Podcast appearances and mentions of bob gallo

Virology vanguard Dr. Bob Gallo is far from ready to slow down. Now in his seventh decade as one of America's top scientists, he could easily sit back and enjoy the fruits of his numerous and pioneering achievements. His groundbreaking work began in the 1970s with research into human retroviruses, including the discovery of the T-cell growth factor (IL-2) and the identification of the Human T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus (HTLV-1) in 1980, earning him his first Lasker Award, often referred to as “America's Nobel Prize.” His subsequent research led to the identification of HIV-1 as the cause of AIDS, securing him a second Lasker Award. In the 1980s, he was the world's most cited scientist. Along with his team, he developed the first HIV blood test, crucial for understanding the spread of AIDS and managing HIV patients. In the mid 1990's Gallo and his collaborators discovered chemokines, naturally occurring compounds that were essential for understanding how HIV infects cells. Dr. Gallo later founded the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1996 and co-founded the Global Virus Network (GVN) in 2011 to enhance global virus detection and management. Recently, Dr. Gallo and his team moved to Tampa, the new global headquarters for GVN, where he now serves as director of the University of South Florida (USF) Virology Institute and Head of the Microbial Oncogenesis Program at the Cancer Institute at Tampa General Hospital (TGH).   In the first part of this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Gallo shares insights into his entry into virology and his initial research into the etiology of certain cancers. This work included crucial discoveries around T cell growth factors, paving the way for identifying HTLV-1. He discusses his collaboration with CDC epidemiologists, which led to recognizing AIDS as being caused by a retrovirus. Once the HIV virus was identified as the cause, creating the first blood test for HIV had profound impacts on the epidemic and patient care.   In the second segment, Dr. Gallo discusses the origins of the HIV virus and its early global spread. He also reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic, why the focus on its origins is irrelevant and reflects on how to rebuild public trust in science and medicine, which may have been damaged during the pandemic.   In the concluding segment, Dr. Gallo talks about his reasons for joining USF Health and TGH and the research areas he finds most promising going forward. He speculates on the prospects for an HIV vaccine, the impact of artificial intelligence on virology, and why he doesn't necessarily worry about the threat of the next global pandemic. Finally, Dr. Gallo opens up about how the early loss of his young sister deeply affected his life and his desired legacy. Dr Vega would like to thank her friend Job Meiller, her YES Man, for the wonderful musical contributions and coming through on every idea she has. This time he contributes his renditions of Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" and "Your Song," by Elton John. Thank you Job! Thanks also to Dr. Ana Velez, our artistic contributor, for her painting, "HIV," used in our episode thumbnail.

Episode 31 contemplates the conundrum expressed in The Troggs' 1966 hit, "I Can't Control Myself." Reg Presley and the boys find some flakes of the same fairy dust they sprinkled over their former hit, "Wild Thing" and, like all discussion of the band, our talk drifts towards the topics of minimalism and negative space in their work (2:00). Big Maybelle had a fling with the song the next year, and both her vocals and Bob Gallo's arrangement are bold, brash, and brassy, with a funky drum break the cratediggers of hip hop have somehow missed, until we pointed it out (55:58).  The Teenbeats are the final contenders, and we comment on the romantic and sexual implications of their fast & furious rendition, which was a hit with Montreal modsters in 1980 (1:25:58).

In this episode, Sean and Kham are joined by, Bob Gallo, of Rhino Holdings, R2 Hospitality, and Optimum Textiles. With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Bob provides his insights as an entrepreneur. They discuss: The entrepreneurial enate trait Defining your company culture Investing your money and time into projects and businesses

In the inaugural episode of Creating the Good with AARP IL, hosts Bob Gallo and Rosanna Márquez sit down with Amy Morton, a restaurateur from Chicago who has seen her world change drastically in the wake of COVID-19. Amy Morton grew up working alongside her father Arnie Morton, founder of Morton's Steakhouse. She started her first restaurant, Mirador in Chicago's Old Town back in the 1990s, and is currently the owner of Found Kitchen and Social House and The Barn Steakhouse in Evanston, as well as Stolp Island Social in Aurora. She is also a long-time supporter of “Connections for the Homeless,” a non-profit group bringing essential services to people facing homelessness and housing insecurity. During this coronavirus pandemic, Amy and the Found team have been cooking breakfast seven days a week for 200 people facing homelessness. Hear Bob, Rosanna and Amy discuss how her community involvement came to be, what inspires her and how she hopes others can get involved during these uncertain times.

Dr. Hayes interviews Dr. Mayer on his training at NCI and running DFCI’s fellowship.   The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories-- The Art of Oncology, brought to you by the ASCO podcast network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering enriching insight into the role of cancer care. You can find all of these shows, including this one, at podcast.asco.org. Today, my guest on this podcast is Dr. Robert J. Mayer. Dr. Mayer is the Stephen B. Kay Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School where he is also the Faculty Associate Dean of Admissions, in addition, the faculty Vice President for Academic Affairs for Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Mayer was raised in Jamaica, New York. And, Bob, I always thought you were raised in Brooklyn, but I looked it up on the map. And it looks like Jamaica is about two blocks in the middle of Brooklyn. So we'll say you're from Jamaica. Actually, I was a little bit to the east of there in Nassau County. That counted a lot then, Queens versus Nassau, but anyway. So it gets even more esoteric. Bob received his undergraduate degree in 1965 from Williams College, which is way out west in Massachusetts, and then went to Harvard where he got his MD in 1969. He did his residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and then was a clinical associate in the medicine branch of the National Cancer Institute from 1971 to 1974. He served a fellowship in medical oncology at what was then the Sidney Farber Cancer Institute. And then he joined the faculty in 1975. He has spent much of his career at leading clinical research in leukemia and GI malignancies. He was the chair of the CALGB, now called the Alliance TI Cancer Committee for years. But, perhaps more importantly, he was director of the fellowship program at, originally, the Sidney Farber and then the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for 36 years. And then he was also head of the fellowship program at the Dana-Farber/Partners cancer program from 1995 until 2011. And, frankly, he was my fellowship director from 1982 to 1985. So I owe a great part of my career to Dr. Mayer. He's co-authored over 400 peer-reviewed papers and another 130 chapters and reviews. He serves as associate editor for both the Journal of Clinical Oncology and The New England Journal of Medicine. And, as have many guests on this program, he served as president of ASCO, in his case, in 1997, 1998. And he received the ASCO Distinguished Achievement Award in 2019 for his ongoing leadership in our society. Dr. Mayer, welcome to our program. Pleasure to be with you, Dan. So I have a lot of questions. And, again, I usually do this, you know, two guys in a cab. How did you do that in the first place? What got you interested in oncology coming out of Williams and at Harvard? And, at that time, there wasn't much in oncology. What made you want to take care of cancer patients? Well, I was a third-year medical student at Harvard sort of sleepwalking through the curriculum, undecided what my life was going to be, planning to go back to New York, and I came across an attending physician on a pediatrics rotation, a hematologist by the name of David Nathan. And we hit it off. And I became really interested in blood cells and how looking at smears and bone marrow morphology could tell you a lot about the status and health and nutrition of individual patients. Nathan took a shine to me. And, when I was a fourth-year student and was going to face probably a military service, and there were military actions going on in Southeast Asia, he called me to his home one night and shoved a whole pile of paper in front of me, said fill this out. I want it back tomorrow. And this was an application to be a clinical associate at the National Cancer Institute where he had spent several years I guess a decade before. So I did what I was told. And, when I was a intern, I guess my first day as an intern, I got an overhead page from the-- in the hospital, call from Bethesda informing me that I had been accepted. I had had 10 or 11 interviews. One of them turned out to be a person who would be important in my life as a friend and a mentor, George Canellos, who was first time I met him. And, in 1971, I found myself at the NIH. That's quite a story. And Dr. Nathan, of course, went on to start the Jimmy Fund, probably had already started the Jimmy Fund Clinic at the time, and became the CEO, I think, of Children's Hospital in Boston. He became the CEO of Dana-Farber actually. I do want to just recollect with you my first day or two in Bethesda because some of the people who found themselves there took it more seriously than others. And I was assigned to the medicine branch. And the medicine branch had a chief who was a breast cancer-oriented investigator by the name of Paul Carbone who went on from there to an illustrious career as the founding head of the Cancer Center at the University of Wisconsin and the leader of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. And Paul, at that point, the first day I met him, told us that, if we messed around, moonlighted, didn't show up, we'd be on a Coast Guard Cutter as fast as he could do the paperwork because, technically, we had a position in the Public Health Service. Under Carbone, there were two branches. One was leukemia, and that was headed by Ed Henderson. He was a lanky guy from California, a wonderful man, went on to a career with Cancer and Leukemia Group B and with the Roswell Park in Buffalo for many years. And he was my branch chief. And the other branch was solid tumors. They weren't solid tumors like we think of them today. They were lymphomas. And that was headed by Vince DeVita and had Bob Young, George Canellos, Bruce Chabner, and Phil Schein, all illustrious founders of so much that has become oncology. So that was the setting. And the last thing I'll mention was about this. I came there as a trained internist, but I was assigned to pediatric leukemia. And I learned very quickly that what separated the wheat from the chaff, in terms of families, parents thinking that you were a good doctor, was your ability to maintain the 25 gauge scalp vein as venous access in these children because there were no port-a-caths, no Hickman lines, and, obviously, access was something that was critically important. You know, I think everybody who is listening to this needs to understand that what you just described started out really with just Gordon Zubrod who then brought in Frei, Holland-- or Holland first and then Freireich. And then they brought in the next group, which I believe you would agree is Canellos, DeVita, Bob Young, and others. And then you were sort of in the third wave. And you could just see it began to expand the whole field of oncology really just from a few people going out. Do you agree with that? I do. I do. When I came to the NIH in 1971, there was no defined, certified subspecialty of medical oncology. The first time the medical oncology board examination was given was in 1973. It was given every other year. I was in the group that took it the second time in 1975, but this really wasn't a subspecialty. In 1973 also was the time that the first comprehensive multi-authored textbook on medical oncology was published by Jim Holland and Tom Frei, Cancer Medicine. And I remember devouring that as I prepared for the board examination, but there was no book like that. There was no reference, no UpToDate, no computer to surf the web and find information. And so this was all brand new. It was quite exciting to be there as part of the action. You sort of jumped ahead on what I wanted to ask you, but I'm interested in the establishment of medical oncology as a subspecialty. Can you maybe talk about Dr. BJ Kennedy and his role in that? I think he was pretty instrumental. Was he not? BJ was at the University of Minnesota. He was an extraordinarily decent man. And, somehow, the internal medicine establishment viewed him as a peer and a colleague, which I would have to say was not what they considered many of the pioneers, if you will, in medical oncology. I can remember, in my second or third year at the NIH, traveling around the country to look at fellowship programs. And I was always being met by senior established hematologists who arched their eyebrows and said now where's the pathophysiology. Where is the science here? They really thought that the animal models, the mouse models, the Southern Research Institute that Gordon Zubrod had been such a pioneer in fostering was pseudoscience. I can also remember, when I found myself back in Boston, the establishment of Harvard Medical School didn't initially take oncology very seriously, but there were patients. And there was optimism. And all of us in that generation really believed that we could make a difference, and we could learn a lot and do good for patients and for medicine. And I think we have. So, in my opinion, now, appropriately, our fellows have a very strict curriculum of what they're supposed to learn and how and when and why laid