Conversations in Science with Dan Rather and Harold Varmus: From Oncogenes to PLOS

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00:00:15.05 RATHER: Doctor, thank you very much for doing this.
00:00:16.25 VARMUS: It's a pleasure. Call me Harold.
00:00:31.07 RATHER: Tell me about yourself. Let's start... life story.
00:00:34.03 VARMUS: Well, I was born at the beginning of World War II.
00:00:38.28 My parents were the children of immigrants.
00:00:42.03 I went to public schools in Freeport, New York,
00:00:44.23 a modest bedroom community not far from New York City.
00:00:48.01 I grew up in a pretty conventional way.
00:00:50.12 Probably after my sophomore year in high school,
00:00:52.27 I was exposed to kids who were more ambitious than I was
00:00:56.06 when I went to the Putney School work camp.
00:00:58.28 And that had a pivotal effect on me.
00:01:01.11 It made me realize that there was more to life
00:01:03.21 than growing up as a comfortable son of a physician
00:01:06.28 on Long Island.
00:01:08.17 And I went off to Amherst College
00:01:10.09 thinking I would probably stick to my pre-med ambitions,
00:01:13.18 but got interested in philosophy
00:01:16.04 and majored in literature,
00:01:17.20 and did a thesis on Charles Dickens that I'm still proud of.
00:01:21.07 I ended up going to graduate school in literature.
00:01:23.14 After about a year there,
00:01:25.18 I realized my friends who had gone to medical school
00:01:27.22 were having more fun than I was.
00:01:29.07 RATHER: What was it about science
00:01:31.14 that eventually weaned you away
00:01:33.22 from this principal interest in literature and philosophy?
00:01:36.22 VARMUS: I had always thought about myself as possibly being a doctor.
00:01:39.20 I admired what my father did.
00:01:41.12 I remember Gertrude Stein saying,
00:01:43.02 I went to medical school because it opens all doors.
00:01:45.19 I switched after my first year
00:01:48.08 and went to medical school at Columbia.
00:01:50.25 I enjoyed medical school.
00:01:52.25 Unlike most people, I was thinking seriously about biology
00:01:55.07 for the first time.
00:01:56.28 The first glimmers of molecular biology being important
00:01:59.23 in the practice of medicine
00:02:01.19 were on the horizon.
00:02:03.02 I could see that there was a lot to be learned
00:02:05.17 by understanding, more profoundly,
00:02:07.07 how cells worked and how genes informed cells.
00:02:09.16 Remember, this... though it seemed like
00:02:12.06 we were pretty far along in the world of molecular biology
00:02:14.29 at that time, in fact we were at the very naissance.
00:02:18.05 The double helix had only been discovered 10 years before.
00:02:21.02 RATHER: Speaking now about...
00:02:22.15 VARMUS: Early '60s... RATHER: Early '60s...
00:02:24.24 VARMUS: Yeah. Given that it was the Vietnam era,
00:02:27.03 many young physicians were not strong supporters of the war.
00:02:30.15 I was actually a very active opponent of the war.
00:02:32.12 We were all required to do national service of some kind.
00:02:35.08 Either you go into the army
00:02:37.13 or join the Public Health Service,
00:02:39.16 or you go to jail or leave the country.
00:02:42.11 So, there weren't that many choices available
00:02:45.04 for someone like me.
00:02:46.23 And I was fortunate
00:02:48.16 -- as someone who had basically learned some medicine
00:02:50.03 but had done no serious science --
00:02:51.28 to get an assignment at the NIH,
00:02:56.01 the National Institutes of Health.
00:02:57.21 And that was probably the critical moment
00:02:59.29 in the development of my career,
00:03:01.22 because up until that point,
00:03:03.18 the closest I came to thinking of myself as a scientist
00:03:06.02 was to say, I'm really fascinated
00:03:08.13 by what science is teaching us about medicine,
00:03:10.10 but I had no idea that I could actually do science.
00:03:13.02 Whenever I had tried, you know,
00:03:15.16 recapitulating ancient experiments in a...
00:03:17.16 in a classroom laboratory,
00:03:19.06 I either failed or was miserable doing it.
00:03:21.25 But suddenly, I saw that if you were devising your own experiments
00:03:26.16 and trying to answer the next question,
00:03:28.04 instead of what people have learned in the past,
00:03:29.25 that science was actually an incredibly stimulating activity.
00:03:33.09 I learned the joy of telling other people about your results,
00:03:36.19 about going to meetings and showing off,
00:03:38.24 getting together with like-minded scientists
00:03:41.24 and thinking about how you solve a problem
00:03:44.19 that seems ineluctable
00:03:47.07 but actually is approachable if you have the right tool.
00:03:50.14 And I had an epiphany one Saturday morning,
00:03:52.28 when I put things into we...
00:03:55.08 a kind of sophisticated Geiger counter,
