvan Hargittai: Two years ago when we first met as lecturers (at) the "Frontiers of Biomedical Research" meeting in Indian Falls, Calif., another lecturer told me, "Charles Weissmann should have shared the Nobel Prize for prion."
Charles Weissmann: It depends on the view you take on how one deserves a Nobel Prize. Stanley Prusiner got the prize because he promoted this very unconventional theory that a protein could be an infectious agent. Stan was the person who carried the ball when nobody was willing to listen to him. I came in skeptical, but through our own experiences I became convinced that the protein-only hypothesis is correct.
Stan was very intent on getting the Nobel Prize, and he really worked hard at it. He asked people to propose him, including myself, which I did. As for myself, I felt that if there was merit in what I've done, it would be recognized without my having to do anything about it. And I did receive a number of other awards.
Hargittai: How do you feel about animal experiments?
Weissmann: They are a necessary evil. I dislike them intensely. Giving prions to mice causes suffering. I've occasionally wondered whether if I had to do these experiments myself, physically, I would be able to do them. I guess I would because in the prion field you currently cannot do without them.
Hargittai: A few days ago we heard the news about cloning piglets. What is your reaction?
Weissmann: It was not unexpected. It works for sheep; it works for cattle; it works for mice. Why shouldn't it work for pigs? It is true, though, that cloning pigs was technically far more difficult than cloning sheep and cattle.
Hargittai: Would you favor (cloning humans)?
Weissmann: There may be circumstances where there would be a good medical and humanitarian reason to do it. I don't see that generating cloned humans in itself is very desirable, but the technology opens the possibility of generating tissues and even organs for transplantation. I don't have an ethical problem with it.
The argument is if you clone an individual, will he and his clone have identity problems? They will not. They are not the same people. If you clone Einstein, you won't get Einstein. You'll get the substrate for an Einstein, but he will never be Einstein. I sometimes wonder whether it might not be useful to have a couple of individuals with Einstein's potential around in every generation. Or with Mozart's.
Hargittai: Would you comment on the debate on genetically modified food?
Weissmann: A lot of it is ridiculous. I'm convinced that we can make greatly improved plants; a very nice example is the introduction of genes for enzymes required for making Vitamin A in rice. It required the introduction of four different enzymes. Vitamin A is a vitamin whose absence causes blindness. There is no danger to the environment in this at all.
I have more sympathy for people who say that resistance to herbicides might spread to weeds. But I have no objection to changing a plant to have higher nutritive value.
The issue has been very badly handled. Monsanto launched these plants with herbicide resistance and insecticide resistance. Genetically modified soya, for example, has become very popular with farmers because it improves the yields. The farmers benefit, Monsanto benefits, only the consumers do not benefit. If the price for these genetically modified products had been lower than for the natural products, the consumer would have benefited as well, and it would have taken a lot of wind out of the sails of the opponents.
Hargittai: I would like to ask you about your beginnings, family background, education, the beginnings of your career.
Weissmann: I am Swiss. I grew up in Switzerland, except for four years when we were in Brazil during WWII. My father was worried that the Germans would occupy Switzerland and that the Swiss Jews would suffer the same fate as those in Germany. My father was in the film business. He had movie houses in Switzerland as early as 1912, when movies were still silent. My father worked until he was 89, although he stopped buying new films when he was 85.
I got interested in science at the age of 11 when I read Paul de Kruif's book "Microbe Hunters." I read the book in English. I learned English when I was 4 years old. I was brought up by an English governess. I early on wanted to become a physician, and I took great interest in medicine already when I was 12 or 13 years old. I bought a lot of second-hand textbooks on histology. I found it very aesthetic.
My father was a rather observant Jew, and I was brought up mildly observant.
I have four children, one daughter, Ruth, from a premarital relationship when I was very young, and two boys, Jody and Ricki, and a girl, Susi, from my first wife, Sigi. My current wife, Juliette, also has three children from her first marriage. Juliette and I have a long history; we were introduced to each other when she was 17 and I 26. We went out together for some two years, but when I left for the U.S. in 1960, we separated and both she and I got married to others. We then met again in 1970 and fell in love. We eventually divorced our spouses and married.
Hargittai: You started life with financial freedom, which is rare among scientists. Then, later in your life you seemed to gravitate into money-making projects. Was it important to you?
Weissmann: I never believed my projects would make money. I joined the Biogen project because I thought it was an exciting adventure; I always had the desire to turn basic research into something practical. As a young student, I dreamed of curing cancer. Inasmuch as interferon can be helpful in some cancer indications, I made a modest contribution in this direction. As it happens, I did also benefit financially, and I have enjoyed building up a small art collection and sponsoring research through a foundation I set up some years ago.
Hargittai: If you could chart your career from the beginning, would you follow the same path that you did?
Weissmann: I only have one relatively small regret, maybe not so small, but I would've spent more time with my children. I almost never spent the summer vacations with my children because there was always a Cold Spring Harbor Meeting, a Gordon Conference or some other meeting.
Hargittai: You have been very successful.
Weissmann: When I set out to become a researcher, I felt very insecure and worried that I would fail. But somehow everything worked out quite well. I've also been quite healthy, at least so far. I sometimes wonder about my father. He was very successful in what he did, but in the last year of his life he was bedridden, paralyzed by a stroke. He was very aware but couldn't speak, and much of the time he was dozing. I wonder whether he regretted his life because of the suffering in that final year. I will never know. I knew though that at the end he wanted to die because he refused to eat, he refused to drink. It was very clear.
Hargittai: Was he helped dying?
Weissmann: Not that I know of. When he refused food, the physician gave him infusions, and that was another torture for him. I would not have had the courage to help my father die, and I don't know whether his physician was humane enough to do so. I don't know.
Hargittai: Do you ever think of such an eventuality for yourself?
Weissmann: Yes. I have an agreement with a close friend; if either of us came into such a situation, we would not let each other suffer in that fashion.
Hargittai: Would there be legal complications?
Weissmann: If you were totally paralyzed and could not take a poison on your own, yes, but if you were able to take a glass and bring it to your lips, in Switzerland it's not a problem. Helping someone to commit suicide is not a crime.
Hargittai: There were medical experiments in Auschwitz that we have known about. How should the scientific community treat information from these human experiments?
Weissmann: I'm probably in the minority here, but my view is that if valuable information had been obtained, obtained at the cost of the victims, and if this information could help others, it should be used, despite its criminal origin. If a member of my family had been a victim, I believe it would be some consolation if his suffering resulted in the saving of lives. The sad truth is that, as far as I know, nothing of value was discovered in those so-called "experiments."
Hargittai: There are still thousands of brains of people killed, stored somewhere in Germany.
Weissmann: I would consider it highly objectionable to use these brains for research. They should be buried. But with information recorded on paper, that's a different situation; it's not the same as continuing the experiment.
Hargittai: Why are these brains still being stored in Germany?
Weissmann: They should not be stored. They should not be used. They should be buried.