Linus Pauling Interview, February 11, 1992

TH: Interview with Linus Pauling, February 11, 1992.

LP: Yes, hello Tom.

TH: Hello, how are you?

LP: Ok.

TH: Yeah, I heard you went down to the hospital down south for your catheter yesterday.

LP: Yes.

TH: Yeah. That all get squared away alright?

LP: Yeah. No trouble. Except I-

[Tape jump]

LP: -before getting to the hospital.

TH: Yeah, well that's unfortunate. I was sorry to miss you and I wanted to see if now might be a good time to grab you and talk for a few minutes and talk a little bit.

LP: Surely.

TH: Good. Good. Let's see. There's so many things to talk about but I think what I'd like to do today, if it's alright with you, is talk a little bit about your visit with Albert Schweitzer.

LP: Ok.

TH: Ok. I'd like to know.... First, tell me a little about the reasons you decided to go to Africa to visit Dr. Schweitzer? What was the reasoning process?

LP: Well, I'd have to check up on the dates because I can't be sure about my thoughts in relation to the period of time.

TH: I believe it was 1959...

LP: Yes, I guess so. Probably by that time Schweitzer had given his Nobel Address.

TH: Yeah.

LP: It was delayed. He didn't go to the Nobel Ceremony, but then came later and gave his Nobel Address. I was impressed by it. I had written to Schweitzer, well at the time of the petition nineteen-fifty...well, around 1957. Around about then. I'd written to him asking to him to sign the petition. And my memory is 00:02:00that he signed about three copies at different times and sent them in to me.

TH: Yes.

LP: And so I had been in contact with him. I don't remember whether I suggested that we come to see him or whether he, well he invited us to come of course. But it may have been at my suggestion.

TH: Yeah.

LP: I just thought I ought to be acquainted with him personally, my wife too. And we were going to make a trip to Europe, and we just flew down to Lambaréné I guess, I'm not sure where the airport was. And then stayed about two weeks with Schweitzer.

TH: Were you surprised by the conditions at his clinic?

LP: Well no I don't know that I was. First, I wasn't thoroughly acquainted with hospitals and medical conditions. And I supposed I expected the conditions there would be pretty primitive. Of course Catchpool, during the three years that he was chief of medical services for Schweitzer kept trying to get the old man to agree to improving the conditions. But Schweitzer just insisted. Well there's the article that Catchpool and I wrote about Schweitzer that has some of that information.

TH: Yes, Yes. Tell me of your...On a personal basis what sort of impression 00:04:00Schweitzer made.

LP: (Laughs) Well I may have said that I thought that he was an old fraud. That's of course is hyperbole. He..I thought he was a sincere old fellow, as Catchpool has decided. He believed in the Great White Master, or whatever the expression is. He had the idea that the Africans couldn't be trained very highly, and didn't make much of an effort to improve their conditions. This was Catchpool's conclusion after having been there a long time- 3 years.

TH: Uh-huh.

LP: The sanitary facilities were pretty primitive for the doctors and nurses and sisters: a couple of backhouses, built hanging over a creek that ran below, and were non-existent for the natives, except that the jungle was available. And I think the little rooms that the patients stayed in with their families had earth floors. They were pretty primitive structures. Schweitzer probably thought it would be better to have conditions much like those in which the Africans were 00:06:00living in the jungle than to try to push them into European situations. We stopped at a hospital in, here I've forgotten the name of the city, in another African state, in fact, Ghana I think it was. And had several hours between planes before there was the small plane flying to Lambaréné. During that time we visited a hospital. The doctors were proud of the hospital. They showed us the rooms, and the operating room and they x-ray apparatus and so on. And there were no patients there. And I think that Catchpool he said that the patients 00:07:00were just afraid to come and the members of the family were afraid to come and leave a patient in these unfamiliar surroundings and so they don't make use of hospitals. Well, I think it had just been opened shortly before so that there hadn't been time to get out propaganda about it. Maybe that condition didn't exist for very long.

TH: But in fact, that would make it sound on the surface as though Schweitzer would have been right in his approach.

LP: That's right. I think Schweitzer was quite a sensible person.

TH: What...In your discussions with him when you were at the clinic, I imagine 00:08:00you spoke a lot about the Peace Process and the question of Nuclear Testing.