out, again, in a pretty rigorous formal manner. You told me before, at the NCI, it was just sort of learn it. It's up to you. Can you talk about that training? And then, when you went to the Sidney Farber, you then turned that into a training program. The medicine branch was fantastic training, but it was learning from taking care of patients and from your colleagues. The quality of my peers was extraordinary, but there was no formal curriculum. The faculty there each were doing research, the members of the faculty. And, for a month, they would come out of their cave, if you will, their laboratory, and they were very smart and were doing fascinating things, but they didn't have long-term patients. Or there was no real process. And the NCI was sort of like a Veterans Administration hospital in the sense that it opened around 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning, closed at 5:00 or 6:00 in the afternoon. One of us would be on call at night with a couple of nurses, but it was rather primitive in its support mechanisms. We were assigned a group of patients. And then, on rotation, those patient numbers would increase. And we were expected to do everything conceivable for that patient. And, at that time, the oncology care offered in Bethesda at the NIH or the NCI was free. It was paid for by the government. And much similar care was not available in other places. So I would have patients flying in from Omaha and New York or Norfolk or Tampa, Florida. And they would be housed in a motel that was on the edge of the NIH reservation, but, if one wants to talk about continuity of care, you knew everything about every one of those patients because you were the only person who knew them. So what were the circumstances then that you ended up in Boston? Well, that's an interesting story because it gets back to David Nathan. I was working after my clinical year in a basic laboratory as I could find. It was run by Robert Gallo, Bob Gallo, who was one of the co-discoverers years later of the HIV virus. But, one day, I got a phone call from Dr. Nathan's secretary saying that he was going to be in Washington a week from Tuesday or whatever. And he wanted to meet with me in the garden of the Mayflower Hotel. OK, fine. So I trotted over to the Mayflower Hotel, and there was Dr. Nathan. And he said, you know, Dr. Farber is getting old, but there's a new building. And there's going to be a cancer center. And he's just recruited Tom Frei to come from MD Anderson. And it's time for you to come back to Boston. Didn't say would you like to come back, would you think about coming. No, he, just applied to the NIH, shoved the papers. Here, it's time for you to come back to Boston. So, a few Saturdays after, I flew up to Boston. And, in that interim, Dr. Farber passed away. He had a heart attack, an MI. And there was Tom Frei who I met for the first time, made rounds with him. We hit it off. And he told me that he would like me to spend one year as a fellow and then join the faculty and become an assistant professor. Well, I didn't need a plane to fly back to Washington. I thought this was tremendous because I was looking at hematology scholarships around the country. And there was no career path. And this seemed to be a career path in a field that I was really interested in. And he talked to me really about coming back to do leukemia because that's what I had been doing at the NIH. And, a year later, I found myself, July 1, 1974, being part of the second fellowship class at what's now Dana-Farber. There were six of us. There were six the year before. We were piecing it together step by step. There, again, was nothing chiseled in marble. There was no tradition. This was try to make it work and learn from what works. And, what doesn't work, we'll change. You must have had a lot of insecurity coming into a program that really had just started. There had to be chaos involved in that. Well, there was a little chaos, but, to be honest, I was really engaged in it because it was exciting. I thought that oncology, as I still do, is this marvelous specialty or subspecialty that unites science and humanism. And, because other people weren't interested or maybe weren't capable of providing what we thought was the right level of care, to be able to sort of write the playbook was a terrific opportunity. We sort of-- and it extended into the year that you were a fellow as well-- followed the medicine branch mantra in the sense that we assigned fellows patients. And they took care of those patients and were expected to do everything that was necessary for them. There weren't rotations at that time that you would spend a month on the breast cancer service and then a month doing lymphoma. You would see new patients or follow-up patients. We didn't really have enough patients or enough faculty at that point to be smart enough to think about that being a better way or an alternative way to structure a trainee's time. I remember, at the end of my first year, when I finished that year as what I think Tom Frei called a special fellow, I was the attending on the next day, which was July 1. And I remember that a fellow, a first-year fellow who was just starting, Bob Comis who became also the chairman of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group years later, a marvelous lung cancer investigator, was the trainee. And, on that day, we went ahead and did a bone marrow on a patient with small cell lung cancer and being a fellowship director just started because there was no one doing it. And Frei said please move ahead. I have to say, when I started in 1982, I just assumed this was the way everybody in the country was training fellows in oncology. It really didn't occur to me that that was only a few years old and the way you had set it up. A few years ago, the Dana-Farber had a banquet to celebrate the 48-year career of a guy named Robert J. Mayer. And I was asked to speak. And I got up. There were over 300 people in the audience, all of whom had been trained there. And, as I looked around, I sort of put my prepared words aside and said look at the people sitting next to you. They are either former or to be presidents of ASCO, ACR. They're cancer center directors, department chairs, division chiefs, and a bunch of really terrifically trained oncologists all due to one guy, and you're the one. So you started with Bob Comis-- I've never heard you tell that story-- to really training some of the greatest oncologists in the world in my opinion, myself excluded in that regard, but, nonetheless, you must be quite proud of that. Well, yes, but I want to flip it around the other way because, for me, this became a career highlight, the opportunity to shape the patterns, to make the people who trained here leaders, and to have them-- right now, the director of the NCI is a Dana-Farber alumnus. To have people who are of that quality-- and you certainly represent that, as an ASCO president and one of the hallmark leaders of the breast cancer community-- this is what a place like Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School, hopefully, not too much arrogance, is supposed to be doing. And to have that opportunity, to be able to fill a vacancy that nobody even appreciated was a vacancy, and then to develop it over enough time that one could really see what worked and see what didn't work is an opportunity that most people don't have. And I'm so grateful for it. Now, Bob, I want to just, in the last few minutes here, you've obviously been a major player in ASCO. Can you kind of reflect over the last 25 years since you were ASCO president, the changes you've seen, and what you think of your legacy? I know you don't like to brag too much, but I think there's a reason you got the Distinguished Service Award. And can you just reminisce a bit about what's happened and then where you think we're going as a field? Well, ASCO has been my professional organization. The first meeting I went to was in a hotel ballroom in Houston, the Rice Hotel, which doesn't exist anymore. And it was a joint meeting of ACR and ASCO in 1974. There were 250 people. And everybody was congratulating each other at the large number of attendees. I had the opportunity, in large part because of Tom Frei and George Canellos and other people, to become involved in picking abstracts for leukemia presentations, being part of the training committee, and then chairing the training committee. I actually had the opportunity to be one of the four people who started the awards program, which now has the Young Investigator Award and Career Development Award and things of that sort. These are just opportunities because they weren't there before. And, if you're willing, and you put in the time, I guess people come back to you and give you the chance to do these things. I became then involved in the JCO, the Journal of Clinical Oncology. I became involved in the debate about physician-assisted suicide and palliative care that led to some very educational debates and probably spawned the field, to some degree, of palliative care. I had the opportunity to be at the forefront of starting the Leadership Development Program that was really Allen Lichter's idea, but I was able to devote the time to make that happen. And, most recently, I've been on the Conquer Cancer Foundation now for almost two decades. And watching that grow has been a joy. ASCO, when I came, was a very small trade organization, if you will, didn't quite know the questions to ask, had a hired office, a management office, that was based in Chicago, came to Alexandria in about 1994 or somewhere in that range with its own office and its own staff, and now is the world organization for oncology. And I think that that growth, that expansion, that international, multidisciplinary pattern, if you will, is a reflection of the growth of oncology in medicine. I have to say, if you take a look at the popularity poll of what the best and the brightest young physicians choose in their careers, when I was in training and, Dan, when you were in training, most went into cardiology. Maybe some went into GI. Now there are more people going into oncology than any other medical subspecialty. Maybe that'll change after COVID, but that's the way it's been. And our hospitals now are filled with cancer patients, and those hospitals are very dependent on the care that we provide cancer patients. I guess the other thing I would say is, looking from a guy with some hair left, although gray, but looking at it from afar, all of those high-dose chemotherapy programs, the notion of dose, of cell poisons, alkylating agents, the solid tumor autologous marrow programs that were so fashionable in the 1980s, have been, in large part, replaced by such elegant, targeted therapy, now immunotherapy, circulating DNA. Who would have thunk any of that when I was taking care of those children with leukemia 45 years ago? So I think this is such an exciting field. I'm so-- continue to be so pleased and proud of the quality of the trainees. Last night, we had a virtual graduation session for the people completing their fellowship here. And I hate to say it. They're as good as ever. And, if we thought and, Dan, if you thought your colleagues that you all and we all were the best, they're all phenomenal. And it's really a reflection on how the pioneers in this field had a vision, how the need for science to understand cancer was so important, and how medicine has changed and how oncology now is a respected and acknowledged discipline of scholarly work. Well, you had two things that I'm fond of commenting on. One of those is I frequently say publicly I wish I was 30 years younger for a lot of reasons, but because of the scientific excitement that's going into oncology and, also, so that I could run the way I used to, but I can't. That's one. The second is I don't think I would choose me to be a fellow. I'm really intimidated when I do interviews with our residents and say, you know, I wasn't nearly in that kind of category of the people we're interviewing now, which is great. I think our field is in good hands, going to move forward, and things are going. Bob, we've talked about a lot of your contributions to training and education, but you've also had a major influence on the way patients with leukemia are treated. Can you talk more about where the 7 and 3 regimen came from? The 7 and 3 or 3 and 7 regimen-- 3 days of an anthracycline, 7 days of continuous infusional cytosine arabinoside, was developed in the early 1970s. And it was developed by Jim Holland, more than anyone else, when he was at Roswell Park. And it emerged from a series of randomized, phase III trials conducted by what was then called the Acute Leukemia Group B, what became CALGB and then the Alliance. In the early 1980s, the late Clara Bloomfield, who I considered a giant in the world of leukemia, invited me to write a review of the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia for seminars in oncology that she was editing. And, in preparing that, I started reading a series of manuscripts published in the early 1970s, which meticulously, step by step, examined the value of two versus three days of anthracycline subq versus IV push versus infusional cytosine arabinoside, 3 days, 5 days, 7 days, 10 days of infusional cytosine arabinoside. And this was all really work of Jim Holland. He was a magnificent scholar, a humanist, and a tremendous booster too and giant in the start of this field. Thank you. I agree. Bob, we've run out of time, but I want to just thank you for taking time today to speak to me and our listeners, but also thank you for what I consider the many contributions you've made, both scientifically-- we didn't really even get into that, your work on leukemia and GI-- but I think, more importantly, establishing a training program that's been the model for, probably worldwide, how to train people in oncology and the contributions you've made to ASCO. So, for all that, I and everybody else are very appreciative. Thanks a lot. My pleasure. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Until next time, thank you for listening to this JCO's Cancer Stories-- The Art of Oncology podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. While you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. JCO's Cancer Stories-- The Art of Oncology podcast is just one of ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all the shows at podcast.asco.org.

