WEBVTT - The Obscure Virus Club 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:28.396 Pushkin. In the second half of the twentieth century, a 0:00:28.436 --> 0:00:32.356 group of scientists became obsessed with an obscure family of viruses. 0:00:33.116 --> 0:00:36.676 There weren't many people in the Obscure Virus Club. They 0:00:36.716 --> 0:00:40.516 all knew each other. The rest of the world rolled 0:00:40.516 --> 0:00:41.396 its eyes at them. 0:00:42.036 --> 0:00:42.676 Read the letter. 0:00:43.036 --> 0:00:46.956 Okay, dear Bob, I regret that your paper on the 0:00:46.996 --> 0:00:51.076 T cell retrovirus is not acceptable for publication in the 0:00:51.156 --> 0:00:52.116 Journal of Virology. 0:00:52.756 --> 0:00:56.356 Exhibit A in the archives of the Obscure Virus Club 0:00:56.796 --> 0:00:57.916 are rejection letter. 0:00:58.316 --> 0:01:01.396 I completely agree with reviewer number one. There's a little 0:01:01.436 --> 0:01:06.076 point in perpetuating this controversy about the presumed viral nature 0:01:06.276 --> 0:01:07.076 of this material. 0:01:08.116 --> 0:01:11.356 Not thank you very much. This is fascinating, but you're 0:01:11.396 --> 0:01:12.316 not quite there yet. 0:01:13.236 --> 0:01:14.076 Just no. 0:01:14.956 --> 0:01:18.556 I hope you'll understand. We can only accept definitive data 0:01:18.716 --> 0:01:22.076 to resolve this question. Therefore, I have no alternative but 0:01:22.196 --> 0:01:25.956 to reject this paper outright and advise you we cannot 0:01:26.036 --> 0:01:30.716 consider the present manuscript in any form. 0:01:29.676 --> 0:01:33.396 In any form. If you were in the Obscure Virus Club, 0:01:33.756 --> 0:01:37.676 you got this a lot. It didn't stop them, Thank god. 0:01:41.956 --> 0:01:45.316 My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to revisionist History, 0:01:45.556 --> 0:01:54.356 my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is the 0:01:54.396 --> 0:01:58.876 final episode of season four, a season of Jesuits and 0:01:58.996 --> 0:02:06.116 lawyers and gangsters and disputatious musicians, iconoclass and skeptics, and 0:02:06.156 --> 0:02:08.596 I want to finish with the story of the Obscure 0:02:08.676 --> 0:02:13.276 Virus Club, maybe the biggest band of iconoclasts of all. 0:02:13.476 --> 0:02:17.036 This is a bedtime story for this season of Revisionist History, 0:02:17.516 --> 0:02:20.116 and as with any story, you have to wait till 0:02:20.116 --> 0:02:28.556 the very end to understand what it's all about. The 0:02:28.596 --> 0:02:33.356 Obscure Virus Club had adjunct members, honorary members, hangers on, 0:02:33.996 --> 0:02:36.316 but I want to focus on the three people at 0:02:36.316 --> 0:02:43.916 its core. Ludwig Gross, Howard Temmen, Robert Gallo. Bob Gallo 0:02:44.396 --> 0:02:46.996 is the only one still alive, eighty two years old, 0:02:47.356 --> 0:02:50.516 still at the office every day. He has pictures of 0:02:50.556 --> 0:02:52.516 his old compatriots on his walls. 0:02:52.956 --> 0:02:55.916 I think he sent this to me. Oh there he is, wife, Yeah, 0:02:56.076 --> 0:02:59.636 oh yeah. This is just, you know, unforgettable character. But 0:02:59.716 --> 0:03:02.316 that captures him, you know. Yeah. 0:03:02.556 --> 0:03:06.996 First Ludwig Gross, head of cancer research for the Veterans Administration. 0:03:07.116 --> 0:03:11.356 In the Bronx members asking him whether he wanted to 0:03:11.396 --> 0:03:15.116 get rich, Gross told him no, he had everything he 0:03:15.196 --> 0:03:19.236 needed and he counted it off. First, he had his car. 0:03:19.596 --> 0:03:22.916 He'd escaped Poland in his car after the Nazis invaded. 0:03:23.436 --> 0:03:24.316 He drove everywhere. 