LP: I don't think we talked about anything else. The first two or three days, well, you know this I think already, the first two or three days Schweitzer sort of held aloof from my wife and me. And then the remaining days every evening after dinner he invited me to come to his room and talk to him for an hour. And I enjoyed that. He...I asked if I could- he showed me his sort of diary or scrapbook consisting, as I recall, of clippings that he pasted into a notebook, perhaps some comments by him. I asked if could borrow one of the books and he 00:09:00seemed a little reluctant but then David told me when Norman Cousins later on he just photographed the pages of all these notebooks and scrapbooks. I didn't do, I didn't even copy anything from them by hand. I was just interested to read the material. So it was largely international affairs and the peace movement that we talked about.

TH: How did you find his opinions on those topics? Did you think he was well informed or was he-?

LP: Well, I supposed so. I don't have a very well defined memory on that. There may be something, well no. I don't know. I don't think I was disappointed in this respect. I thought he was a pretty smart fellow.

TH: But in terms of calling him an old fraud that would refer mainly to the way he ran his clinic?

LP: Well no I think it referred mainly to his religious talks. Of course he was the rather iconoclastic even when he was young. So that the missionary society that sent him to Africa sent him on condition that he not preach but only practice medicine. And after dinner every evening sometimes he'd play the piano, he didn't have an organ, but there was a piano in the dining room. Sometimes he played the piano before the people got up and left. There were usually about 15 or 20, 15 possibly 18 something like that, people. About 4 doctors and nurses, 00:11:00all White of course, having dinner together. And then often he gave a little talk, and I think during the whole of the time that we were there he talked about St. Paul and different aspects of St. Paul's life. And never once mentioned God. So, I have a feeling that he may have been something of a free thinker but thought it wise to hide the fact. So that is why I say he was an old fraud.

TH: So you remained on a friendly basis with him after that. I know you exchanged more correspondence with him, I believe, after you -

LP: I didn't hear that.

TH: You left Schweitzer on a friendly basis then?

LP: Oh yes, we got along together very well. I think some people didn't get along well with him. Some people went there of course to try and exploit him in some way. I never exploited him at all except that after his death Catchpool and I did write one biographical sketch or statement.

TH: Did you learn anything from Schweitzer that you didn't know before? Was there anything important that he passed on to you?

LP: Well I guess not, I probably did learn some things from him but I don't think, I suppose that they weren't important enough for me to remember.

TH: When you came back, after your trip was over and you came back to Pasadena, I believe that you were scheduled to give a talk about Schweitzer and that it 00:13:00was about, I'm trying to remember the sequence of events but for some reason the talk was never given.

LP: Where do you think-?

TH: Well, this would have been just after you came back and what happened I think was, the sequence of events that included the night when you were out, overnight, out on the cliff.

LP: Oh yes

TH: Yeah, and that-

LP: 1961 I guess, or early 1961. January the 30th. Yes. I don't remember that, but I'm not surprised that I had to cancel some speaking engagements.

TH: Yeah, well, there was a period of time after that night on the cliff when you stayed in house I believe and I was talking with Linda about that period of time and it sounded as though it was a period of recuperation for you after that point.

LP: Well it was a shock for me and just even more of a shock for Ava Helen who 00:14:00didn't know what had happened. I knew what had happened but I was a little upset by the fact that I was afraid to retrace my steps. After we came back to Pasadena I went back to the lab and the secretaries had put up a sign "welcome home Dr. Pauling" or something like that. I looked at it and went into my office. I was unable to speak, to say anything. The secretaries called Barclay who came over and decided to take me home. Obviously this experience was a shock to me and I hadn't realized how much of a shock till that episode.

TH: You had...After you were found and brought back home, you were behaving just the way you always do, went into the office just how you always do and it was only then-?

LP: Well, I don't remember. Probably we stayed at the ranch a couple of days more and then went down to Pasadena. I don't know how many days had gone by, perhaps only 3 before I went down to work and had this episode.

TH: And then you stayed at home for a while after that?

LP: I guess so, I expect so.

TH: How do you qualify that experience? You know this is the one time that I've heard about in your entire life when it seems that you were not in complete control of yourself.

LP: Well, of course I was troubled about the fact that one of the networks radio 00:16:00had carried word that I had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Crellin heard this; he was very upset up in Seattle. This was some reporter who had misunderstood a signal I guess. So that may have upset me too, to think that Crellin had been upset by that false news. Well it was sort of a shock, that episode. People get ledged, as they say, mountaineers, people call it being ledged. Every once in a while you get out on a ledge and you were unable to 00:17:00move. Well I wasn't paralyzed I was able to move, but I was unable to leave the ledge and crawl back over the scree.

TH: And you stayed awake the whole night?