Dr. Hayes interviews Dr. Bruce Chabner on his experience with cancer drug discovery and development, phase I trials and pharmacology.   The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.   Welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology, brought to you by the ASCO podcast network, a collection of nine programs covering a range of educational and scientific content and offering enriching insight into the role of cancer care. You can find all of the shows, including this one, at podcast.ASCO.org. Today my guest on this podcast is Dr. Bruce Chabner. Dr. Chabner's is widely considered one, or frankly if not the father, of our understanding of the pharmacology principles of anti-neoplastic drugs.   And probably more importantly, the translation of these principles to the intelligent application of the agents we use in clinic every day. Among the many accomplishments that Dr. Chabner has had working with his mentor, Dr. Joseph Bertino at Yale, who developed the concept of high dose methotrexate leucovorin rescue, that was completely based on their preclinical understandings of the mechanism of action, and more importantly, resistance to this agent. Dr. Chabner was also instrumental in the development of paclitaxel when he was at the National Cancer Institute, and he was intimately involved in many of the early studies that led to better understanding of AIDS and the ways to treat it.   Dr. Chabner was raised in Shelbyville, Illinois, and I'm going to digress for a moment, because I've always had a very special soft spot in my own heart for Bruce Chabner. A, because of his science, but more importantly, because I was raised in Shelbyville, Indiana. Both of these towns were named after Colonel Isaac Shelby, who was a hero in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. By the way, Dr. Chabner, I know you were a big student of history when you were in college, so I thought you'd like this.   Dr. Shelby became the first and then the fifth governor of Kentucky, and as a citizen he was a land surveyor. There were actually nine counties and 11 cities and towns spread around the Eastern and Midwest regions that are named after Colonel Shelby. And I don't know about you, Bruce, but I had this drilled into my brain in eighth grade history class. I had to learn all about Colonel Shelby.   Anyway, so he and I are brothers in Shelbyville. Dr. Chabner received his undergraduate degree of Yale, where again, he spent a lot of his time in the history department but also in the biology department. And then he got his medical degree at Harvard, where he stayed to complete his residency in internal medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital before it became the Brigham Women's Hospital.   In 1967, Dr. Chabner became a clinical associate in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute, where he was, in succession, a senior investigator in the laboratory of clinical pharmacology, chief of the clinical branch of the clinical oncology program, associate director of the clinical oncology program, and then he succeeded Dr. Ben [? Stabida, ?] someone I have previously interviewed for this series, as director of the division of cancer therapy.   In 1995, after 25 years at the NCI, he moved to Boston as the chief of the division of hematology oncology and the clinical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center, where he is now the clinical director emeritus. Dr. Chabner has authored, I counted, over 500 peer reviewed papers. I think even more than that. By the way, his first was in 1969, a case report of shaking chills related to occult lymphoma, authored with Drs. DeVita and the [INAUDIBLE] of the [INAUDIBLE] syndrome. Bruce, that really shows how old you are.   He's been the editor of all five editions of the Principles and Practice of Cancer Chemotherapy and Biologic Response Modifiers, which I consider the bible of cancer pharmacology. And I'm looking at my fifth edition on my bookshelf right now. He's trained too many Fellows for me to name, but numerous of them have gone on to be cancer center directors, chiefs of division, department chairs, and other leaders of oncology in the world. He's won way too many awards me to go through, but he received a Karnofsky award from ASCO, and he served on the ASCO board of directors.   Dr. Chabner, welcome to our program.   Nice, that's a lot of history. It speaks to my name.   Well, that's the problem of interviewing all of you folks. It takes a long time to get through all the things you've done. It's a good problem to have, though. First, I want to start out, I understand you carry the flag rank of rear admiral. And I want to know, have you ever even been on a ship? And more importantly, did you and Dr. Shelby actually serve together in the Revolutionary War? I couldn't figure that out.   You know, I never bumped into him when I was on the battleship Shelbyville, but who knows. He seemed to be what I call a name dropper. He left his name on so many different things, and I think there's a Shelby County, Tennessee, which is Memphis. Plus I think the smallest thing that he ever created was Shelbyville, Illinois, which was even smaller than your hometown.   Yep, that's true. All right, that's the last joke I'm going to tell in this interview, but I like that connection. Anyway, so how did a guy from Shelbyville, Illinois get to Yale and then Harvard and NCI? And more importantly, what made you decide to be an oncologist? I know your father was a general practitioner, but at that time the field barely existed. What was your motivation?   Well, OK, I'll tell you a bit of a story. My mother came from Chicago and she had a brother who was pretty smart. And he went to Harvard. And he used to come down to Shelbyville because he liked the pies that she made. And we were 200 miles south, so it was a trip for a pie, but anyway we used to play chess together. And when he was a college student and I was like in fourth grade, I beat him in chess and he said, Jesus, you ought to go to an Ivy League school. So that put the idea in my mind.   And then my parents were not really happy with that. They wanted me to go to Washington University or University of Illinois, but I wanted to get away from home. It was a little bit confining to be around my parents for the rest of my life. So I applied to Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, and the deal was I could go to school if I got a scholarship. So I got a scholarship to Yale, so I went there. I was happy with that choice. I really-- it was sort of, you know, life changing, actually. Stayed on the east coast.   But I still have many good friends from my Shelbyville days. We all get together once a year to play golf and poker and tell life stories.   So I have to interject. My father told me I could go to any college in the United States as long as the tuition was the same as in-state tuition of Indiana University, which at the time was $400 a year. So I ended up going to Indiana University. So how did you--   That was such a great deal. Yeah, that was my--   How did you get into oncology?   Well, when I was at the Brigham, I got interested in cancer. There was not much going on there, but one of my residents was a guy named Jack [? Moxley, ?] who had been a part of the initial study with DeVita and others, George [? Kinellas, ?] of the mop treatment for Hodgkin's disease. And I got really interested in that. And actually during my internship my sister got an immediate stromal tumor during her pregnancy, and it turned out to be a thymoma. But cancer really intrigued me at that point.   And we all had to apply for positions at NIH as a way to get out of the draft, and I wanted to do research, so that really appealed to me. And I actually applied for cardiology and cancer, and I was interviewed by Gene Brown for cardiology, and he didn't seem very impressed. But the cancer people did like me, particularly George and Vince, who had come back there. And they were young and energetic and they had interesting ideas about combination therapy, so I ended up in oncology.   Yeah, I talked with some of the other people I've interviewed about the so-called era of the yellow berets and how that really transformed medicine, in my opinion. Because so many smart people went to the NIH to stay out of Vietnam. It's probably the only good thing that came out the Vietnamese war, as far as I can see, and especially the NCI. So when you went to the NCI, [? Harlan ?] and Frye and [? Freirach, ?] I believe, were gone. So you've already started to say, it sounds like Dr. DeVita and Dr. [? Kinellas ?] were the movers and shakers at the time. Is that fair, or?   Yeah, well they were really young. I mean, it was like working for, you know, contemporaries. There were no old people there. And Frye and [? Freirach ?] weren't that old at that time. They were in their 40s with Vince and George, who were in their mid 30s. And I was 28 years old, I guess, when I went down there. I loved it. We had laboratory opportunities, we had patients, we had people that believed that they could change the way cancer was treated. George and Vince, particularly Vince, were so energetic and so committed to the idea of changing therapy, and particularly combination therapy.   And then the other thing that made it such a great experience were the colleagues that I had in my first group of clinical Fellows. Bob Young was part of it, and I became very close friends with Bob Young. And in the same group, David Livingston was my next door neighbor, and we had interned together and been arrested together. So we had just constant stimulation from a lot of different people, all of them energetic and interested in research.   Who else was in your class besides Dr. Livingston and Young, then?   Phil Shine, who made a name for himself in toxicology and then in industry. And let's see--   He was director at the cancer center at Georgetown for a while.   Georgetown, right. Subsequently, there was just a long list of wonderful Fellows. When I came back, I actually spent two years at Yale between my NCI time and then coming back to NCI. And I had a wonderful time with Joe Bertino. He was, I think, very important to me, because he was really a great scientist. And I learned a lot about biochemistry enzyme purification and working in the lab.   And so when I came back to NCI I had sort of converted to being an anti-folate person from being interested in alkylating agents. And so I was always interested, I guess, in anti-metabolites. But that was a great anti-folate experience with Joe, high dose methotrexate. It was really his idea, not mine. But the thing I worked on was the clinical pharmacology and trying to figure out why it was so toxic to kidneys. So we actually did some really interesting experiments.   We gave high dose methotrexate to monkeys, and then when they died, we took the kidneys out and looked at them. And we were doing it because we thought we would see interesting pathology. What we saw were a bunch of yellow gravel in their tubules. And it turned out it was methotrexate, and it became obvious what was happening. The drug was precipitating in the acid urine environment. But that was sort of the beginning of the methotrexate studies.   And personally, I don't think we teach pharmacology very well anymore. What made you want to go to high dose methotrexate?   Well, interestingly, I was particularly interested in-- Joe was trying head and neck cancer. There was almost simultaneously an article from Frye and Isaac [? Jurassi ?] about adjuvant therapy of osteogenic sarcoma. And there were several interesting things about that. One is that it turned out that 12 patients weren't all patients with osteogenic sarcoma. But prognosis of those patients wasn't apparently obvious.   But there seemed to be some success with it, and there was a lot of toxicity that they didn't really know how to deal with. And so I started doing pharmacokinetic monitoring in patients that we had that were on the treatment. And then when they went into renal failure, they just didn't clear the drug. The drug was hanging around for many days and they were getting this horrible toxicity. So we got into this business of why the renal toxicity and the need for hydration and alkylization, particularly.   And so first of all, I have to tell you I blamed you for much of my first year as a Fellow, because we had to draw the blood. So there were no study coordinators. Dr. Frye would just run around at all times of day and night drawing blood on patients for getting high dose methotrexate. And I still mumble under my breath when I hear your name.   Well, you don't have to do all of that now, but you know, in those days we were trying to get a more complete profile, so we did. There was a woman there at the Farber that was doing similar work. I can't remember her name.   Sue Pittman I think, right?   Yeah, Sue Pittman. That's right, that's right, that's right. But that was certainly the introduction to the anti-folate. And then I got into a very interesting area of polyglutamation and how it changed the potency of the drug and led to retention, and it was an important determinant of response. That was quite an interesting area of research.   Were you the first to report amplification of DHFR? No, that happened in 1978. I was working on MTX at the time and we had noticed that you could select highly resistant cells in culture. But then we were interested in knowing why, and Joe and Joe Bertino had described the fact that increased dihydrofolate reductase activity was found in this circumstance. But the actual demonstration of amplification in mammalian cells was done by Bob [? Shimke ?] when Joe was on a sabbatical with him.   And they had a medical student working in the lab on that on that paper, and that was Dan [? Haber ?] actually. Who came back to--   Who is now the cancer center director [INAUDIBLE], right?   Yeah, he wrote a key paper. So we had, at the time when that came out, we got interested in that. And we stuck radiolabeled methotrexate in the culture with some tumor cells and found these odd migrating entities that turned out to be polyglutamate. So that led to the whole issue of what were polyglutamates and how did they change the biochemistry? And that was quite interesting, and then actually at the same time we saw a patient.   It was a young man who came to NIH with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and was treated with high dose methotrexate. I can't remember. I think he had CNS involvement or something like this. We found evidence of gene amplification in this patient. So it was actually the first demonstration that gene amplification occurs in people on the drug. There are a lot of interesting things that were happening at that time.   How was translational medicine before it was called translational medicine?   That was the nice part of NIH, you know? The emphasis was on the labs working with the clinics, and particularly with physician scientists. So, you know, we were one of the few places where our Fellows were expected to work in labs in their second and third years, and they did, and we had a wonderful group of Fellows that came through. The first guy that worked on polyglutamation of MTX was Rich [? Shilske. ?]   Who is now the chief medical officer of ASCO, and many, many other accomplishments after that.   Right. But many--   Actually, I'd like to change gears for a minute, because I know you had a lot to do with the development of paclitaxel. And I always found that story interesting that, you know, it was in the bark of the Japanese yew tree, which had to do with ultimate supplies. But also the first phase one trials, which some of that was done at the Dana Farber when I was there. Can you just walk through the history of paclitaxel? I think our listeners would love to hear this.   