0:03:24.316 --> 0:03:26.556 When he came to see me at nih drop from 0:03:26.596 --> 0:03:30.356 New York Communion, his first experiments were in the backseat 0:03:30.876 --> 0:03:34.796 Trump what is called soa said number two, I have 0:03:34.956 --> 0:03:37.116 my television. I can see Perry Mason. He was a 0:03:37.156 --> 0:03:40.996 Craig Mason, adding number three, I had my work, and 0:03:41.116 --> 0:03:42.676 number four I had my wife. 0:03:44.676 --> 0:03:46.556 That's a load of bit Gross. 0:03:47.196 --> 0:03:50.876 At scientific meetings in the nineteen fifties, people wouldn't sit 0:03:50.996 --> 0:03:58.156 next to ludbit Gross. Everyone thought he was crazy. Next 0:03:58.276 --> 0:04:02.156 came the ringleader of the Obscure Virus Club, Howard Temmen, 0:04:02.836 --> 0:04:04.516 the remarkable Howard Tenmen. 0:04:05.236 --> 0:04:06.956 Really, wait, can you do the intention of this one? 0:04:06.996 --> 0:04:07.076 Man? 0:04:07.156 --> 0:04:10.476 I can do it right now if you get. 0:04:10.076 --> 0:04:14.116 Yeah, Vernon, where are the controls? 0:04:14.396 --> 0:04:17.156 You don't have any damn controls? 0:04:17.316 --> 0:04:20.756 And you're making too many things. 0:04:21.676 --> 0:04:23.316 With the hair like you the same hair. 0:04:23.316 --> 0:04:29.276 Nke Howard Temmen, Ludwig Gross, Robert Gallo. And what did 0:04:29.276 --> 0:04:30.116 they have in common? 0:04:30.796 --> 0:04:32.636 I mean, what's in common is we got pissed on. 0:04:33.636 --> 0:04:35.716 We all had our time of horror, I would. 0:04:35.556 --> 0:04:40.796 Say, three scientists shunned by their peers. That was the 0:04:40.836 --> 0:04:47.916 price of admission to the Obscure Virus Club. In nineteen eleven, 0:04:48.156 --> 0:04:52.236 a young physician named Francis Peyton Rouse set up a 0:04:52.276 --> 0:04:55.196 cancer research laboratory in New York at what is now 0:04:55.316 --> 0:04:59.436 Rockefeller University. A woman came to see Rouse. She had 0:04:59.476 --> 0:05:02.476 a poultry farm just outside the city, and she brought 0:05:02.476 --> 0:05:05.276 with her a hen with a large lump on its chest. 0:05:05.916 --> 0:05:09.436 The lump was cancer, a sarcoma that is a tumor 0:05:09.476 --> 0:05:13.116 of the connective tissue. We don't know why a cancer 0:05:13.156 --> 0:05:16.316 doctor would be curious about a dying chicken, but he was. 0:05:17.396 --> 0:05:21.676 Rous removed the tumor, grounded up, mixed it with saline solution, 0:05:22.076 --> 0:05:26.156 and injected the solution into healthy chickens. And what happened. 0:05:26.916 --> 0:05:32.396 The healthy chickens developed the same tumors. Rous was perplexed. 0:05:32.876 --> 0:05:35.996 Cancer is not supposed to be a communicable disease. It's 0:05:35.996 --> 0:05:39.116 caused by a malfunction of the genetic machinery inside a cell. 0:05:39.636 --> 0:05:42.276 It can't be passed from one person to another like 0:05:42.316 --> 0:05:46.036 the flu. But this is exactly what seemed to be happening. 0:05:46.596 --> 0:05:50.476 The chicken's tumor, Rouse concluded had to be caused by 0:05:50.516 --> 0:05:54.636 a virus. People didn't believe him. They said, well, maybe 0:05:54.636 --> 0:05:57.996 that tumor isn't really cancer, or so what this is 0:05:58.116 --> 0:06:01.996 just some weird thing that happens with chickens. Rouse got discouraged. 0:06:02.436 --> 0:06:07.956 He stopped working on viruses entirely. Years later, this same problem, 0:06:08.076 --> 0:06:11.276 whether cancer could bread like a virus, came to obsess 0:06:11.396 --> 0:06:15.756 Ludwig Gross. He worked with mice. Sometimes mice came down 0:06:15.796 --> 0:06:20.156 with leukemia, murine leukemia, which is a lot like human leukemia. 