LP: Oh yes, I thought I'd better stay awake. Well, I also dug a hole. The ledge was about two feet wide I guess, perhaps 3 at that. And soft material had fallen, so there was loose material. I dug a hole and I had my walking stick with me. I hammered it down on the cliff side, the ocean side, about middle of my body so that if I did fall asleep I wouldn't roll over. But I dug a hole deep 00:18:00enough perhaps 8 inches deep, to lie in with my legs brought up just to my chest. I had a map that I was carrying with me. I was lightly dressed but I spread this map over me, tucked a corner of it under my arm and perhaps at the corner of my leg to help keep me warm. Fortunately it was a rather warm night anyway. But I also continued to exercise. During the whole night I was usually moving. First one arm back and forth, then another arm, then one leg and the other leg. So as to keep warm.

TH: And you were doing mental exercises as well I understand.

LP: Yes.

TH: There were a lot of other things, you know, right at that particular time, a lot of other pressures on you it seems to me in reading the record. There were, especially at Caltech. Of course that was during the time you were under increasing pressure because of your political activities. And there was the ongoing question of laboratory space I understand and certainly the sort of chronic pressure from the board of trustees and that sort of stuff. You had, I believe, written some letters about that time actually looking around or sounding out places or opportunities. It sounded in some of these letters as though you'd been thinking about leaving Caltech at that point.

LP: Yes that's right. In fact I was offered a job at UC San Francisco in the 00:20:00department of anesthesiology. I had just published my papers on.

TH: Oh, Featherstone. Yeah.

LP: Featherstone offered me a job. And then it was withdrawn. The administration, I judge, forced him to withdraw the invitation. Ava Helen and I went up to San Francisco and looked around in the neighborhood of Golden Gate Park there near the hospital medical school, looking for an apartment or house. We were taking that seriously.

TH: Yes. And then it was withdrawn. Did Featherstone tell you why or was this 00:21:00just a supposition?

LP: I don't remember.

TH: You know, I know his sons, oddly enough, a strange connection. I was in a dormitory with one of Featherstone's sons and got to know him quite well.

LP: Oh, well, that's interesting.

TH: Fella who's my age. And I visited their house on several occasions in Hillsborough. In any case, it seems to me; now tell me if this scenario sounds right, Linus. I'm trying to piece together this story here. I am going to run this by you and you tell me if this sounds right to you, okay, about this period in time. When you were, you know this is just around 1960-61, just before you won the Peace Prize and left Caltech but when this pressure was growing to a certain extent. In fact I'd read some things that indicate that you might have 00:22:00had some health problems or sleeping problems about that time as well. And I'm just wondering if things had reached such a point that on that night when you were on the cliff, that that just would've sort have been like the straw that broke the camel's back to an extent?

LP: Well maybe, I suppose. I am sure that I was under stress for several years, the family too. That additional stress might have had a greater impact on me because of that fact, than it would have had otherwise.

TH: Now, would you qualify what happened to you in the weeks following your 00:23:00night on the ledge there when you couldn't speak in your office and you returned home and stayed home for a while, would you qualify that as a nervous breakdown?

LP: Well I'm not at home enough in this field to know about the terminological usages. I think that would be too strong of an expression to use for that. It was clear that I should just not try to resume my normal activities quite so rapidly. But I don't think it was a nervous breakdown.

TH: Do you remember anything about that period of recuperation?

LP: No I don't. I don't remember how long I stayed home, but I don't think it was more than two or three days.

TH: I want to ask you about something entirely different now. I've been doing a lot of research on the early period in Munich and the Quantum Mechanical Revolution that was going on at that time and I think often, I wonder often about what, in terms of models of the atom, I wonder when you are thinking of molecules and you're thinking of atomic structure...What picture do you see in your mind of an atom? What does an atom look like to you?

LP: Well it's a pretty complicated picture. I think of atoms in many different ways, not in any one way, depending on what phenomena I am interested in.

TH: Say you are thinking about the water molecule and you're thinking about the chemical bonds formed between hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It seems to me, from 00:25:00everything that I've read about your thinking, you have such a strong physical sense. Your love of models, or your use, your extensive use of models and your ability to think intuitively in a very physical way, it seems to me that that would be linked to a visualizing, you know a mental image of atoms and molecules.