00:03:57.19 and could see that I could actually measure
00:04:01.11 how one gene gets copied into RNA to make protein.
00:04:06.07 RATHER: Sort of a eureka moment for you?
00:04:07.28 VARMUS: It was. I mean, I wasn't answering a question.
00:04:10.19 I just had the tool. I had the... I had the measuring stick.
00:04:13.00 There were a lot of questions I could answer
00:04:15.17 that depended on trying to understand a basic problem in biology:
00:04:17.28 gene regulation.
00:04:20.16 You know, we come into life as human beings
00:04:23.15 with roughly 21,000 genes.
00:04:25.07 Each of our cells expresses -- makes the protein encoded by --
00:04:28.11 a different constellation of those 21,000 genes.
00:04:31.19 How does the cell know how to do that?
00:04:33.18 RATHER: So, now you're hooked on science.
00:04:35.09 VARMUS: Absolutely.
00:04:36.21 RATHER: At age 28, you make this switch.
00:04:38.21 In your world, that's pretty late on.
00:04:40.15 VARMUS: It is pretty late.
00:04:41.29 On the other hand, it's a chronology
00:04:44.02 that I like to point out to other people,
00:04:46.05 because I increasingly see these days
00:04:48.09 that very ambitious and talented high school students...
00:04:51.11 they think, if they don't start working in a lab when they're 16
00:04:54.08 and start publishing in Nature when they're 18,
00:04:56.06 that they're behind the others.
00:04:58.01 And I say, slow down.
00:05:00.12 Prolonged adolescence enriches your life,
00:05:02.16 enriches the way you do science,
00:05:04.29 and it doesn't need to be done so fast.
00:05:07.12 RATHER: Well, didn't turn it out all that badly.
00:05:09.05 You won the Nobel Prize.
00:05:10.28 VARMUS: Yeah. That's not why we were doing the work, though.
00:05:13.26 I think that's... I think that's an important thing to state.
00:05:15.20 RATHER: Now, I want to follow up on that,
00:05:17.18 because so many people
00:05:19.09 -- a lot of powerful people included --
00:05:20.26 who are organized around the idea
00:05:23.10 that people should be doing scientific research
00:05:25.07 with the goal of producing a better product,
00:05:27.15 as opposed to just learning for learning's sake
00:05:31.14 and knowledge for knowledge's sake.
00:05:33.02 VARMUS: No one does that kind of work oblivious to the possibilities.
00:05:36.10 Even then, you couldn't write a grant application
00:05:38.10 without saying, you know, how this might be useful.
00:05:40.25 And I was certainly aware that if we understood
00:05:43.15 the molecular basis of cancer,
00:05:45.09 we might do a better job
00:05:47.13 at diagnosing it at preventing it and treating it.
00:05:49.24 But I didn't myself want to develop the drugs
00:05:52.21 that might be useful someday
00:05:55.00 in trying to defeat this disease.
00:05:57.25 I hoped somebody would do that.
00:06:00.11 But I think all of us grow up in an environment,
00:06:02.27 whether consciously or not,
00:06:04.25 in which we understand the original precepts
00:06:07.19 of Vannevar Bush, who wrote the book Science: The Endless Frontier
00:06:11.15 for Franklin Roosevelt after Vannevar Bush
00:06:13.16 had served as the coordinator for all science
00:06:16.19 during World War II.
00:06:17.28 He said, let's give federal money to academic institutions,
00:06:21.17 and encourage them to study anything
00:06:25.02 that looks interesting and approachable,
00:06:26.14 and they will generate basic knowledge
00:06:28.20 that industry will then come along
00:06:31.01 and develop practical products from.
00:06:33.16 My concern is that there's a lot of fundamental biology
00:06:36.05 that we still don't understand.
00:06:37.26 We've worked with a very restricted number of organisms.
00:06:40.18 We have a set view about how life works
00:06:44.09 that is clearly incomplete.
00:06:45.27 You know, every year or two
00:06:47.28 there's some astounding discovery,
00:06:49.11 whether it's the CRISPR editing tools
00:06:51.13 or some new phenomenon about gene expression.
00:06:54.12 Completely unexpected.
00:06:56.17 And if we don't take chances,
00:06:59.19 conservatism in this field seeps in,
00:07:02.06 and people begin to think more about their careers,
00:07:07.09 the safe options, and not the risky ones.
00:07:10.16 I have to say, things were so comfortable for people of my generation,
00:07:15.11 I never really worried, am I gonna get a job or get a grant?
00:07:19.01 I just... the question was, am I gonna do good work?
00:07:21.06 RATHER: Well, I want to talk about the Nobel Prize.
00:07:23.11 Tell me exactly, for what did you win the prize?
00:07:27.00 VARMUS: What I wanted to do was learn something about the origins of cancer.
00:07:30.13 And not much was known about how a normal cell
00:07:34.17 becomes a cancer cell.
00:07:36.01 There was good reason to believe genetics was important.
00:07:39.26 We have to put ourselves back into a historical era.