0:06:20.916 --> 0:06:24.076 Gross spread mice to show how the disease was communicated 0:06:24.116 --> 0:06:28.036 from one generation to the next. He became convinced that 0:06:28.036 --> 0:06:31.556 the leukemia was caused by a virus passed from mother 0:06:31.636 --> 0:06:36.196 to offspring. But the same thing happened. Other scientists didn't 0:06:36.196 --> 0:06:39.636 believe him. Here was this strange emigree in the bronx, 0:06:39.996 --> 0:06:44.356 imagining cancer causing viruses in mice. Why couldn't that just 0:06:44.436 --> 0:06:46.876 be a set of faulty genes being passed down. 0:06:47.316 --> 0:06:48.796 He proved it was viral disease. 0:06:49.316 --> 0:06:52.356 But everybody's ah, you know that his cages are filthy, 0:06:52.396 --> 0:06:55.636 and it has no technology whatsoever. It is you know, 0:06:55.716 --> 0:06:58.636 really what he's doing. You know, it was all bad mouth, 0:06:58.676 --> 0:07:01.916 completely essentially virtually destroyed. 0:07:02.876 --> 0:07:05.716 Gross finally won the Lasca Award, one of the most 0:07:05.756 --> 0:07:10.116 prestigious prizes in medicine, in nineteen seventy four when he 0:07:10.156 --> 0:07:14.196 was seventy. In the Obscure Virus Club, you often had 0:07:14.196 --> 0:07:19.676 to wait your entire career for validation. After Gross comes 0:07:19.716 --> 0:07:24.196 Howard Tenman, the remarkable Howard Temman. Timman was the second 0:07:24.196 --> 0:07:27.156 of three sons of a lawyer and an activist from Philadelphia. 0:07:27.796 --> 0:07:30.916 The biologist David Baltimore met Temmen when they were both 0:07:30.996 --> 0:07:34.276 part of the student summer program at the Jackson Laboratory 0:07:34.316 --> 0:07:35.276 in Maine. 0:07:35.356 --> 0:07:37.676 If you had a question or there was a lecture 0:07:37.676 --> 0:07:40.236 and you didn't understand something, you could. 0:07:39.996 --> 0:07:40.516 Go to Howard. 0:07:40.556 --> 0:07:45.076 And Howard knew everything. He was an amazing intellect, and 0:07:45.156 --> 0:07:49.956 so I spent the summer in a sense as his student. 0:07:50.756 --> 0:07:53.716 He was famous at Swarthmore actually because they said he 0:07:53.756 --> 0:07:55.596 had read every book in the library and they had 0:07:55.636 --> 0:08:01.156 to buy more for him. I mean, I wasn't the 0:08:01.196 --> 0:08:03.836 only one to notice that there was something very special 0:08:03.836 --> 0:08:05.116 about him. 0:08:06.076 --> 0:08:09.316 This is the kind of person he was. Tenman donated 0:08:09.316 --> 0:08:12.876 his bar Mitzvah money to a refugee camp. Years later, 0:08:13.116 --> 0:08:16.276 when he visited the Soviet Union, he smuggled in Hebrew 0:08:16.356 --> 0:08:19.596 prayer books. I met Temmen once when I was a 0:08:19.596 --> 0:08:22.596 cub reporter for the Washington Post. I happened to be 0:08:22.636 --> 0:08:25.836 in Madison, Wisconsin, at the University of Wisconsin, where he 0:08:25.876 --> 0:08:29.076 taught his whole career. I went to see him. I 0:08:29.116 --> 0:08:32.036 don't remember the specifics of what he talked about, and 0:08:32.076 --> 0:08:36.276 I've lost my notes. What I remember with absolute clarity 0:08:36.676 --> 0:08:39.916 is the feeling I had after leaving his office, which 0:08:39.916 --> 0:08:42.716 is that I had never met someone so completely in 0:08:42.756 --> 0:08:46.196 command of his own thinking. I've only ever gotten that 0:08:46.276 --> 0:08:50.996 sense of command of mastery from watching great athletes, never 0:08:51.116 --> 0:08:56.916 biologists with squeaky voices. Temmen's wife, Rayla says that when 0:08:56.956 --> 0:08:59.796 Temmen first got to Wisconsin, he would sit in on 0:08:59.916 --> 0:09:02.116 seminars in other departments. 0:09:02.036 --> 0:09:06.396 And as soon as he got here, he drew attention 0:09:06.516 --> 0:09:08.996 of people because he would sit up in the front 0:09:09.156 --> 0:09:13.636 and then he would ask the most pointed, brilliant, important 0:09:13.716 --> 0:09:16.956 questions of the speaker. So everyone said, well, who is he? 0:09:17.036 --> 0:09:17.596 Who is he? 0:09:18.436 --> 0:09:22.276 But once you met Howard Temmen, you remembered Howard temen. 