LP: That's right. Probably I was pretty good at this. In 1924 when Sommerfeld visited Caltech the first time I remember in the physics seminar room I brought over a couple of models that I had made. The Smithsonian has one of them. They said they were borrowing it, but they've never sent it back after 10 years. I 00:26:00think I still have the other one. Possibly it's in Corvallis, but I'm not sure. At any rate, just at that time, along about that time, there was an argument between the physicists and mainly G. N. Lewis. G. N. Lewis's static atom and the Bohr atom. And my model showed my way of reconciling the two. I have the little wooden cube edges and corners truncated about an inch and a half on edge or inch and three-eighths - and holes bored in the corners in such a way that I could 00:27:00bend an eighth inch steel rod, decimeter steel perhaps, into a long ellipse, about 14 inches long say, extending out or upfront. And the two ends at one in of this ellipse I put in the holes, two adjacent holes. And did this for the four corners, for four edges of the cube so that these ellipses stuck out in tetrahedral directions. So I said here are Bohr orbits, and I had on the structure representing Neon two rubber balls threaded on each of the wires. And 00:28:00then I had little loops only a couple of inches long down the center each with a rubber ball. Those were the K electrons. Then the eight were the L electrons two in each of theses elliptical orbits. And I said that so Lewis is talking about the average position of the electrons whereas the physicists are concentrating on the motion in the ellipses.

TH: Well, that's a very insightful idea.

LP: That's essentially what I said in my 1931 paper after Quantum Mechanics and I don't know if anyone else had proposed this resolution. When I got to Munich in 1926 after some time, a month perhaps, Sommerfeld remembered that and said 'You 00:29:00are that young fellow that talked about the structure of neon, and the structure of water'. I had another bottle showing the hydrogen atoms, essentially the same but with the hydrogen atoms in two of the loops threaded across with some wire holding them at the center of the loops. Well, this is pretty much the picture that I would form now of the water molecule but with refinements. That is the orbits aren't so well defined because of quantum mechanics and there is the difference in the hybridization so that the two bond orbitals have more P 00:30:00character but some S character and the two other orbitals have more S character, and so on. That's a lot of detail. But essentially the same picture.

TH: You- So, say- this is just on such a sort of silly, basic level but you know, say the difference between a space filling model in which the electrons might be viewed as solid shells interacting versus a sort of an orbital model similar to your decimeter steel rods, in which the sort of the outer circumference or the effective electron radius is demonstrated as a sort of a circle around. In your mind do you see the electron cloud as a space filling cloud or as a ring?

LP: Well sometimes I think of it, no not a ring. I think probably I think usually about the hybridized orbitals and even about the Bohr ellipses or the Bohr-they really ought to be called the Bohr-Sommerfeld ellipses. But then there are circumstances in which I ignore the individual ones and think about the successive shells. It just depends on the problem that I'm thinking about. And of course when it comes to hyperfine structure involving interaction with the atomic nucleus I think about-

[tape break]

LP: -old way, partially Bohr model. Quantum theory and partially quantum mechanics.

TH: You know, when you learned about Wave Mechanics and the Schrodinger view of standing, sort of a standing wave model of electron shell, did that change your...did you try and visualize that in your mind?

LP: Oh that never appealed to me. I preferred the sort of statistical interpretation where the electron is a particle but its distribution in space is determined by the wave function.

TH: So, and a last question about this and then I'll leave it, it's just it's just sort of an odd interest of mine. When you think of the electron itself and the movement of the electron, do you see the, do you think of the movement of the electron at all? I mean that's such a hard thing to visualize and do you try 00:33:00and visualize the way in which an electron moves?

LP: Oh yes of course. First you have the Virial Theorem which holds in quantum mechanics as well as classical mechanics. When you have a structure involving just electrostatic forces, coulomb forces, the average kinetic energy is minus a half the average potential energy. Well, the potential energy relative to particles separated infinitely is negative. And the kinetic energy is positive and is equal to the negative of the kinetic energy with the factor multiplier by half. So any system involving particles held together by electrostatic forces 00:34:00has to be a dynamic system in that way. This applies to all of the states of the system. All of the quanti states or all of the states of motion of a classical system. So the Virial theorem forces one to think about the particles of moving.

TH: Yes. And of course when you were in Munich it was such a...it was one of the questions that was so big was how the electron moves. And what form that takes, so in your own mind, how did you end up thinking about the movement-?

LP: I suppose largely classically. I never have made much use, I may have made 00:35:00reference once or twice to it, to the [Zitterbewegung] as the Germans called it that Dirac introduced. That the electron is always jumping back and forth through a small distance. So then you can't localize it exactly except as an average. I think I may have mentioned it in one of my papers. I have had reason to think about my scientific work because of having read three books recently, that you have probably read.