00:07:43.14 We didn't have recombinant DNA technology.
00:07:45.18 We didn't how to do DNA sequencing.
00:07:47.11 And the only game in town
00:07:49.20 seemed to be a game that was played with viruses
00:07:53.14 of various animals
00:07:55.21 that could change a normal cell into a cancer cell
00:07:58.18 quite efficiently.
00:08:00.02 So, that was the game I wanted to play.
00:08:01.25 And how does a cell maintain its identity
00:08:04.02 and not become a cancer cell?
00:08:06.02 And what are the things that a virus
00:08:09.10 brings into a cell that allows it
00:08:11.24 to change the behavior of the cell so profoundly?
00:08:15.00 So, the prize was awarded because we had
00:08:18.07 discovered that the cancer gene of a chicken virus
00:08:20.26 called the Rous sarcoma virus
00:08:23.14 was derived from a normal cellular gene.
00:08:26.08 NOBEL SPEAKER: Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus,
00:08:29.24 your discoveries started to give
00:08:32.09 a new insight into the very complex disease
00:08:35.04 that we call cancer.
00:08:40.11 VARMUS: The fortunate thing is that we chose a virus
00:08:43.04 that had a single gene
00:08:45.19 that was able to turn a normal chicken cell
00:08:48.11 into a cancer cell.
00:08:49.28 And that gene wasn't required for the virus to grow.
00:08:52.10 It was just an independent gene
00:08:53.28 that must have come from somewhere.
00:08:56.00 And understanding the nature of those changes,
00:08:58.12 and finding that there were lots of other viruses
00:09:00.29 of a similar type
00:09:02.21 that had other kinds of genes,
00:09:04.21 set in motion a kind of avalanche of discovery of genes
00:09:08.26 that to this day are targets of new cancer therapies
00:09:12.12 and, in some cases,
00:09:14.12 ought to be the targets for therapy,
00:09:16.06 but we still haven't solved the problem of how to inhibit them.
00:09:19.05 RATHER: Well, it was landmark work for research into cancer.
00:09:22.27 Where are we now in the continuing battle against cancer?
00:09:27.09 VARMUS: Every cancer has its own genetic signature.
00:09:29.18 One of the great mysteries of cancer
00:09:31.16 -- one of the reasons cancer is so fundamentally interesting --
00:09:35.04 is that cancer is the result of evolutionary processes.
00:09:38.20 Cells undergo genetic change -- mutation --
00:09:43.06 and the fittest cells survive and grow
00:09:46.03 and spread to distant organs.
00:09:47.26 And even after you begin to treat those cancers,
00:09:50.11 it's generating more variants
00:09:53.09 that are likely to demonstrate their fitness
00:09:56.13 in the presence of an inhibitory drug
00:09:58.10 because cancer is such a wily beast.
00:10:01.03 RATHER: You're very prolific as an author.
00:10:03.18 What do you see as the biggest problem of...
00:10:06.18 I'll use the verb translating... science
00:10:10.28 to the general public?
00:10:12.13 VARMUS: Yeah. Well, there are some big problems here.
00:10:14.12 It's... in my view, you can't transmit
00:10:17.03 all of scientific knowledge to anybody.
00:10:18.17 I'm sometimes reminded when I run into
00:10:21.25 the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
00:10:24.04 She was my congresswoman about 30 years ago,
00:10:26.09 who still remembers the day I brought
00:10:29.03 a young, energetic scientist from UC San Francisco
00:10:32.17 to see her.
00:10:34.05 The scientist's name was Cynthia Kenyon.
00:10:35.17 She's made some important discoveries about aging in small roundworms.
00:10:39.05 And she came into Pelosi's office,
00:10:41.13 and she didn't try to inundate her with information.
00:10:43.22 She was just able to transmit the excitement
00:10:46.14 of using the genetics of these small worms
00:10:50.26 to understand lifespan.
00:10:53.05 And everybody's interested in lifespan.
00:10:55.11 RATHER: So, it was her enthusiasm, her passion,
00:10:57.28 much more than just the details of exactly the...
00:11:00.06 VARMUS: The information...
00:11:01.26 what Nancy Pelosi remembers to this day is the excitement.
00:11:05.12 I think you also have to contextualize
00:11:08.24 the goal in science communication.
00:11:10.19 Many times, you are trying to teach someone something,
00:11:13.06 and the content matters a lot.
00:11:15.18 Other times, you're simply trying to persuade someone
00:11:18.21 that science is an exciting enterprise
00:11:21.07 and, in the case of a member of Congress,
00:11:23.15 that they ought to support it with federal funds.
00:11:26.05 So, then it becomes... there's a pragmatic outcome,
00:11:29.03 but it's not learning why a worm becomes an old worm.
00:11:38.02 RATHER: You've had any number of positions
00:11:39.23 that brought you into politics.
00:11:41.19 What does your experience dealing in politics tell you?
00:11:45.26 VARMUS: I have found myself