Well, it was an accident of history. Believe me. The thing started in 1964, when a group at the research triangle, a chemist, isolated this compound from the yew tree. And they didn't actually know what it was, but it was cytotoxic. And it was an anti-mitotic, and it took him seven years to figure out the structure. So finally in 1971 a guy named Ronnie from that group published the structure. It was a ridiculously complicated structure, And nobody could synthesize it, at least at that point.   It hung around in the lab and nobody was interested in developing it, because it was such an odd molecule. It was insoluble. Nobody can put it in solution. So it really wasn't an attractive pharmaceutical. And the thing that happened was, in 1978 or 1979, we had a very hot drug that was called maitansine. And we were very eager to put this into the clinic. And it was an anti-mitotic also, and very, very potent drug.   And so Dr. DeVita asked me to personally shepherd this thing and he told me that he didn't want it to fail. And so I put it into patients and it was terrible. And I kept telling him, this is not going to work. He said, it's got to work. He was pretty persistent. Well, it didn't, and he was very disappointed. So was I. And the fact is, we had nothing else to put in the clinic at that time except for paclitaxel. So we said, oh, well, we'll try it.   And we put it in a lipid emulsion. It was like putting it in engine oil or something, but it went into the clinic in several places. Peter [? Wernick ?] did it. Einstein. I guess you guys did it at the Farber. And it was causing all sorts of hypersensitivity responses. It looked impossible. And it took about, I don't know, four or five years to get it into a regimen that was tolerable. And there had been responses. The first response was in melanoma, so we were all excited about that.   That was the usual circumstance in those days that, when you took a drug into the clinic, melanoma would be the first response. And no one else from melanoma. Everywhere was-- and so but then Peter began noticing responses in ovarian cancer. And a regimen was worked out with antihistamines so it was reasonably tolerable. And finally in 1991, which was eight years after it went into the clinic, we finally decided, well, it was time to license it to industry. There was no patent, but we did it under a co-operative research and development agreement.   And the only company that was interested in the US was Bristol-Myers. Everybody else said, this is ridiculous. Nobody wants this drug. And it was too hard to make it. You had to make it from the bark of plants and it was insoluble and it caused hypersensitivity. So they took it. And about a month afterward there was a report from M.D. Anderson saying that it was active in breast cancer. And at that point it just took off like a rocket. And, you know, tried in all sorts of different diseases. Was active in lung and bladder and-- I can't remember all the other things. Head and neck.   Anyway, it became the first billion dollar drug in the cancer drug industry. And I think, you know, there are two things that really set off industry to be interested in cancer. One was that, the fact that you could actually make money on it. And the second was the notion of targeted therapies, which was growing at that time.   So to my knowledge, this is the only time somebody at the NCI had to work with the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management regarding a new drug. Can you tell that story?   Well, yes. The only place where you get the raw material for the drug was from the US Forest Service. And so Texas plants were being sort of cut and burned because they were considered scrub and not worth anything as lumber. So they were cooperating. And finally when we licensed it, Senator Ron Wyden, who's still in the Senate from Oregon, got interested in this whole thing. He said, why isn't the government making money on this license? Why did you license it to Bristol-Myers and you didn't you didn't ask for anything back?   And we said, well, you know, that's not the function of NIH. We didn't have a patent. I guess we could have asked for a slice of the pie, but we didn't because no one else wanted it. We really were trying to give it away. And he was giving us a really hard time at this hearing. And then the key thing that happened was a woman who was a forest ranger with ovarian cancer, we found this woman, and she testified to how much good it did for her. And that sort of stopped all the fuss about the license.   And we actually, it was the first drug where as part of the licensing agreement we had the chance to fix the price or agree to the price that Bristol-Myers fixed. And the government never has done that since that time. Of course, this was a circumstance where we sort of owned the information, so they had to listen to it. But they set the price at $2,000 a course. And we consider that pretty high, but it was sort of equivalent to what other drugs were costing at the time, so we let that go by. But ever since then, the price of drugs has just escalated remarkably.   I hope there are some young people listening, because this story, in my opinion, the story of trastuzumab again, I think people think that these things just happen because the system makes them. And my experience is they happen because the drug or the treatment gets a hero, gets a champion. Ultimately the science has to prove it works, but I'm sure lots of people wanted to walk from Taxol.   You know, everybody thought it was a dog. Because it was, you know, caused hypersensitivity, it wasn't all that active in the initial testing, and it was really hard to make the stuff.   Well, the same thing is true with platinum I did my residency at UT Southwestern with Donald Sullivan, who's the chair of medicine. He was a renal guy, and a patient with metastatic-- and I had gone to Indiana. So Dr. [? Einhardt ?] taught me how to give it. So I had a patient come in with widespread testicular cancer, I wanted to give him cisplatin, and Dr. Sullivan wouldn't let me do it because it would hurt his kidneys. I said, Dr. Sullivan, he's going to die if we don't do this. And he said, he'll die anyway.   And so I did it behind Dr. Sullivan's back and I got a complete response. Fortunately in those days the residents didn't have a lot of oversight so I could do what I wanted to do. There were a lot of people that thought these drugs should be shut down, and it took the courage that you guys had back at the NCI and other places to push them out.   Don Sullivan was very anti cancer chemotherapy for the rest of his life. And it was odd for me, because I actually had a relative who was on his faculty and I went down there a couple times to talk. And I always felt very uncomfortable telling him that we were accomplishing something. Because his concept of success in science was getting an RO1 in your lab.   Yeah. He finally came to terms because [? Shelfke, ?] myself, Fred [? Lemaitre, ?] and a number of us went into oncology and had been reasonably successful. And I think he decided that it was worthwhile after all. But it wasn't easy for him. We lost him a year ago. I still miss him.   Yeah, he was an amazing guy, but he really did have a hard time believing in cancer.   So the other question, I wanted to change gears a little bit, because I know just about the time you became the director of the DCT was when the AIDS epidemic was exploding in the early 1980s. That must have been a very confusing situation about who should be in charge of this at the NIH, which institute, and how you approach it. Can you give us some background on that?   Again, it was really a crazy time. Because I remember one of the first patients that was identified as having AIDS was a person admitted to the immunology branch at the NCI. Not the medicine branch or the clinical branches. It was a patient who had disseminated tuberculosis and it had no CD4 cells. And, you know, everybody said, oh my god, what is this? This is really a weird, weird circumstance. And then other people began reporting this from San Francisco and New York.   So we actually, DCT, the reason we got involved was because of Bob Gallo. Bob Gallo had discovered the HTLV1 virus, which was causing this lymphoma in T cells. And we suspected that this might be a syndrome caused by a T cell virus. So in 1981, really quite early, we convened I think the first meeting about the biology of what was called HTLV2, I think, at the time, or three. I can't remember which one it was. But at any rate, there were a cadre of people at NIH that felt that it was caused by inhaling gases or, I don't know, their various weird theories about it.   But this theory that made sense to us was that it was caused by a virus. So Sam [? Brodeur ?] was collecting samples from patients and brought them over to Gallo's lab. And of course Gallo mixed those samples with the French sample and found virus and then made a test kit for the virus, which was really a key event in beginning to control the epidemic. And because of all that work going on at NCI at the time, we were asked-- we had the only drug development system at NIH.   We were asked to, well, look, can you set up a drug development system for this? And Sam [? Brodeur ?] set up assays in infected T cells and showed that certain nucleocyte analogs could stop the virus from replicating. The first one was ADT. And his first study was, I think, was 16 patients with AIDS in which he showed that the T cell counts recovered and people didn't die. And from that point on, we were getting significant funding for doing research on treatment development. And it was it was done in conjunction with NIAID and Tony Fauci.   What Tony did is he delegated a fellow to work with us and sort of be the liaison. And the first fellow that did that was Margaret Hamburger, who became [INAUDIBLE] FDA subsequently. And, you know, subsequently, four other people from our division-- well, actually one from NGH, became directors of FDA. Ned Sharpless most recently, and then Steve Hahn, who was a Fellow in the medical oncology group at NCI.   Yeah, he's just been named.   It was, you know, an unusual breeding ground for people interested in therapeutics.   That's interesting. You know, I was a third year resident at UT Southwestern. I was at the VA in March and a young man was admitted to our service. He had been a Vietnam veteran and he had red splotches all over him, so I called a dermatologist who biopsied it. And I got a page from the pathologist and I called him back and he said, you have mislabeled the samples. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, this says it's a 37-year-old man. This is something I've never seen before, but I looked it up and it's called Kaposi sarcoma, and that only happens in old men or people from Africa.   And I said, I don't think we mislabeled things. And I think he was probably the first man in Dallas to be diagnosed with this. Because just as the MWR and the new journal paper came out a few months after that. So again, for the young folks listening to this, and we've already hit this a couple of times, it's one or two patients that pique your interest that often change the world in terms of, gee, I wonder why that happened.   Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, a lot of this is an outcome of the fact that you have research people as physicians who are working with patients, and then they ask questions.   Yeah. One of the things I've carried forward, Dr. Frye used to always say, think like a scientist. Think like a doctor. And ask yourself, so what? And I know you do that, because again, you've already told us today and I've seen you do that in other places. You know, so what? Why did this happen to this patient?   Why did that happen, yeah.   What in my lab actually will change that? And you guys did that in spades, I think, 40, 50 years ago. It's pretty amazing.   Yeah. Well, I [INAUDIBLE].   [INAUDIBLE]. Go ahead. Go ahead.   No, it's really happening a lot now, you know, in terms of recognizing subsets of diseases. We used to think that non-small cell lung cancer was just one disease. Now it's 20 diseases. It's amazing, you know? It's amazing, you know, as science progresses, you begin to understand the complexity of cancer. And then therapies become meaningful.   Yes, I agree.   It's so nice. And so I wish, you know, we were curing people. But we are making a difference, and least we're understanding it a little.   I agree. Anyone who has not heard or read Bruce Johnston's ASCO presidential address should do so. Because he did point out exactly what you just said. He had a pie chart, and 10 years ago the entire pie chart was chemotherapy for metastatic non-small cell lung cancer with little or no success. And now the pie chart is well over half the patients getting some kind of targeted or immunotherapy. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.   It is quite [INAUDIBLE] for young people that are listening to this, is that there are enormous opportunities for doing even better than we did. So we just made a start in this whole thing.   OK. With that inspiring message, which I'm glad you said it, we've run out of time. Actually we come at the end of our time. But Dr. Chabner, I want to thank you on behalf of all of us who trained after you, who've learned so much from what you've done, and more importantly, the patients who have benefited from the stuff that you've contributed to the field. It's pretty remarkable and inspiring. I don't use that word too often, but it is. So thank you, and thank you for taking time today. I hope folks listen to this and say, I'm going to go back and make a difference here.   Thank you, Dan. I have enjoyed it. It's been a wonderful time in this career.   Yeah. Well, my pleasure. Until next time, thank you for listening to this JCO's Cancer Story, the Art of Oncology Podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, don't forget to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. While you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology podcast is just one of ASCO's many podcasts. You can find all the shows at podcast.ASCO.org.

On this episode of the Daily EDGE Podcast, Raul interviews his good friend and client Bob Gallo. Bob is a long-time, multiple-business entrepreneur. He helped create the market for mobile document shredding business, then sold the business at a hefty profit. From there, he started and sold several other businesses, and he became so good at selling businesses that he started a consulting business helping other entrepreneurs learn how to exit their business and feel good about it.  On this episode of the Daily EDGE Podcast, Raul interviews his good friend and client Bob Gallo. Bob is a long-time, multiple-business entrepreneur. He helped create the market for mobile document shredding business, then sold the business at a hefty profit. From there, he started and sold several other businesses, and he became so good at selling businesses that he started a consulting business helping other entrepreneurs learn how to exit their business and feel good about it. 

Craig Dellimore talks with Bob Gallo, State Director of the American Association of Retired Persons in Illinois and Manager of Advocacy Mary Anderson about the issues voters over 50 care most about, and what they want from the next Mayor and local lawmakers.

