Experiment Eleven (24 page)

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 experiments. 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.”

“Nonsense,” Schatz noted.

W: I said, “Where are the notebooks?” He said, “Here are the notebooks.” I didn't pay any attention and of course I wouldn't go over every page to see whether it is there ... Later, when I checked up in the notebook, I find that the crucial page—you asked me before about the second culture 18-16—the crucial page ... between August 25th and September 10th there was a crucial experiment and that page has been very neatly taken out, and worse than that, Schatz with his own handwriting very carefully corrected all the corresponding pages ... Well, then there is a question here for Sherlock Holmes. I began to go carefully through again and what do you think I discover? A very interesting psychological problem. The very date when the report is made about the chicken throat culture, I find a note on the very page where the first experiment is recorded, I find a note written by Mr. Schatz a year and a half later on February 2, 1945: “Miss Jones brought over the chicken throat and swabbed the plate while I was picking actinomycetes or after I have selected them for transfer. Therefore 18-16 and D-1 are separate isolations.”
Now tell me
—

Watson interrupted, “Never mind the comments. Just give us the facts.”

E: What was the name of the assistant who reported [the missing page] to you?

W: That I wouldn't be able to tell you, because at that time Schatz was no longer working in our main laboratory.

E: You
don't recall who that was
?

W: No.

E: Were you sufficiently familiar with that particular notebook to know that a page that had been taken out contained something on it when it was taken out?

W: Well, of course. I used those notebooks in writing up the papers. Those notebooks, as I said, Schatz was the force that wrote those lines, but I knew not only every word, but every idea behind it.

Eisenberg asked what the missing page might have contained.

W: That page may have contained information of critical importance to the isolation of culture 18-16 as related to culture D-1, because that is the page where it would logically have been described ...

E: But you are not saying that it did contain such information?

W: No, of course I am not.

E: Was anyone present when you talked with the plaintiff about the return of the notebooks or the breaking in incident that you talk about beside you and the plaintiff?

W: I don't think so. As I said, he came to my office and cried like a baby. He cried and he said, “My God, Dr. Waksman, you have given me far more credit than I deserve. I have got to run away from my family.” I said, “Well, that is for you and your family to fight out, but please don't drag me into it.”

Schatz wrote, “Not True. Incredible!”

E: That is all.

The hearing adjourned at 2:50 P.M. It would be a vital part of Schatz's case.

UNDER OATH, WAKSMAN
had reluctantly conceded that Schatz's work had been “important,” then retracted that judgment, and then restored it. He
had revealed, for the first time, the personal fortune of $350,000 that he had amassed from the royalties of streptomycin. He had reinforced the doubt about who had given Schatz the culture from the chicken's throat, the so-called D-1 strain, and he had then introduced two entirely new doubts: about whether the second strain, 18-16, might, in fact, have been the same as the first, merely a contamination from D-1, and about the missing page in Schatz's notebook. In the process he had accused Schatz's Uncle Joe of unlawful entry into his laboratory and of stealing a lab notebook, apparently with the intention of doctoring Schatz's experiments.

Schatz's notebook showed that a page had, indeed, been cut out. But there was no evidence of any break in the experiment that he had been conducting at the time—Experiment 11—in which the two separate strains of
A. griseus
, D-1 from Doris Jones and 18-16 from heavily manured soil, had produced streptomycin. The missing page was at the end of Experiment 11, but by then both D-1 and 18-16 had already been recorded separately as showing clear zones.

The page of Albert Schatz's laboratory notebook showing the start of Experiment Eleven. (Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries
)

Watson would later point out to Waksman, if he didn't know it at the time, that the missing-page allegation was “
insignificant
.”

And the story of the break-in by Uncle Joe and the theft of a key notebook
could not have been true
because Watson's brother, Dudley Watson, another Rutgers Foundation lawyer, would later reveal the notebook in question had been with the Merck lawyers on the date specified by Waksman. They had asked for it to complete the streptomycin patent application.

EISENBERG WOULD HAVE
a chance to pursue Waksman's new allegations later, when he examined Doris Jones and the pathologist Dr. Fred Beaudette. For the moment, he was anxious to take advantage of what they had found out about the money.

In the tradition of the plaintiff's bar, juicy tidbits extracted in depositions are fair game. Eisenberg immediately leaked the story about Waksman's royalties. By this time, Waksman and his wife were in Europe, out of the public eye, but the story gave Schatz new confidence that he would win the case. His somber mood changed. He wrote to Jones,

People, however, don't seem to realize that I would never have instituted litigation if I did not feel confident of proving my charges in court. The simple fact of the matter, Doris, is that
Waksman is through
!!

He's in Europe now, probably doing a bit of politiking [
sic
] in an effort to collect a Nobel Prize. Very likely he is looking upon this as a last straw, with it and the attached prestige, he no doubt feels he has a chance. But it will not help him. His greed and lust for fame will convict him.

You have no idea, Doris, as to the evidence on which our case is based. For example, I will tell you
in the strictest confidence
Selman A. Waksman has to date pocketed $350,000 of the total royalties derived from the streptomycin patent!!!

Can you imagine what [people] will think when this information is made public!!! You see Waksman didn't give all the money away as he
publicly led the world to believe. Privately, he feathered his bed, and feathered it well ...

I wanted you to know that I haven't gone off half-cocked on a willow-the-wisp [
sic
] chase. It is quite true that this litigation will result in the ruination of a professional reputation, but it is Waksman not I who will be ruined.