0:09:24.276 --> 0:09:27.596 One of his former graduate students, Sandy Weller, says she 0:09:27.636 --> 0:09:29.116 could barely keep up with him. 0:09:29.396 --> 0:09:32.036 He rode his bike to work every day he took 0:09:32.116 --> 0:09:34.196 He never took the elevator. If he had to go 0:09:34.196 --> 0:09:37.596 to the ninth floor, he walked ninth floors, and several 0:09:37.596 --> 0:09:39.676 times he made me do that, or he just assumed 0:09:39.676 --> 0:09:41.076 I would do that with him if we were going 0:09:41.156 --> 0:09:42.876 up to the seminar on the ninth floor. 0:09:43.836 --> 0:09:47.316 Temman could have done anything, walked into any field in 0:09:47.436 --> 0:09:51.156 science and left his mark. But he became obsessed by 0:09:51.156 --> 0:09:54.796 the chicken tumor that Peyton Rouse had discovered fifty years earlier, 0:09:55.276 --> 0:09:57.396 now known as rous sarcoma virus. 0:09:57.996 --> 0:10:02.756 And so what I was interested in doing was understanding 0:10:02.756 --> 0:10:04.636 how that virus closes cancel. 0:10:05.676 --> 0:10:08.396 That's tenmen in an oral history taken a few years 0:10:08.396 --> 0:10:12.396 before his death in the nineteen fifties. You could not 0:10:12.516 --> 0:10:15.076 have picked a more obscure topic to study than a 0:10:15.116 --> 0:10:19.756 cancer virus. People were still avoiding Ludwig Gross at conferences. 0:10:20.076 --> 0:10:23.436 The University of Wisconsin had a virology position open at 0:10:23.436 --> 0:10:26.076 their cancer institute. No one wanted it. 0:10:27.156 --> 0:10:30.196 You said when you came to Wisconsin that the virology 0:10:30.196 --> 0:10:32.676 position had been offered to several people, and they hadn't 0:10:32.716 --> 0:10:33.396 been interested. 0:10:33.596 --> 0:10:35.916 How come these people had turned down the position. 0:10:36.636 --> 0:10:40.516 Viruses at that time were not considered very important in 0:10:41.196 --> 0:10:46.076 cancer research. They had always been a side show for 0:10:46.396 --> 0:10:47.596 cancer research. 0:10:48.076 --> 0:10:51.596 His first office at Wisconsin was in the basement next 0:10:51.636 --> 0:10:52.996 to the sump pump. 0:10:52.916 --> 0:10:59.156 And my office was in what had been a transfer room, 0:10:59.516 --> 0:11:03.316 a little isolated room about the size of just where 0:11:03.356 --> 0:11:05.516 you're sitting, a couple of square feet. 0:11:06.396 --> 0:11:10.796 But none of that mattered. Tenman was hooked. Raus's sarcoma 0:11:11.076 --> 0:11:14.836 was a weird, enthralling puzzle. He began to notice all 0:11:14.916 --> 0:11:19.196 kinds of anomalies. For example, sometimes the virus would mutate, 0:11:19.556 --> 0:11:21.916 it would take on a strange new shape, and then 0:11:21.956 --> 0:11:25.116 afterwards the cell it infected would take on the same 0:11:25.276 --> 0:11:29.196 strange shape, as if the virus weren't just occupying the 0:11:29.236 --> 0:11:32.676 cell it infected the way say a flu virus does. 0:11:33.036 --> 0:11:37.036 The flu just sits inside your cells, multiplying until your 0:11:37.036 --> 0:11:40.356 immune system drives it out. The flu is a squatter, 0:11:41.196 --> 0:11:44.316 but rous sarcoma seemed like it was conquering the cells 0:11:44.356 --> 0:11:48.556 it was infecting, inserting its own genetic information into the 0:11:48.636 --> 0:11:52.356 DNA of its host. How it did that made no sense. 0:11:53.036 --> 0:11:56.236 At the time, the field of genetics had something scientists 0:11:56.236 --> 0:12:00.396 called the central dogma. The central dogma held that genetic 0:12:00.436 --> 0:12:06.436 information only moved in one direction. DNA gave instructions to RNA, 0:12:06.956 --> 0:12:12.436 which then used those instructions to make proteins DNA to RNA. 0:12:13.036 --> 0:12:17.556 Rous sarcoma was an RNA virus. According to the central dogma, 0:12:17.596 --> 0:12:21.076 then it was impossible for it to insert its genetic 0:12:21.156 --> 0:12:23.756 information into the DNA of the cells that was infecting. 