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care, and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Welcome to Cancer Stories. I'm Dr. Daniel Hayes, a medical oncologist. And I'm a translational researcher at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. And I'm also the past president of ASCO. Over the next several podcasts, I am privileged to be your host for a series of interviews with the founders of our field. Over the last 40 years, I've been fortunate to have been trained, mentored, and frankly, inspired by many of these pioneers. It's my hope that through these conversations, we can all be equally inspired by gaining an appreciation of the courage, the vision, and the scientific understanding that led these men and women to establish the field of cancer clinical care over the last 70 years. By understanding of how we got to the present, and what we now consider normal in oncology, we can also imagine and work together towards a better future, where we offer patients better treatments, and are also able to support them and their families during and after cancer treatment. Today, I am very pleased to have as my guest on this podcast, Dr. John Minna. John is generally considered one of the pioneers of translational research in solid tumors, and he's widely recognized as a leader in lung cancer. Dr. Minna is currently the director of the Hammond Center for Therapeutic Oncology Research, and Professor of Internal Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he also holds the Max L. Thomas Distinguished Chair in Molecular Pulmonary Oncology, and the Sarah M. and Charles E. Seay Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research. Dr. Minna received undergraduate medical degrees from Stanford in the mid-1960s, which were followed by a residency at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He then went to the NIH, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for his fellowship in biochemical genetics at the NIH with Dr. Marshall Nirenberg. And then he stayed at the NHLBI as the head of the section on somatic cell genetics. In 1975, he became chief of the NCI-VA Medical Oncology branch within the Clinical Oncology program of the Division of Cancer Treatment. And in 1991, he then moved to University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, where he served as the director of the Sammons Cancer Center and Chief of the Division of Medical Oncology for four years. And since, he has held his current position. Doctor Minna has authored over 700 peer-reviewed papers, and well over 100 other reviews, book chapters, and educationally related manuscripts. He's won too many awards and honors for me to go through in detail. But these include the AACR's Rosenthal award, and ASCO's Scientific Achievement Award, two of the highest in those two organizations. He's also received the ASCO Statesman Award, and he's served on both the AACR and the ASCO boards of directors. He's been PI of the combined UTSW and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Lung Cancer Specialized Program in Research Excellence. And in 2015, he was named one of the Giants of Oncology by OncLive. Dr. Minna, that's quite a mouthful, though. Welcome to our program. Thank you so much, Dan. And thanks for all your work in ASCO and everything, too. Well, actually, it was, as you can imagine, a great privilege. I just had a fabulous time. Just as an aside, when I got elected, I interviewed about 10 former presidents. And at the end of each of my set of questions, I said, well, fill in the blanks. What do you want to talk about? Almost everyone of them said the saddest day of their career was the day they had to quit being president of ASCO. And I know that now. Anyway, now I know you went to Stanford. Were you always a California boy? Or how did you get to Stanford? Well, yes. I was born in San Francisco, actually at the Presidio, which is now a fancy movie set-- some of the priciest real estate. And then, my dad was in the Army. My mom was a nurse. And then I grew up in San Diego. And my Dad had the largest family practice in San Diego. And my mom was the nurse that ran the office. I never forget, I called them one day when I was an intern at Mass General and complained I had 25 outpatients that I saw that day. And they laughed. They'd seen 80. And I made maybe 500 house calls with my dad, carrying his bag when I was younger. And so, he obviously was in medical school just before and then right after the Depression. And so, he had had an opportunity. He was going to do a fellowship in pediatrics at Harvard, but couldn't do it. He had to support all his parents and everything. And, by the way, he had immigrated from Italy when he was a kid. So this was quite a story. And so they always encouraged me to go into academic medicine. It was interesting, because all his buddies were surgeons that kept telling me to come back and be a general surgeon in San Diego. So anyways, I grew up in San Diego. And then was lucky enough to get into Stanford undergraduate medical school. So I went back and looked at your publication list, which dates back to the mid-1960s. By the way, I was in junior high then. It looks to me from your list of publications that you weren't originally headed to a career in oncology. In fact, it looks like you were doing genetics. So you've done a lot in lung cancer. Tell us what happened at the NIH that you sort of changed gears and went into lung cancer. Well, actually, the cancer decision was actually made back in medical school. And it was those-- two of the people that you mentioned when we were talking before, Henry Kaplan and Saul Rosenberg, that really inspired me at Stanford. And they both took me under their wing. I remember the last six months of medical school I spent full-time on radiation oncology. Actually, I worked up nearly 100 new patients with Hodgkin's, if you can imagine that. It's all because of the clinical trials going on there at Stanford. So there were all these new patients coming in. So both of them absolutely got me committed to a career in cancer way back in medical school, and then helped get me internships, residencies. It was Henry's letter to get me a position with Marshall Nirenberg. But both of them were instrumental. And they took a group of young people-- another person that was a year behind me was Ron Levy, obviously, a very prominent person in oncology. And there was a group of us at Stanford that they took under wing. And so as medical students, we were going to these clinical protocol conferences in cancer, which probably didn't exist anywhere else in the United States at that time. And it was just amazing to see the two of them work together-- totally different personalities, but extremely skilled clinically and in terms of clinical trials. So that was an exciting time. And so the decision for me was made way back there when. And as part of it, at Stanford Medical School, I was fortunate enough to do my research in the Department of Genetics. And the person that took me under his wing there was Leonard Herzenberg, who was the guy that invented the fax machine. Obviously, probably should have won the Nobel Prize for that. And so it was kind of genetics on the one side, and cancer on the other. So you can see how that kind of evolved going forward. What struck me at Mass General was that there were fantastic clinicians and everything. Obviously, a lot of cancer. But nobody wanted to take care of the cancer patients in Mass General. So an intern resident, I kind of volunteered for all of that. And then when I got to the NIH with Marshall, it was more genetics and everything. And we can talk about that. But I realized after five to seven years there I was either going to be a basic researcher, or get back to my clinical love. And that would have been cancer. So those were the ties that brought genetics and cancer together for me. So can I ask you, when you were in Boston, who was the chief of medicine at Mass General? Oh, gosh. [INAUDIBLE]. The real question I'm asking is, had Dr. Farber's work filtered across town to you guys? That was just about the same time he was starting to give chemotherapy to kids over at Children's. Right. No. Obviously, they knew about it. But it really wasn't discussed at all there. And there was obviously a separation between what was going on at Farber and the Brigham and then at Mass General. Now, obviously, things are much more integrated. So what made you go into lung cancer after you got to the NIH? I think it was Vince DeVita. But it happened because I actually-- so I'd been with Marshall and they had given me my own group to work with there that we mentioned. And I'd been working on somatic cell genetics. And so I went to Vince and I said, look it, I have to do an oncology fellowship so I can learn about this stuff now and get ready. Of course, this is-- the boards came in '75, which were later. And so he said, well, John, I'm not going to do that. But I tell you what. There's this branch of the VA hospital that [INAUDIBLE] [? Anson ?] and Frank [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE] are running. And I'm trying to decide whether or not to shut it down. So I tell you what. Why don't you go down and run that? And then you'll kind of learn on the job. And, of course, being 35, 36 years old, you think you can do everything. And I said, well, who's the staff there? And he said, well, they're all leaving. And fortunately, one guy [AUDIO OUT]. So I said, well, who are the fellows coming out of the program that are the best fellows? He said, well, that's easy. It's Dan [INAUDIBLE], Paul Bunn, and Jack McDonald. And so I said, well, if I go talk to them, will you at least back me up? And so I did. And fortunately, two of the three agreed to come. I said, you're going from being a fellow to being a senior investigator here in one fell swoop. But this is it. Jack went with Phil [? Stein ?] and did all the work on GI. Phil was leaving the NCI to go down to Georgetown. So they did that. And fortunately, Marty Cohn was down at the VA. He is fantastic clinical trials [INAUDIBLE] and done work with lung cancer. And we did all of that. And so, we went down there. And so, I said, well, OK, got to work on lung cancer. And so we've got to then start working on the genetics of lung cancer. Of course, everybody said that was totally stupid and not possible. And fortunately, I had my collaborator who had been part of the oncogenic virus program, a pathologist, Dr. Adi Gazdar [INAUDIBLE]. So I said, Adi, come on down, and we can do that. So there was people that really gambled on me. Yeah. I wanted to talk about your association with Adi. Before I get to that though, what were you doing for lung cancer in the mid '70s? It must have been pretty crude. Well, we thought it was pretty sophisticated. And, in fact, what we-- obviously, there was the whole series of the first phase of small cell lung cancer clinical trials. There were first reports that occasionally patients respond, have these dramatic responses. And so we set up these whole series of trials. And, of course, at that time, nobody out in the private world wanted to take care. So these patients would come flooding in. And we would do all the staging, get their tissues, and then try to start cell lines from them that nobody had been able to that before. But then they all went on to randomized clinical trials. And Marty Cohn played a big role in that. Obviously, Dan [INAUDIBLE] and Paul Bunn were instrumental. Des Carney came on. And so, these were various combination therapies that [INAUDIBLE] essentially leukemia-like treatment. But Vince always thought the reason we weren't in small cell lung cancer was that we weren't tough enough. And I kept saying, Vince, we're getting-- we're putting them in isolation. We're treating them with more intensive regimens than with leukemia. And so odd responses, but not. And then the other important component of that was Eli Glatstein's recruitment to the NCI as head of the NCI radiation oncology branch. And he really was-- I mean, briefly had known each other at Stanford. And because we were both tied to Henry Kaplan, that made Eli and me instant friends. And basically, we were like brothers. And so he totally threw the support of the radiation oncology branch behind that. And then there were a series of trials with that. Allen Lichter, former president, obviously, and Joel Tepper, he [? added ?] parts to that. So that was fantastic. Anyone from-- So it must have been pretty exciting for you to see some of the first complete responses with chemotherapy in a solid tumor with a small cell. Absolutely. And that's what-- you know, at that time, and particularly then when we started putting this with limited stage, we were really hoping there was going to be a big tail on the survival curve with people who got put into complete remission being able to remain there. And obviously, the therapies would combine modality with chemo and radiotherapy were complex, too. And we were very fortunate to have the various skillful skill set from the radiation oncologists to work with that. And then in '81, by the way-- so we were at the VA from '75 to '81. And then from '81 to '91, it was the NCI-Navy Medical Oncology Branch, when Vince moved us all up to the new National Naval Medical Center. So you and Dr. Gazdar obviously have had a decades-long collaboration. And how did the two of you even hook up? Was it just because you were providing specimens to him in the pathology lab? Or-- No, no. It all actually started five or six years before. We were-- as part of the somatic cell genetics effort is-- I don't know if you remember, there was also a big effort in terms of isolating tumor viruses and the study of retroviruses. And it turned out that the genetics that I was doing with somatic cell genetics could be used to map receptors for retroviruses. And so he and I collaborated on studying the genetics of RNA viruses in