TH: I bet I can guess one of them: the Physical Chemistry from Oswald to Pauling.

LP: Yes. I hadn't known before that Oswald had had the desire to make physical 00:36:00chemistry unify chemistry. And that he had failed at this. And of course was pleasing to me to have an author say that I was the person who succeeded. Then there's a book I forgot the name of the author, came out about a year ago. Quantum Mechanics, Early Days of Quantum Mechanics in America, 1926-1936. The author emphasizes the work of 13 theoretical physicists, American theoretical physicists, and I am one of the thirteen. He doesn't say much about what I did 00:37:00in quantum mechanics except to say that I applied quantum mechanics to chemical problems. But he doesn't mention my 1926 and 1927 papers which were very early applications of quantum mechanics up to essentially physical problems of systems with more than one electron.

TH: Yes, the work off of the [Vensil] paper

LP: Yes, and then the Royal Society paper that Sommerfeld submitted to the Royal Society. I had an amusing experience during that period. I wrote my paper on 00:38:00hydrogen chloride and cross electric and magnetic fields. And since I was in Europe I sent it off to Nature, published by McMillan Company. I got a letter back returning the manuscript saying "We regret that you have not been introduced to us". I published it in Physical Review then.

TH: Introduced in the formal sense? Was the idea that they'd never heard of you and hence-?

LP: That's all I can say about it, I'd surmise. I just don't know.

TH: That's interesting, yeah.

LP: Then the third book is Judith Goodstein's book "Millikan's School". It has a chapter about me, mainly about the Chemistry Department with some stuff that I 00:39:00hadn't known. Well, the book "Oswald to Pauling" also had some early material that had been dug up in the Rockefeller Foundation Archives.

TH: On, yes, on Noyes's opinion of you.

LP: But Judith Goodstein quoted a statement that A. A. Noyes made she said that 'in the early 1930's if all of the members of the chemistry department at the Caltech, at CIT, or at the institute were to disappear leaving only Pauling it would still be one of the most important departments in the whole world. Have you heard that?

TH: Yes, I ran across that myself at the Rockefeller Archives. And I thought I'd made this great find and then about a month later I read it in the Oswald to 00:40:00Pauling book and the of course it should up in Judith Goodstein's book also. Yeah.

LP: In the Goodstein book she is rather vague about it doesn't say when or to whom the remark was made. But you think it was made in a letter to Warren Weaver probably?

TH: Yes in fact it was in a note to Warren Weaver. And you know I can't remember if it was in...Warren Weaver kept extensive diary notes when he went on visits and it seems to me that he noted this remark as being made to him during one of his visits in his diary. That was part of the justification - they were reviewing your funding requests at that time, and that was used as a justification for granting you-

LP: Well, it's interesting to me. Of course much of this stuff. The fact that Noyes didn't inform me that G.N. Lewis had come to offer me a job. And that he 00:41:00was successful in keeping G. N. from offering me the job too. He's only a few years older than G. N. but of course he was the director of the laboratory at MIT where G. N. worked.

TH: That's right and you know they were extremely competitive. G.N. Lewis took some of Noyes best people when he left MIT and went out to Cal and I think that Noyes may have always felt a little suspicious of G.N. Lewis taking his best people. And he didn't intend that to happen with you. You know I have used, I've been thinking of you in terms of Noyes and the word protégé keeps coming to my mind. I don't think you necessarily saw things this way when you were a student 00:42:00but when you look back at what Noyes thought while you were a student and during your early academic career before he died it seems clear as though the word protégé would be accurate. Even though your fields of interest were so different. He cultivated you almost from the beginning as his successor. Does that seem right to you?

LP: Well I think that is probably true. So far as I am concerned I think it would be wrong to say that I was a protégé of A. A. Noyes. I felt I was just doing my work, doing my job, doing the things that I liked to do and wanted to do. I probably underestimated the help that I got from other people especially A. A. Noyes. I know there are scientists from my reading biographies, and 00:43:00observations, there are scientists that think a lot about their careers and promoting their careers and cultivating people who will be helpful to them. I don't think I ever was of that nature. I don't think that I tried to get other people to help me in advancing my career.

TH: In fact, it seems to me, you may have done just the opposite with some people. At various times.

LP: Yes. Yes. Well of course this may have been the result of my having developed considerable self-confidence after I became a graduate student or even to some extent at OAC because of doing well in my work.

TH: You know the flip side of self confidence is often sensitivity. You know a great many people who have a good deal of belief in their own abilities also are extremely sensitive to criticism of those abilities. Would you say that you are sensitive to criticism as well?