0:12:24.796 --> 0:12:26.596 RNA didn't move in that direction. 0:12:26.956 --> 0:12:30.236 We knew the basic lifestyle of most viruses, but now 0:12:30.316 --> 0:12:34.956 the cancer inducing viruses stood out as different than and 0:12:35.556 --> 0:12:36.396 hard to understand. 0:12:36.676 --> 0:12:39.716 David Baltimore again, what was different and hard to understand 0:12:39.716 --> 0:12:41.396 about them? 0:12:41.636 --> 0:12:46.356 Well, the fundamental thing was that they had RNA as 0:12:46.396 --> 0:12:50.156 their genome, and yet they were able to establish a 0:12:50.676 --> 0:12:54.356 permanent position inside the cell and run the cell. So 0:12:54.356 --> 0:12:56.836 he turned it from a normal cell to a cancer cell. 0:12:57.196 --> 0:12:59.996 And so here it was behaving a bit like DNA, 0:13:00.356 --> 0:13:04.316 and yet it was an RNA virus, and that didn't 0:13:04.356 --> 0:13:08.796 make sense. Howard had been driven by that question for 0:13:09.236 --> 0:13:10.476 ten years previously. 0:13:12.516 --> 0:13:15.956 David Baltimore watched his old friend Howard Temmen stand up 0:13:15.996 --> 0:13:19.076 at conferences and try to convince everyone else to take 0:13:19.116 --> 0:13:22.996 this weird anomaly seriously. Why did that question assume such 0:13:23.556 --> 0:13:24.756 importance for him. 0:13:24.716 --> 0:13:27.036 Well, because he was thinking twenty four hours a day 0:13:27.556 --> 0:13:29.036 about these viruses. 0:13:29.556 --> 0:13:33.156 As he obsessed over the puzzle of Rous's sarcoma, Temmen 0:13:33.236 --> 0:13:36.836 decided it could only mean one thing. The central dogma 0:13:36.996 --> 0:13:40.596 must be wrong. One of the fundamental facts about human 0:13:40.636 --> 0:13:45.396 genetics taught in every science textbook and every science classroom 0:13:45.516 --> 0:13:49.356 in the world, had to be in error. There must 0:13:49.396 --> 0:13:52.476 be a class of viruses like Rous's sarcoma virus that 0:13:52.556 --> 0:13:57.996 could somehow work backwards from RNA to DNA. It was 0:13:58.036 --> 0:14:01.596 as if he said, yes, the Earth rotates around the 0:14:01.636 --> 0:14:04.796 Sun in an anti clockwise manner, but the only explanation 0:14:04.876 --> 0:14:08.036 for what I'm seeing with Rous is that on occasion 0:14:08.516 --> 0:14:10.756 the Earth must stop and go clockwise. 0:14:11.676 --> 0:14:15.396 And then he spent about ten years at University of 0:14:15.396 --> 0:14:19.956 Wisconsin trying to find an experiment that would convince anybody 0:14:19.956 --> 0:14:22.396 else of that, and he couldn't. 0:14:23.916 --> 0:14:27.956 Temen had an intuition, a hunch, but no one was 0:14:27.996 --> 0:14:31.156 going to overturn the central dogma because some guy from 0:14:31.196 --> 0:14:47.156 Wisconsin had a hunch it wasn't right. Science is a 0:14:47.196 --> 0:14:51.236 social process. People within a field are in constant contact. 0:14:51.516 --> 0:14:54.716 They share notes, they gossip, They compete for the brightest 0:14:54.756 --> 0:14:58.836 graduate students, for grant money, for prizes. When you say 0:14:58.876 --> 0:15:01.756 something that the group doesn't believe, you pay a price. 0:15:02.436 --> 0:15:05.116 And with every year that passes with you saying one 0:15:05.156 --> 0:15:08.356 thing and the group saying another, the price gets higher. 0:15:09.236 --> 0:15:11.636 First of all, people thought he was crazy. I mean, 0:15:11.676 --> 0:15:16.076 he didn't prove his theory for six years after proposing it. 0:15:16.476 --> 0:15:19.276 Temen's former graduate student Sandy Weller. 0:15:19.396 --> 0:15:22.236 And that six years was a very difficult period for 0:15:22.556 --> 0:15:26.436 all of his students, and for him. He was a pariah. 