human cells and assigning the various linkages to different chromosomes. And so when, again, as I said, when Vince offered me this battlefield promotion, I knew were going to need a laboratory thing. So I said, Adi, come on down. I said that we were going to have to-- we can't study viruses. We're going to need to study something else. And it's going to probably be lung cancer. And so he agreed. And obviously, he has trained as a pathologist, even better part. And he's now, obviously, one of the world's leading lung cancer pathologists. The other person that was at the VA whose name you may not know is Dr. Mary Matthews, who is a pathologist. And she did a lot of the first VA studies, actually determining that small cell lung cancer was highly metastatic, even when it appeared to be localized. So she was-- I've seen her work. Yeah. Actually, so you were there when viruses were going to be the cause of every cancer. Did you get a lot of pushback if you began to say, I don't think that's the case? Well, it's kind of what goes around comes around. We didn't-- no. As it turned out, it was oncogenes that are cause of cancer, which were discovered through Bishop and [INAUDIBLE] thing too. But you do know the other interesting connection with us and viruses and cancer is that we were obviously studying lung cancers and patients and that. But then, Paul Bunn was extremely still interested in lymphomas. But the way the politics, the Onco politics at the NCI intramural program went, that was already the domain of the medicine branch, Bob Young's branch-- Bruce [? Jander ?] and Dan Longo and Bob Young. But there was one lymphoma that they absolutely wanted to have nothing to deal with. And that was Sézary syndrome mycosis fungoides. So Paul said, OK, we're going to study mycosis fungoides. So both at the VA and at the Navy, we had just huge numbers of patients with [? MF ?] come in. And that involved a variety of studies with electron beam and various therapies and staging that Paul was a major figure in. Well, as part of that-- so we started cell lines, tried to start cell lines from those as well. Well, the other thing that was happening was Bob Gallo's discovery of IL-2, T-cell growth factor. And so we got some of that from him, and were able to study, to grow several of these. And it turned out, one of these was from a young patient with highly aggressive HTLV-1 disease. It was a young black guy from the South. He had one of the first-- you know, his bone scan was a super scan with [INAUDIBLE]. Now, we know. So we didn't do that. And it turned out that Bernie Poiesz was a fellow rotating with us. And he went back to work in Gallo's lab and took those cells. And, of course, Gallo was searching everywhere for oncogenic viruses and retroviruses. And the super [? agent ?] from this cell line, H102, blew the roof off. And it turned out to produce HTLV-1. And that was [INAUDIBLE]. Actually, Henry Kaplan submitted for us to PNAS that was with Bernie and Bob Gallo. And that was the first human retrovirus that was discovered. And then it turned out there were other patients that we had, obviously with T-cell lymphomas, that didn't produce virus. But it turned out that those were ones that the virus could replicate in. And that leads off into a whole separate story that you probably need to talk to Adi Gazdar about, because he started this line. And that's the whole Bob Gallo thing. But the point is that Bob knew that if you could get a T-cell line to grow, it could make the retrovirus, and you could identify it. And so, he kept trying to grow T-cells from patients, at that time young, gay guys from New York and San Francisco. Of course, nothing would grow because they were all being killed by HIV. But there were these T-cell lymphoma lines that had that property. So, in any event, this whole thing came back to viruses, that-- it's not my [INAUDIBLE] study. But it was Adi's and Bob Gallo's. You know, you've through this talked a lot about the basic science and the observations. And the term translational medicine really hadn't been invented yet. But you, and I would argue, Marc Lippman and Bill McGuire in breast cancer, were really some of the first to span the gap between [INAUDIBLE] in the clinic in solid tumors. My impression is leukemia and lymphoma had been going on, but it was the solid tumors where you made your big step. Were you thinking about that the whole time? How can I take this and take better care of Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones? Were people trying to stop you from doing that? Who was your role model to give you the courage to move forward? No. I think if you were present back at the NCI-VA and NCI-Navy, it was pretty clear-- and this didn't require any set of smarts-- that the whole idea to start these things was to have models that you could then test to see about new therapies in order to find out what were the underlying causes. And so you remember back there was the [? Amberg ?] and Dan Von Hoff assays for tumor cell sensitivities. So a lot of our first studies were looking at drug response and radiation response phenotypes. And one of the interesting first things was that the small cells, most of them were exquisitely-- they were like lymphocytes, sensitive to radiotherapies, which was what it was like in the clinic. So I think that there was probably kind of obvious some of the things to do. I think the obstacles were-- first of all, the major obstacle was everybody blamed the lung cancer patient for having lung cancer because they smoke. And I'm sure Franco and anybody working in the lung cancer field with Franco Muggia would tell you this. And we're finally over that, I think, and also with the never smoking lung cancer cases. So that was one big obstacle. I think having these models to work with was another. And then just having the genomic techniques to study them. I look at our first publications in Nature with Southern blots and a few samples. And now, you couldn't even-- this wouldn't even qualify as supplementary supplementary data. Actually, I don't know if you were at ASCO. Bruce Johnson's presidential address was an elegant description of the progress made in lung cancer. And he showed pie charts of 10 years ago. And the entire treatment was chemotherapy. And now it's broken up into all the different precision medicine and immunoncology. I've got to think if you were in the audience, and if you weren't, that's fair. But if you were sitting here thinking, boy, shake my head. We've made a lot of progress. Oh, [INAUDIBLE]. Well, I tell you, I get-- some of those slides I know Bruce was-- I was giving those to Bruce. So, you know, clearly, those were the types of obstacles. And everybody thought that-- first of all, everybody thought that lung cancer was not a genetic disease. And in retrospect now, it's obvious. But, you know, so I think there's that-- the technologies. So one brief anecdote about-- and you probably saw this, too, at the Farber. I'll never forget at the NCI-Navy, all of the senior staff rotated. And we had several months worth of attending in there. And we were taking care of patients with all kinds of tumors-- breast, lung, everything. And we had our own ward with 40 beds. And we saw about 70 patients elsewhere in the hospital. And we had 100 patients a day in clinic. So it was a huge service. So I go up, and I'm doing my first day of attending. And I introduce myself. And I'll tell you who my fellows were on that round. So one of them was Nancy Davidson. The other was [INAUDIBLE]. The other was Neal Rosen. And one was George Morstyn, who subsequently became a-- Australian guy became a VP at Amgen. And so they're presenting these cases and everything. And I go back, and I sit down with Paul and [INAUDIBLE] and Dan [INAUDIBLE]. And I say, Jesus. I said, I can't believe it. We have some really good fellows this time. At another time offline when it's not recorded, I'll tell you some of the presentation that Neal Rosen gave that time, which was vintage Neal. And I say this mainly because to our oncology fellows now, I say, look right, look left, and there's going to be some really interesting people that you're meeting right now. Just remember them several years down the line. You know? Nancy was no different in her presentation today than when she gave her presidential address. She had all the [AUDIO OUT] and everything. And so, that was great. Nancy and I are the same age, but she's been my role model for 25 years. [AUDIO OUT] The other thing-- Well, a couple of other questions-- you've been on the board of both the AACR and ASCO. And I'm interested in what you see as both the contrasts and the mutual initiatives going forward and how they've evolved. Do you have any insights into that? Well, I think Saul Rosenberg may have said something about this [INAUDIBLE] to you. He always, from early on, lamented that, quotes, "commercialization" of ASCO, as opposed to its academic thing. I think, number one, ASCO has done a fantastic job in terms of medical education at many different levels. So I think that's a major success. I think also what clearly is needed now is that we get more of the real world experience. So if patients are treated with checkpoint inhibitors with lung cancer, we don't need to know the results of 300, or 400 patients, or 500. We need to know what happens in 10,000 or 20,000 patients. And the only way we're going to get this is to have some kind of interaction with everything that's going on in the real world. And I think ASCO is positioned to do that. And so, I see that type of interaction being very important. Back when I was on the board, there was-- well, how many people from the private sector should be on the board? And we need to have them have a voice, and all of this. And there was kind of the-- then some people in the private sector trying to take control of ASCO for their own group practices. And we won't go into any names or anything here. But I think what's eventually come out is the possibility to really be the best for everything, both educational, translation of findings. So if there's real improvement in discoveries which have happened to be made, we obviously want to get them out as quickly as possible. Patients demand it. But then also, that we can work out some way to get feedback. Actually, this is one of the reasons-- you've hit on a couple of big initiativies over the last 10 years that I've been involved with. One is the development of CancerLinQ. And we hope that CancerLinQ will provide exactly the kind of data you just asked for. The other is the establishment of the Department of Clinical Affairs, and reaching out to the state-affiliated councils. Steve Grubbs is our Vice-President for that. And it's made a big difference. So that instead of being us versus them, academic versus private practice, it's us versus cancer all together. I'm glad you noticed that, actually. One final question, and this is a bit of a trite question. But I'm asking each of my guests on the show, what do you consider your legacy, your greatest accomplishment? In the end, what are people going to remember John Minna has done to change the face of oncology? Is it your science, or your mentoring? Or what's the one thing you would put your finger on? Well, I think Bob Young and I have an agreement about this. It's the mentoring and everything. And I think training the next generation, setting the example, is very important. I would say one other thing that's really important about ASCO that I see going forward is integrating surgery, radiotherapy, other disciplines, too. And I think it's been very successful. It wasn't necessarily all that way at first. But it's been really key. And getting a chance to know some of the giants in surgery and giants in radiation oncology, like Sam Hellman and Eli Glatstein. And I think Vince, in his book, in many ways saw that, too. The DeVita textbook with Hellman and Steve Rosenberg was an important example of that. So I think that's another important legacy from ASCO too. I agree. Well, actually, I think we've run out of time. Dr. Minna, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your taking the time to speak with us today. I'm sure the memberships can be thrilled to listen to the stories you've told. It's interesting, you've referred to several people I've actually already interviewed, or have planned to interview in the near future. You dropped a lot of names. And that's because-- and you sort of alluded to this. I'm not sure any of us recognize where we are in history at the time that history is being made. And then you look back and say, wow, I was there. And that you were fortunate to be at the NIH in those days. I was fortunate to be at the Dana-Farber in a few years after that. And you shed a lot of light. It's been terrific. Any final comments or parting words? Well, no. I think the one thing I would say is I was thinking back to those early ASCO meetings where there would be 5,000, 7,000, 8,000. So you couldn't even walk from one place to another, because you were always stopping and talking. And now you go to 15,000, 17,000 more. And I remember John Niederhuber and I, when he was director of the NCI, on the third day of ASCO walks through and he grabbed me, and he said, John, you're the first person I recognize. And I [INAUDIBLE]. We had roughly 40,000 people at the meeting this year. Yeah. I think that the question-- so going forward is how we need this family, but how do we get it so it could also be on the personal level? Anyway, Dan, it's been good talking to you. And we thank you for your service, Dan. Thank you. It's been great. For more original research, editorials, and review articles, please visit us online at JCO.org. This production is copyrighted to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Thank you for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Le dernier épisode a traité du livre “Laser: 50 ans de découvertes” de Fabien Bretenaker et Nicolas