00:11:48.05 trying to be sure that the products of science,
00:11:50.21 the knowledge we generate,
00:11:52.18 is widely and efficiently shared.
00:11:55.08 The tools are now available.
00:11:57.06 You know, you want to use the internet to foster dissemination of knowledge,
00:12:01.02 and that's the way I and many other scientists feel
00:12:04.07 -- that there is no fundamental reason
00:12:06.13 why it's not possible for every paper --
00:12:09.27 even before it's been peer-reviewed --
00:12:12.17 to be accessible to a broad public, without inhibitions of the kind
00:12:16.24 that are created by subscriptions.
00:12:19.01 Subscription-based journals
00:12:21.18 should be done by now.
00:12:23.12 They will be done soon, I think,
00:12:25.00 but we haven't quite gotten to that stage.
00:12:26.17 It doesn't mean there's no cost of publication.
00:12:29.09 But we need to find the resources in other ways.
00:12:33.13 Funding organizations
00:12:36.13 want the products of the labors their money pays for
00:12:40.20 to be made widely available so other scientists
00:12:44.18 -- people who are worried about a disease,
00:12:47.12 people who are just curious about something --
00:12:49.18 have access to the information.
00:12:51.29 And we have the tools to do that now.
00:12:53.25 And yet it's been 20 years
00:12:56.12 of fairly heated political battles
00:12:58.11 to try to get us part of the way.
00:13:00.01 RATHER: Well, you've been a leader in that.
00:13:01.27 VARMUS: Well, I've worked on it, yeah.
00:13:03.15 RATHER: Making it much more accessible.
00:13:05.10 What should we the people...
00:13:07.05 what should we be doing about communicating science?
00:13:09.07 VARMUS: I would love to see more emphasis
00:13:12.00 on scientific communication as a kind of...
00:13:15.13 as a discipline in its own right.
00:13:17.12 What you have to learn to do
00:13:21.00 is to focus on something that somebody cares about.
00:13:23.09 Why don't we have an influenza vaccine, a good one?
00:13:26.19 RATHER: Good question. I don't know the answer.
00:13:29.01 VARMUS: Well, some of the answers are kind of pat, but also true,
00:13:35.13 that the va... the virus changes every year.
00:13:36.26 But I think if you start by saying to someone,
00:13:39.05 you know, here's... here's something.
00:13:41.07 You know, we've known about influenza...
00:13:43.10 I mean, my grandmother died in the influenza epidemic 100 years ago, in 1918...
00:13:47.28 101 years ago.
00:13:49.13 How come... we know a lot about influenza virus.
00:13:51.11 Why don't we have a good vaccine?
00:13:53.06 And you start with that question,
00:13:55.15 and then suddenly you're talking about virology and protein structure
00:13:59.04 and how the immune system works
00:14:00.26 and how these viruses mate
00:14:04.00 -- because they exchange information all the time.
00:14:05.20 It makes... they create new viruses every year.
00:14:07.27 You get someone led into
00:14:11.04 an incredibly interesting discussion
00:14:12.23 that requires a fair amount of knowledge
00:14:15.08 that you could not simply feed to them
00:14:17.11 by saying, today we're gonna talk
00:14:20.03 about how influenza viruses mate.
00:14:22.05 But if you bring people in
00:14:24.04 by asking a question that's very provocative,
00:14:26.06 then you make some progress.
00:14:27.27 And I think we need to get people attuned to how to do that.
00:14:30.07 RATHER: Doctor, thank you very much. VARMUS: Yeah.
00:14:31.29 RATHER: I really appreciate your time. VARMUS: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
00:14:33.05 RATHER: Thank you so much. VARMUS: This was fun. Thank you.

This Talk

Speakers: Harold Varmus, Daniel Rather

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: April 2019

Talk Overview

Dr. Harold Varmus talks to Dan Rather about his journey from literature major to scientist, and from the discovery of oncogenes to creating PLoS. Varmus reflects on his time as a researcher, as Director of the NIH, and on the importance of open communication in science. He ends by emphasizing why good science communication is important to engage more people in conversations about science.

Speaker Bio

Harold Varmus

Harold Varmus is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center. He previously was the Director of the National Institutes of Health (1993-1999), president and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York (2000 – 2010), and Director of the… Continue Reading

Daniel Rather

Dan Rather has a resume that reads like a history book. He has interviewed every American president since Eisenhower and personally covered almost every important global dateline of the last 60 years, from the Civil Rights Movement to Vietnam, to Watergate to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Rather helped pioneer the very idea that television… Continue Reading