0:15:26.636 --> 0:15:28.956 They thought his students were nuts for working with him. 0:15:29.396 --> 0:15:33.916 At one point, Howard Tenmen wrote Francis Krick, Sir Francis Krick, 0:15:34.436 --> 0:15:38.516 Nobel Prize winner of Watson and Krick, the co discoverers 0:15:38.556 --> 0:15:43.356 of DNA, the authors of the central dogma itself. Temmen 0:15:43.556 --> 0:15:47.356 writes Krick a letter gently suggesting that an amendment to 0:15:47.396 --> 0:15:49.116 the Central Dogma might be in order. 0:15:49.716 --> 0:15:53.236 Quick writes back, very condescending, arrogant letter. Well, I'm sure 0:15:53.276 --> 0:15:56.436 you think this is true, but you must realize you're wrong, 0:15:57.036 --> 0:15:59.876 And to talk like that to Howard, to me, that's 0:15:59.996 --> 0:16:00.676 just such. 0:16:00.476 --> 0:16:03.796 A Most people would have given up, but he doesn't 0:16:04.156 --> 0:16:05.356 because he's Howard Temman. 0:16:05.836 --> 0:16:08.116 The word that it comes to mind is righteous, which 0:16:08.236 --> 0:16:11.396 has a negative of down to it. I don't mean 0:16:11.396 --> 0:16:12.076 to be negative. 0:16:12.516 --> 0:16:14.396 This is Timens's daughter, Miriam. 0:16:14.676 --> 0:16:18.916 But he had his strong moral compass and was incredibly, 0:16:19.036 --> 0:16:23.156 incredibly confident person was blessed with that and so was 0:16:23.156 --> 0:16:27.196 not shy about speaking his mind. 0:16:27.676 --> 0:16:29.636 Yeah, where do you think that? 0:16:29.956 --> 0:16:31.716 What was the source of his confidence? 0:16:32.356 --> 0:16:37.076 That's what I asked my uncle Michael Temman the source 0:16:37.116 --> 0:16:40.276 of his stick with itness was And his answer was, well, 0:16:40.316 --> 0:16:40.836 he knew. 0:16:40.636 --> 0:16:41.116 He was right. 0:16:41.916 --> 0:16:44.836 And then one day in nineteen seventy, he came home 0:16:44.876 --> 0:16:47.036 to his wife, Raila, full of excitement. 0:16:47.636 --> 0:16:51.396 He was going to be away on our anniversary, which 0:16:51.476 --> 0:16:55.716 was May twenty seventh, and he was explaining why he 0:16:55.836 --> 0:16:58.916 had to leave and that we would celebrate later. I said, well, 0:16:58.956 --> 0:17:03.996 that's fine, that's fine, and he said that actually he 0:17:04.116 --> 0:17:07.756 had something that was a bombshell that he was going 0:17:07.796 --> 0:17:11.156 to announce at the meeting, but he couldn't tell me 0:17:11.356 --> 0:17:11.956 what it was. 0:17:13.476 --> 0:17:17.756 She said, let me guess you found it. He nodded. 0:17:18.396 --> 0:17:21.596 After years of trying, Temmen had located the part of 0:17:21.596 --> 0:17:26.876 the virus that enabled it to work backwards, and by 0:17:26.916 --> 0:17:30.956 an incredible stroke, his old friend David Baltimore had found 0:17:30.996 --> 0:17:35.116 it too. By then, Baltimore had fashioned his own equally 0:17:35.156 --> 0:17:39.636 brilliant career. At almost exactly the same moment, the two 0:17:39.676 --> 0:17:43.956 old friends independently discover a little enzyme looking in a 0:17:43.996 --> 0:17:48.916 distant corner of this strange class of RNA viruses an interpreter, 0:17:49.676 --> 0:17:54.156 something that speaks RNA and can translate into DNA, so 0:17:54.196 --> 0:17:56.876 that the virus had a mechanism for inserting its own 0:17:56.916 --> 0:18:02.116 genetic information into the cells it infected. Temmen finds the 0:18:02.276 --> 0:18:06.516 enzyme in rous sarcoma virus. Baltimore went looking for it 0:18:06.636 --> 0:18:10.636 in mouse leukemia virus, the samevirus that had haunted Ludwig 0:18:10.676 --> 0:18:16.236 gross Temen and Baltimore call it reverse transcript tase, and 0:18:16.316 --> 0:18:19.116 the class of viruses that had obsessed them all for 0:18:19.156 --> 0:18:24.476 so long now had a name retroviruses, because by virtue 0:18:24.516 --> 0:18:28.116 of their onboard translator, they had the ability to work 0:18:28.196 --> 0:18:32.916 in reverse. How hard was it to find this particular enzyme? 