Treps. Avec eux nous avons appris quasiment tout ce qui est possible de savoir à propos des lasers et de leurs applications, de celles que nous rencontrons dans notre vie de tous les jours à celles incroyables des laboratoires de recherche dans le travaux de pointe sur la fusion, la chimie, etc.Aujourd’hui nous allons parler du livre de Michel de Pracontal “L’imposture scientifique en dix leçons”. J’en avais parlé dans l’épisode 5 de LisezLaScience comme un livre que j’aimerais lire. Et bien je l’ai lu ! Grâce à ce livre on se retrouve plongé dans cette zone grise de la science où il est parfois compliqué de prime abord de savoir à quoi l’on a affaire: science, pseudo-science, charlatanisme, manipulation politico-industrielle ? C’est de tout cela dont nous parle Michel de Pracontal, et à propos duquel il nous entraîne à mieux comprendre ce qu’il en a été d’évènements passés important et à mieux les identifier (les manipulations) quand ils surgiront peut-être demain.L'imposture scientifique en dix leçons - crédit : http://www.amazon.fr - http://goo.gl/mJJ9wESommaireQuelques mots sur Michel de PracontalLe livre “L’imposture scientifique en 10 leçons”Un livre qui n’a rien à voirUn livre que j’aimerais lireUne quotePlugsUn auteurMichel de Pracontal - crédit : http://nouvelobs.com - http://goo.gl/fwgKciMichel de Pracontal est un journaliste qui publie des articles aujourd’hui principalement pour Médiapart où il possède notamment un blog. En tant que spécialiste des sciences et de vulgarisation il y opère en décryptant des sujets scientifiques, des idées reçues et il rend les concepts et les théories compréhensibles aux simples mortels que nous sommes tous face à ces sujets, parfois polémiques, qui défrayent chaque jour un peu plus la chronique dans les médias en quête de sensationalisme.Michel de Pracontal est cannois de naissance. Né en 1954, il possède une formation scientifique avec notamment une maîtrise en mathématiques. Sûrement rapidement attiré par la vulgarisation et le journalisme scientifique il obtient aussi un doctorat en science de l’information sur la vulgarisation scientifique.Médiapart n’est pas le premier média pour lequel il a travaillé. Il a aussi en effet publié pour Science et Vie, L’évènement du Jeudi (pour lequel il avait d’ailleurs couvert l’histoire du sang contaminé) et pour le Nouvel Observateur pendant presque 20 ans (de 1990 à 2009).Mais Michel de Pracontal ne s’est pas arrêté au journalisme et il a aussi été essayiste et romancier. À son crédit on peut citer les ouvrages suivants : “La Mémoire de l’eau” (un livre de vulgarisation paru en 1990 chez La Découverte), “La femme sans nombril” (un polar publié au Cherche Midi en 2005), “Les gènes de la violence” (autre polar publié en 2008 chez le même éditeur), “Kaluchua - Cultures, techniques et traditions des sociétés animales” (un livre de vulgarisation publié chez le Seuil en 2010) ou encore, le livre dont nous allons parler aujourd’hui : “L’imposture scientifique en 10 leçons” publié chez La Découverte en 2001.Comme on peut déjà le pressentir avec ces différents ouvrages dont il est l’auteur, Michel de Pracontal est un amateur des sciences au sens large. C’est une chose que l’on retrouve d’ailleurs dans les sujets qu’il aborde dans ses articles pour Médiapart ou sur son blog : biologie, évolution, météorologie, neuro-sciences, rien ne l’arrête et il arrive à parler de ces sujets sans perdre son lectorat. Qualité incomparable pour quelqu’un qui cherche à vulgariser les sciences pour aider le quidam à s’y retrouver et à ne pas se faire berner par des imposteurs.Un livreAvant-proposAvant de lire ce livre, je ne m’étais pas rendu compte à quel point “L’Imposture scientifique en 10 leçons” de Michel de Pracontal était une oeuvre qu’il était indispensable de connaître quand on s’intéresse aux sciences et au traitement qui leur est offert par la société et les médias.Le style de Michel de Pracontal peut paraître déroutant au premier abord (j’ai été dérouté pour ma part lors de la lecture des premières pages), car il alterne un ton moqueur voire sarcastique dans certains cas (quand les sujets sont légers) avec un ton strict, méthodique et implacable (quand il s’agit d’énoncer des faits et de révéler des impostures qui ont détruit des vies). Il sait aussi garder un fil conducteur entre toutes les impostures qu’il met en lumière (et je ne parle pas ici de cette histoire récurrente d’hémorroïdes) avec cette idée que la science est parfois utilisée à de mauvaises fins en ne servant que de prétexte pour des idées plus noires.Il est bon de noter que la version que j’ai entre mes mains est la version revisitée de 2001. La première édition était sortie en 1986 et celle-ci ajoute un grand nombre de mises à jour et de nouveaux faits concernant des impostures qui ont été révélées entre temps.La revueMichel de Pracontal débute son livre avec tout un passage sur le fait que les imposteurs de la science sont là pour révéler la vérité sur les vraies questions que l’Humanité se pose. Et on comprend que la science ne répond qu’aux questions qu’elle peut tester dans le monde réel par l’expérience et pas à des questions qui restent sans réponse testée, validée et approuvée. On découvre aussi que souvent les imposteurs justifient leurs théories en supposant des causes qui vont permettent d’aboutir à ce qu’ils veulent trouver. Quoi de mieux pour justifier quelque chose que d’en supposer la cause après tout? Qu’elle soit aussi peut existante que le résultat n’est pas grave d’ailleurs … Ces imposteurs sont d’ailleurs capables de tout relier, dans une théorie holiste dont personne n’aurait compris l’existence avant eux et ceci même si ils n’ont pas de preuve “en béton” pour le prouver. Ceci fait d’ailleurs souvent d’eux, les nouveaux Gallillée, Einstein ou Darwin (et ceci même si ils cherchent à les détruire soit-dit en passant).Dans sa leçon suivante, Michel de Pracontal donne différents exemples qui naviguent du loufoques au très sérieux (et dangereux) comme par exemple les Isolation Tanks de John Lilly permettant de réaliser des Out Of Body Experiences. Richard Feynman en parle d’ailleurs dans son livre “Surely, you’re joking Mister Feynman où il explique son expérience de ces Isolation Tanks et ce qu’il a ressenti.De cet exemple Michel de Pracontal ressort différentes règles qu’il arrive à valider avec les autres cas qu’il décrit comme par exemple l’usage du QI pour la sélection des immigrants en Angleterre ou aux États-Unis (halluciant), ou pire, pour la stérilisation des plus “bêtes et ignares” aux États-Unis (encore plus dingue).Dans la troisième leçon, Michel de Pracontal aborde un sujet cher à certains des Alter-scientifiques que décrit Alexandre Moatti dans son livre au nom quasiment éponyme “Alterscience” : le rejet de la science dite “officielle”. On découvre ainsi des théories aussi variées que farfelues à propos de l’évolution de la Terre, la sempiternelle remise en cause des idées de Darwin à propos de l’évolution et de la sélection naturelle ou encore la magnifique mémoire de l’eau. “Découverte”, et je mets des guillemets, du Docteur Benveniste qui revient encore aujourd’hui à la télé avec un reportage passé sur France 5 un soir très tard dont j’ai vu la fin vers 1h du matin une nuit où je ne dormais pas dans lequel le fait Luc Montagnier s’y intéresse justifie la véracité de ce qui est expliqué dans le documentaire.Dans la quatrième leçon on apprend que les imposteurs s’adressent plutôt à leurs concitoyens à travers des médias de masse comme la télé par exemple, plutôt qu’à leurs pairs à travers des revues à comité de lecture. Parfois cela vient du fait que les scientifiques remettraient en cause ce qui est dit et qu’il serait dommage de devoir justifier ce qui ne peut l’être. D’autres fois c’est pour poursuivre une quête de reconnaissance qu’il est compliqué d’acquérir avec les pairs et de pouvoir affirmer au monde qu’on est le meilleur.On découvre ainsi comme a été annoncée l’histoire de la Fusion Froide découverte par Fleischmann et Pons et comment le soufflet est retombé. Enfin pas complètement, il existe encore aujourd’hui des conférences sur le sujet malgré les preuves d’impossibilité du phénomène présenté qui ont été données de par le monde depuis. On peut aussi s’interroger, comme le fait Alexandre Moatti, dans son livre que des hommes politiques de la stature de Kofi Annan, à l’époque où il était secrétaire général de l’ONU, puissent tomber dans de telles supercheries.Quand on arrive à la cinquième leçon on apprend aussi qu’une bonne façon de devenir un imposteur en science est tout simplement de modifier les faits pour qu’ils collent à la théorie. Michel de Pracontal en parlait déjà dans une leçon précédente concernant le QI, il en parle ici plus précisément concernant l’histoire de l’Homme de Piltdown découvert en Angleterre par Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward et aussi Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Enfin découvert. Plutôt inventé! Car il s’est finalement avéré que les preuve fournies étaient fausses. Michel de Pracontal fait d’ailleurs extensivement référence à l’ouvrage de Stephen Jay Gould où ce dernier traite longuement du sujet : “Quand les poules auront des dents”.Autre fait intéressant associé, on découvre aussi les manipulations sur les données qui ont été réalisées autour des recherches de Mendel concernant les gènes qu’il réalisa grâce à l’étude de caractères morphologiques des pois et leur transmission. C’est un point que Vincent Guidice décrit d’ailleurs assez bien dans l’épisode 161 de Podcastscience sur l’ADN qu’il avait réalisé. Les données étaient ici à priori modifiées pour coller au mieux à la théorie. Mais à la différence de l’Homme de Piltdown, ici la théorie était correcte. Je vous laisse écouter le podcast pour en savoir plus.Dans la sixième leçon, Michel de Pracontal prend du temps pour nous parler de l’histoire du SIDA et du sang contaminé qu’il couvrit pour le compte de l’Évènement du Jeudi pour lequel il travaillait à l’époque de l’affaire en temps que chroniqueur scientifique. Il nous explique en détail la découverte de la maladie, le travail des équipes américaines et notamment celle menée par Bob Gallo et celle de l’équipe française de Luc Montagnier, François Barré-Sinoussi et consort. On apprend les coups sous la ceinture qui ont été donnés, comment la politique s’en est mêlée autant aux États-Unis qu’en France (avec un impact plus négatif en France). Robert Gallo ne semble pas tout blanc dans son traitement des échanges qu’il a pu avoir avec l’équipe française quand à la découverte du SIDA et de l’annonce correspondante.Et puis il y a les tests de dépistage. Parce que découvrir le SIDA en laboratoire c’est bien. Pouvoir dépister les porteurs du virus pour qu’ils puissent recevoir des traitements qui restent encore à mettre en place et limiter la propagation du SIDA sont des choses indispensables. Pour une problématique de santé publique, mais aussi et surtout pour une problématique industrielle et financière. Et malheureusement c’est cette dernière qui va être retenue et qui va mener à l’affaire du sang contaminé en France. Michel de Pracontal explique en effet (ou tout du moins c’est ce que j’ai compris) que le retard de l’Institut Pasteur par rapport aux américains dans la mise au point d’un test fonctionnel, vendable et dont la production serait industrialisable, à empêcher le dépistage de poches de sang contaminées par le VIH, malgré le fait que le Centre National de Transfusion Sanguine sache qu’un risque existât à l’époque.Dans la septième leçon, Michel de Pracontal nous parle du lien qu’il existe entre certains imposteurs scientifiques et la religion. On apprend comment certains phénomènes poussent certaines personnes à supposer des choses impossibles afin de faire rentrer des carrés dans des ronds avec la science et la religion. Que ce soit en biologie avec les notions de plan de construction pour les êtres vivants, le Tao de la Physique de Frank Capra, l’Ordre impliqué remise au goût du jour grâce à la notion d’Univers Holographique, l’hypothèse Gaïa de Lovelock, la Noogenèse de Teilhard de Chardin, ou encore le principe anthropique avec l’Homme comme objectif de l’Univers.Avec sa huitième leçon, Michel de Pracontal nous plonge dans le monde fantastique du paranormal que décortique d’ailleurs avec succès Jean-Michel Abrassart dans son podcast “Scepticisme Scientifique”. On découvre ainsi l’histoire d’Eusapia Palladino, qui savait faire voler des tables et qui en aura mystifié plus d’un grâce à ses prétendus pouvoir spiritiques. Ou encore Joseph Rhine et la parapsychologie qu’il tenta de rendre scientifique tout en se faisant, selon les mots même de Pracontal, “rouler dans la farine par des collaborateurs sans scrupules”. Michel de Pracontal présente d’ailleurs les travaux réalisés par Henri Broch sur le psi et le fait que plus on fait d’étude, moins il existe (ou plus on se rend contre des supercheries peut-être ?). Il est d’ailleurs intéressant de voir comment l’aspect non-intuitif de la mécanique quantique a fait ressusciter certaines théories paranormales qui voit dans cette physique déroutante la source de tout ce que ces théories n’arrivaient pas à prouver jusque-là. Ceci malgré le fait que la plupart des physiciens rapprochent l’idée des psiristes selon laquelle l’esprit pourrait influencer les mesures réalisées à celle “des tables tournantes du XIXème siècle”.Dans sa neuvième leçon, Michel de Pracontal présente l’un des plus importants ressorts des imposteurs : l’usage exagéré de termes scientifiques à tout va, créant un galimatias incompréhensibles qui permet de couvrir d’une couche scientifique un discours qui s’avère, au mieux vide de sens, au pire totalement faux et contraire à ce que la science énonce comme faits prouvés par l’expérience. Ainsi on navigue entre mots ayant des doubles sens, métaphores abusives, analogie incongrues, référence au sens commun pour justifier n’importe quoi, utilisation de termes du langage courant dans des sciences qui leur donnent un sens tout autre. Michel de Pracontal fait d’ailleurs référence au livre “L’âge du capitaine” de Stella Baruk concernant le cas particulier des mathématiques pour ce dernier point.Michel de Pracontal fait aussi référence au fameux article d’Alain Sokal qu’il avait fait publié dans une revue américaine nommée SocialText malgré le fait qu’il fut vide de sens et rempli de termes utilisés de manière abusive. Le but de l’article de Sokal était justement de démontrer les torts possibles quand la science est utilisée pour donner une assurance de valeur. C’est d’ailleurs quelque chose qu’Alain Sokal et Jacques Bricmont ont par la suite dénoncé (l’usage par l’article) dans un ouvrage intitulé “Impostures intellectuelles” qu’il me semble indispensable d’ajouter à ma liste de lectures.Dans la dernière leçon de son ouvrage, Michel de Pracontal nous parle de la non-réfutabilité des théories des imposteurs scientifiques. Il ne faudrait pas en effet qu’ils puissent être remis en cause! Il parle ainsi de ce que Karl Popper appelle la réfutabilité. Que l’expérience ne suffit pas et que par exemple un mauvaise prédiction en astrologie n’invalide par, selon les tenants de cette pseudo-science, les principes sur laquelle elle est basée. Termes vagues, raison cachée non prise en compte, etc il y a forcément quelque chose qui va permettre de retomber sur ses pattes. Mais il faut faire attention, il existe en science de vraies théories qui ne sont pas pour autant réfutable, et la Théorie des Cordes en est un bon exemple. Pour l’instant les développements théoriques réalisés ne permettent pas de la tester pour la valider ou l’invalider. Ceci n’en fait pas, bien sûr, une théorie aussi farfelue que l’astrologie, car elle n’est pas impossible dans le principe. Elle englobe les théories physiques actuelles et repose sur de solides édifices mathématiques. Michel de Pracontal pointe ensuite le fait qu’il existe des domaines de recherche qui ne peuvent pas être jugées à l’aune des critères de Popper comme l’Histoire par exemple. Pour citer Pracontal : “Le modèle des sciences de la nature ne s’applique pas à toutes les formes de connaissances et de théories”.Une question reste en suspend : une autre science reste-t-elle possible ? Selon les pseudo-scientifiques ou les alter-scientifiques : oui. Mais c’est là la graine qui nourrit les imposteurs, car finalement, si tout ceci devient prouvé, ceci devient une science … Pour paraphraser Groucho Marx et citer Michel de Pracontal, “l’imposteur scientifique ne voudrait pour rien au monde faire partie d’un club scientifique qui serait disposé à l’accepter comme membre”.En conclusionAprès la lecture de ce livre, j’ai pu découvrir qu’il fait partie des fondamentaux de beaucoup quand à la critique (dans son sens le plus classique) de la science d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. J’ai appris énormément sur tous ces moments de l’Histoire de la Science où certains ont tenté d’apporter des choses, bonnes ou mauvaise avec la science comme arme. Sur leurs méthodes, sur les résultats bons ou mauvais qui en sont ressortis. On grandit en tant que citoyen baignant dans cet univers trop complexe pour être compris, mais indispensable à nos vies.Et, outre la lecture même du livre qui donne une vision, non pas pessimiste, mais équivalent à celle d’un néon blanc qui révèlerait les failles et le teint blafard de certaines facettes de ce que l’on appelle de la science au sens large, ces différentes histoires me font dire qu’il est très complexe de se faire une idée concrète d’un sujet sans faire des recherches extensives sur ce à quoi l’on s’intéresse. Il est en effet très rapide de se faire berner par des imposteurs en mal de reconnaissance, par des scientifiques de qualité qui se sont fait bernés ou qui auraient besoin de recouvrer un prestige disparu avec les années ou jamais atteint.Cela me laisse une sorte d’amertume car ce livre révèle ce qu’est finalement une facette de la science et son traitement et retire ce vernis qu’on nous fait lui donner à travers les merveilles qu’elle a pu réaliser.Ne vous méprenez pas, c’est un très bon livre et une œuvre indispensable à lire, mais elle aura tendance à remuer certaines de vos préconceptions ou idées et d’éclairer certains évènements sous un regard nouveau et implacable.Ce livre fait partie d’une sorte de corpus (avec “Denialism” de Michael Specter, “Alterscience” de Alexandre Moatti, “La croyance au paranormal: Facteurs prédispositionnels et situationnels” de Jean-Michel Abrassart et d’autres bien sûr) qui est un mal nécessaire pour toute personne souhaitant pouvoir comprendre ce qui est réellement scientifique, et ce qui ne l’est pas. La science est en effet devenue le cœur de toutes les avancées technologiques et presque sociétales de notre temps et il ne fait pas oublier ou se situe la limite que certains voudraient voir disparaître (consciemment ou non) entre science, pseudo-science, alter-science, science-fiction, fantastique, miracles, etc.Un livre qui n’a rien à voirLa Nuit des Temps - crédit : goodreads.com - http://goo.gl/JUvtSI Comme livre qui n’a rien à voir, j’ai décidé de choisir l’un des romans les plus connus de René Barjavel : La nuit des temps. Il s’agit selon moi d’un chef d’œuvre du fantastique paru en 1968 aux Presses de la Cité. On peut d’ailleurs le retrouver en poche pour ceux qui préfèreraient un format plus petit.L’histoire est celle d’un journaliste qui participe à la couverture d’une découverte sensationnelle au pôle sud : la découverte d’une anomalie sous la glace et qui s’avère être une capsule ayant plus de 400000 ans et hébergeant deux personnes : une homme et une femme. La femme est réveillée et elle fait découvrir un monde inconnu où les règles sont différentes, la science plus avancée qu’aujourd’hui et le véritable amour impossible. René Barjavel nous raconte cette histoire de manière haletante, en mélangeant histoire d’amour, science-fiction et il nous livre ici un chef d’œuvre de la littérature fantastique du XXème siècle. Pour vous dire à quel point ce livre se dévore : j’ai du lire les presque 400 pages de ce livre en un peu plus de 3 heures. Et ceci plusieurs fois … Je ne peux donc que vous le recommander très chaudement !Un livre que j’aimerais lireGödel Escher Bach : Les brins d'une guirlande éternelle - crédit : amazon.fr - http://goo.gl/rl5gIv À force d’écouter des épisodes de Podcastscience où les mathématiciens en chef que sont NicoTupe et Robin parlent du livre “Gödel Escher Bach : Les brins d’une Guirlande Éternelle” ou GEB pour les intimes, de Douglas Hofstadter, je me dis de plus en plus que je ne peux pas y échapper et qu’il va falloir que je le lise à un moment ou à un autre. De ce que je peux comprendre des résumés, ce livre est culte, et ce pour une très bonne raison : il est capable d’embrasser différents domaines de la science et de montrer de quelle manière les mathématiques permettent de les relier de manière harmonieuse et notamment comment, et c’est ce qui fait le nombre du livre, on peut relier la musique de Bach, les gravures d’Escher et la logique mathématique sur laquelle travaillait Gödel.Un programme pour le moins alléchant ! Ce livre intègre donc la longue liste de livre que j’aimerais vraiment lire. Ne vous y trompez pas, il ne s’agit pas juste de le lire pour l’avoir fait, mais de le lire pour mieux comprendre le monde qui nous entoure.QuoteQuoi de mieux qu’une citation de monsieur Karl Popper en ce qui concerne la science, les impostures et un moyen de réfuter la non-science ?Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.Karl Raimund PopperEssay, 'On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance', in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1962), 28.Plugs et liens évoquésDavid Medernach, alias Xilrian sur le web, nous fait profiter à travers Xil’cast, sa chaîne Youtube de vidéos sur des sujets variés et vous pouvez ainsi découvrir “Les 9 vies de Timothy Leary” et dernièrement “Les 8 travaux de John Van Neumann”. C’est bien fait, fun et informatif à la fois. Si jamais nous ne connaissez pas, jetez-vous sur ses vidéos, cela vaut le détour!”.PodcastScience organise avec Xavier Durussel, CM de Podcastsuisse, une soirée radio-dessinée le 23/08 sur le thème “Instruments scientifiques : Cathédrales du XXIe siècle”. Cela va se passer à Genève, je ne peux que vous enjoindre à vous y rendre ! Vous pourrez m’y retrouver ainsi que la bande de PodcastScience et de StripScience. Ce sera l’occasion d’apprendre plein de choses et de passer une bonne soirée :) Si vous voulez y participer, un seul lien: http://www.podcastscience.fm“L’imposture scientifique en dix leçons” de Michel de Pracontal dans la rubrique “Un livre que j’aimerais lire” de l’épisode 5 de LisezLaScience: http://lisezlascience.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/lisezlascience-5-le-beau-livre-de-la-medecine-de-clifford-pickover/Page wikipédia consacrée à Michel de Pracontal: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_PracontalLa page de Médiapart avec les articles de Michel de Pracontal : http://www.mediapart.fr/biographie/119420Le blog de Michel de Pracontal chez Médiapart : http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/michel-de-pracontalÉpisode 161 de Podcastscience sur l’ADN par Vincent Guidice : http://www.podcastscience.fm/emission/2014/02/09/podcast-science-161-ladn/Podcast Scepticisme Scientifique : http://scepticismescientifique.blogspot.frConclusionQue vous ayez aimé ou pas, surtout, ne restez pas à regarder les championnats d’Europe d’Athlétisme. Envoyez-moi des courrier, des commentaires, de like sur la page Facebook, des tweets, des retweets, de l’enduit à joint, j’en ai besoin pour finir de plâtrer un mur ou l’oeuvre complète de Jean-Paul Delahaye si jamais vous avez assez des livres bien écrits.Vous pouvez retrouver LisezLaScience sur son site web http://lisezlascience.wordpress.com et vous pouvez me contacter sur twitter sur @LisezLaScience ou sur la page Facebook associée https://www.facebook.com/LisezLaScience et le podcast est accessible sur podcloud http://lisezlascience.podcloud.fr/ et sur podcastfrance http://podcastfrance.fr/podcast-lisez-la-science .Vous pouvez aussi m’envoyer des e-mails à lisezlascience@gmail.comVous pouvez d’ailleurs retrouver l’ensemble des livres cités sur la liste goodreads associée à ce podcast sur le compte de LisezLaScience. Les livres seront placés sur des “étagères” spécifiques par épisode et ceux de celui-ci sont sur l’étagère “lls-7”Prochain épisodeOn se retrouve le 31/08/2014 pour un nouvel épisode sur “Désir d’Infini” de Trinh Xuan Thuan.D’ici là bonne quinzaine à toutes et à tous.Les références des livres évoquésLa Mémoire de l’eauISBN : 270711894X (ISBN13 : 978-2707118943)Auteur : Michel de PracontalNombre de pages : 227 pagesDate de parution : 02/03/1999 chez La DécouvertePrix : 15,00 € chez Amazon ou 27,00 € à la FnacLa femme sans nombrilISBN : 2749103517 (ISBN13 : 9782749103518)Auteur : Michel de pracontalNombre de pages : 229 pagesDate de parution : 01/02/2005 chez Le Cherche MidiPrix : 2,79 € chez Amazon ou 3,70 € chez la FnacLes gènes de la violenceISBN : 2749111137 (ISBN13 : 9782749111131)Auteur : Michel de PracontalNombre de pages : 285 pagesDate de parution : 09/10/2008 chez Le Cherche MidiPrix : 24,00 € chez Amazon ou la FnacKaluchua - Cultures, techniques et traditions des sociétés animalesISBN : 2020513064 (ISBN13 : 9782020513067)Auteur : Michel de PracontalNombre de pages : 187 pagesDate de parution : 14/10/2010 chez le SeuilPrix : 17,20 € chez Amazon ou la FnacL’imposture scientifique en 10 leçonsISBN : 2020639440 (ISBN13 : 978-2020639446)Auteur : Michel de PracontalNombre de pages : 378 pagesDate de parution : 08/04/2005 chez le SeuilPrix : 9,60 € chez Amazon ou la FnacSurely you’re joking Mister FeynmanISBN : 0393316041 (ISBN13: 9780393316049)Auteur : Richard P FeynmanNombre de pages : 350 pagesDate de parution : 12/05/1997 chez W. W. Norton & CompanyPrix : 13, 26 € chez Amazon ou 7,98€ chea la FnacAlterscience. Postures, Dogmes, IdéologiesISBN : 2738128874 (ISBN13 : 9782738128874)Auteur : Alexandre MoattiNombre de pages : 336 pagesDate de parution : 17/01/2013 chez Odile JacobPrix : 23,90 € chez Amazon ou la FnacQuand les poules auront des dentsISBN : 2020128861 (ISBN13: 9782020128865)Auteur : Stephen Jay GouldNombre de pages : 478 pagesDate de parution : 17/05/1991 chez le SeuilPrix : 10,10 € chez Amazon ou la FnacL’âge du capitaineISBN : 2020183013 (ISBN13: 9782020183017)Auteur : Stella BarukNombre de pages : 355 pagesDate de parution : 01/01/1998 chez le SeuilPrix : 8,10 € chez Amazon ou la FnacImpostures IntellectuellesISBN : 2738105033 (ISBN13 : 978-2738105035)Auteur : Alain Sokal, Jean BricmontNombre de pages : 276 pagesDate de parution : 02/10/1997 chez Odile JacobPrix : 22,90 € chez Amazon ou la FnacLa croyance au paranormal: Facteurs prédispositionnels et situationnelsISBN : 613154901X (ISBN13: 9786131549014)Auteur : Jean-Michel AbrassartNombre de pages : 104 pagesDate de parution : 19/11/2010 chez Editions Universitaires EuropeennesPrix : 39,00 € chez AmazonDenialsm : How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our LivesISBN : 1594202303 (ISBN13: 9781594202308)Auteur : Michael PsecterNombre de pages : 304 pagesDate de parution : 26/10/2010 chez Penguin BooksPrix : 12,48 € chez Amazon ou 6,65 € chez la FnacLa Nuit des TempsISBN : 2266023039 (ISBN13: 9782266023030)Auteur : René BarjavelNombre de pages : 394 pagesDate de parution : 01/01/1988 chez PocketPrix : 7,30 € chez Amazon ou la FnacGödel Escher Bach : Les brins d’une Guirlande ÉternelleISBN : 2100523066 (ISBN13: 978-2100523061)Auteur : Douglas Hofstadter, Traducteurs : Jacqueline Henry, Robert FrenchNombre de pages : 883 pagesDate de parution : 05/11/2008 chez DunodPrix : 50,00 € chez Amazon ou la FnacVous pouvez retrouver la liste des livres dans goodreads à l’adresse suivante : https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/30797714-lisezlascience?shelf=lls-7