0:18:32.996 --> 0:18:33.116 Is that? 0:18:33.436 --> 0:18:34.076 Is it trivial? 0:18:34.796 --> 0:18:34.956 Oh? 0:18:34.996 --> 0:18:35.276 Really? 0:18:35.796 --> 0:18:37.516 It's really the notion of. 0:18:37.556 --> 0:18:39.636 Two days of experiments. Two days. 0:18:41.276 --> 0:18:43.916 So it's just the idea of knowing where to look 0:18:44.556 --> 0:18:46.196 and what to look for, and what to look for. 0:18:47.316 --> 0:18:51.876 You have to design, very specifically design your search so 0:18:51.956 --> 0:18:54.436 that it will show up this enzyme. If you don't 0:18:54.796 --> 0:18:56.676 look in exactly the right way, you're not going to 0:18:56.716 --> 0:19:02.636 spot it right. Just like that, the great puzzle was resolved. 0:19:04.556 --> 0:19:07.516 When I got to the point where I knew that 0:19:08.116 --> 0:19:11.236 the enzyme was in the virus particle. The first thing 0:19:11.236 --> 0:19:14.236 I did was to call Howard and say, I want 0:19:14.276 --> 0:19:15.076 to tell you about this. 0:19:15.716 --> 0:19:16.916 How did he respond? 0:19:17.716 --> 0:19:20.156 He responded by saying, we're doing those experiments too. 0:19:24.036 --> 0:19:27.836 In nineteen seventy, Baltimore and Tenmen jointly publish a famous 0:19:27.876 --> 0:19:31.916 series of papers in the prestigious journal Nature. Five years later, 0:19:32.076 --> 0:19:35.436 they were awarded the Nobel Prize along with their old teacher. 0:19:35.636 --> 0:19:39.116 We're not odel Becco. Temmen trades in his two first 0:19:39.116 --> 0:19:42.156 class tickets to Sweden for coach seats so he can 0:19:42.196 --> 0:19:43.436 take along as two daughters. 0:19:43.756 --> 0:19:46.156 Well it's always seven. When he got the Nobel Prize, 0:19:46.716 --> 0:19:48.236 and one of the things I remember is that his 0:19:48.396 --> 0:19:50.396 pants were too long and they were sort of all 0:19:50.436 --> 0:19:52.916 bunched around the bottom. 0:19:52.916 --> 0:19:56.116 Of his talks at the ceremony. Yes, did you go 0:19:56.196 --> 0:19:57.716 to the ceremony? Yes, oh you did. 0:19:57.956 --> 0:20:01.316 Yes, I kind of remember, meaning the king, and I 0:20:01.516 --> 0:20:07.876 definitely remember a banquet, very very fancy in this enormous 0:20:07.956 --> 0:20:12.916 wide staircase where the laureates came down and their spouses 0:20:12.956 --> 0:20:16.036 all paired with somebody else. So my father had a 0:20:16.276 --> 0:20:18.636 I believe a Danish princess on her arm, if I'm 0:20:18.636 --> 0:20:22.236 remembering correctly, in a long pink dress. I remember that. 0:20:22.316 --> 0:20:25.356 And my mother was escorted by some lesser prince person 0:20:26.556 --> 0:20:29.156 and the waiters, you know, all in this procession with 0:20:29.196 --> 0:20:30.476 the most beautiful food. 0:20:31.236 --> 0:20:34.476 It was the seventy fifth anniversary of the Nobel Prize, 0:20:34.676 --> 0:20:38.116 so all previous laureates were invited. There was a huge 0:20:38.236 --> 0:20:42.796 banquet in the Golden Hall. By tradition, one representative from 0:20:42.836 --> 0:20:46.636 each set of new laureates was allowed to speak. Temen 0:20:46.796 --> 0:20:50.836 was chosen. He stood up with his baggy tuxedo trousers 0:20:51.196 --> 0:20:52.516 and his squeaky. 0:20:52.116 --> 0:20:55.076 Voice, and he went up to the microphone in front 0:20:55.116 --> 0:20:59.396 of these twelve hundred people and thanked them very very 0:20:59.516 --> 0:21:03.556 much for the prize you have given us. For cancer research. 0:21:04.196 --> 0:21:07.156 His wife, Reyla was sitting in the audience with their daughters, 0:21:07.836 --> 0:21:11.596 and then Temen said, here, we are being rewarded for 0:21:11.676 --> 0:21:15.436 our work in understanding cancer, and you're all smoking. 0:21:15.996 --> 0:21:19.396 The King was smoking, the Queen was smoking. Everybody there 0:21:19.476 --> 0:21:23.036 was smoking. So they were just a gaus that he 0:21:23.076 --> 0:21:25.356 would get up and say that hat in front of 0:21:25.956 --> 0:21:26.956 all the royalty. 0:21:27.236 --> 0:21:28.556 Did they put out their cigarettes? 0:21:29.276 --> 0:21:29.396 Uh? 0:21:29.476 --> 0:21:32.276 Yeah, I think many of them did, because I was 0:21:32.356 --> 0:21:34.756 down in the floor on the table. I was sitting 0:21:34.796 --> 0:21:37.836 next to the Prince of Denmark, was my partner that night, 0:21:38.676 --> 0:21:42.156 and I looked and they people just looked shocked when 0:21:42.156 --> 0:21:44.476 he said it. I remember the look on the faces. 0:21:44.516 --> 0:21:46.556 And then they stubbed out the cigarettes. 0:21:50.436 --> 0:21:53.436 The story of the Obscure Virus Club could end here, 0:21:54.036 --> 0:21:57.476 Baltimore and Temen getting their medals from the King of Sweden, 0:21:57.876 --> 0:22:00.916 then Temen calling out the whole crew for their hypocrisy. 0:22:01.836 --> 0:22:06.076 Happy ending, But there's a whole other chapter to come. 0:22:20.356 --> 0:22:24.476 When David Baltimore and Howard Tenman discovered reverse transcript tastes 0:22:24.876 --> 0:22:29.316 and shattered the central dogma, Bob Gallo, the third charter 0:22:29.396 --> 0:22:32.236 member of the Obscure Virus Club, was still in his 0:22:32.356 --> 0:22:38.276 early thirties, the son of Italian working class immigrants, Lean, ambitious, 0:22:38.596 --> 0:22:42.996 raw a rising star at the National Cancer Institute. He 0:22:43.076 --> 0:22:46.356 went to a scientific conference in Paris, was stuck in 0:22:46.396 --> 0:22:49.156 a cab when he looked out the window and saw 0:22:49.196 --> 0:22:49.836 Howard Tamman. 0:22:51.236 --> 0:22:53.556 He's looking on the streets in Paris like a law soul. 0:22:53.916 --> 0:22:55.676 November of nineteen seventies. 0:22:55.716 --> 0:22:57.556 Now a hero, Howard the hero. 0:22:58.036 --> 0:23:01.356 Howard Tamman, the hero walking down of Paris street. 0:23:01.356 --> 0:23:08.476 Had window shopping or something by himself excus different, Yeah. 0:23:07.596 --> 0:23:08.756 How wre you are? 0:23:09.516 --> 0:23:10.756 I said, yes, there you are. 0:23:12.196 --> 0:23:16.716 I think sometimes we overestimate the importance of ideas and science. Yes, 0:23:17.036 --> 0:23:19.396 you read a paper in Nature and it changes the 0:23:19.396 --> 0:23:22.316 way you think about the central dogma. But what is 0:23:22.356 --> 0:23:24.476 it that really changes the way you think about the 0:23:24.476 --> 0:23:27.716 central dogma when you meet the person who challenged the 0:23:27.756 --> 0:23:32.436 central dogma, and because that person is so remarkable, you realize, oh, 0:23:32.916 --> 0:23:37.076 I want to be like that. Bob Gallo met Howard 0:23:37.076 --> 0:23:40.596 Teman and decided then and there to join the Obscure 0:23:40.676 --> 0:23:41.316 Virus Club. 0:23:41.676 --> 0:23:43.796 He was a hero to me. You know, when I 0:23:43.836 --> 0:23:47.156 was a child, it was Jodamajo. Okay, how adults hard 0:23:47.236 --> 0:23:50.916 of it, so, you know, even not that much older 0:23:50.916 --> 0:23:53.036 than me, it's a bit decade or so. But no, 0:23:53.316 --> 0:23:56.876 I couldn't identify with him like that. I just appreciated 0:23:56.956 --> 0:23:59.636 him a lot. I was just fascinated by him. I 0:23:59.676 --> 0:24:01.596 was just taken in by it. And I just said, 0:24:01.676 --> 0:24:03.996 you know, you know, listen to theiry goddamn thing this 0:24:04.036 --> 0:24:04.556 guy says. 0:24:04.596 --> 0:24:04.836 You know. 0:24:08.276 --> 0:24:12.396 Gallow's special was leukemia, cancer of the blood cells, and 0:24:12.436 --> 0:24:15.356