LP: Well, I don't think I am especially sensitive to criticism of my abilities. I can't think of a good example to quote here. I may be sensitive to criticism in general. That is, I think I am a conformist. You may think that's funny.

TH: I do. Can you tell me a little more about that?

LP: Well, as a boy I don't think it would have entered my mind to do anything unconventional. Can you counteract that statement, quote anything?

TH: Well, you know the...It seems to me that as a boy, prior to the time that you went to Oregon State, from the things I've read and talked to you about, it seems as though you kept a pretty low profile in general. You always were very interested in your own interests and you followed your own interests - your, with insect collecting, rock collecting, your laboratory down in the basement and so forth. And you were strong minded to the extent that you would often, 00:46:00say, take a job that your mother urged you to take as a teenager and then you would find a way to drop it, if you didn't like it too awfully well. Some jobs, some jobs you kept. So I would say that you were strong-minded but as far as being a non-conformist, I suppose that's right, you didn't especially stick out.

LP: I am not at all like Peck's Bad Boy.

TH: Yes, right. And in college, let me see, at OAC you of course, you joined the Military Society, you joined the Miners Club, you joined the, you know, you headed the Chemistry Club. You were sort of an all-around good student at that point and I would say that it would probably be not until the period after World War II, other than in a scientific sense, I mean of course in your scientific work you often took on other people. But apart from your scientific work, and 00:47:00that's normal for the scientific world, that's not being a non-conformist, that would conform to the norms of the scientific world. So I suppose that I couldn't think of an example until around 1940. In 1940 you started speaking out about the, what was that Society? The World Federation...that was the first thing.

LP: Union Now.

TH: Yes, Union Now.

LP: Ava Helen, of course, got me interested in these things. I just sort of followed her along. I debated in Culburtson Hall with the professor of economics about the presidential election. They had trouble getting any faculty member to 00:48:00support Roosevelt in the debate. So I did that. I debated. I think I sent my notes, the cards, to OAC.

TH: This would have been '36? The 36 election? Or the '40 election?

LP: I guess the '40 election. Let me see, that fellow from the Midwest-

TH: Alf Landon.

LP: Landon.

TH: Yes, I believe that would have been 1940, I'll check that. So that same time.

LP: That was my first open public, open political activity.

TH: You know, it's interesting, in the context of being a conformist, in a 00:49:00psychological sense, that would explain a lot about the feelings that, of almost surprise and hurt that people would attack you for your political beliefs. Say after the war now, when you begin to speak out about the bomb or the reaction of your neighbors about your Japanese gardener. Events in which peoples' prejudices and so forth begin to be directed to you. As, sort of viewing you as a non-conformist when in fact your whole life would have been a relatively conformist life up until that point.

LP: Yes. As a boy, I suppose I was I was behaving about the way I have in later years. As determined by my own thinking about problems. Just relying on my own 00:50:00analysis of problems rather than just accepting others. But I was a conformist just because I think I didn't know there were other attitudes. That it was ignorance that kept me from being a non-conformist as a boy. I haven't got around to thinking along those particular lines relating to my general activities.

TH: So that underlines again the importance of Ava Helen.

LP: Yes. As a scientist, in the sense I have been a conformist I suppose. In 00:51:00that you remember that, let me see, that Frenchman that came to the Rockefeller Institute and who discovered the first antibiotics. Well, he said that I worked in the mainstream of science but 20 years earlier than other people.

TH: Does that sound accurate to you?

LP: Yes I think so, yes. Of course I showed originality. The things I was saying 00:52:00that were considered iconoclastic perhaps were just accepted by scientists in general 20 years later.

TH: Speaking of which I just saw a, probably your most non-conformist scientific views on Vitamin C. And, or currently considered to be your most non-conformist, and even here in Oregon a press report of the, from the AAAS meeting on, a fellow from the Pauling Institute talking about free radical quenching and the aging process. Did you see that?

LP: No.

TH: Just in the last couple of days they've been doing wire reports from the AAAS meeting.

LP: No. I haven't seen that.

TH: Yeah. Big front page story on aging and changing patterns of aging.

LP: It may be Jim Fleming.

TH: Yeah, it was Fleming. There were three researchers mentioned, all of them talking about SOD and its effect on aging.

LP: You saw that there were some news reports also about an article by Ames and his collaborators in Berkeley that Vitamin C slows down the mutation rate in the sperm.

TH: That's, you know I did see that. It's so funny it seems like in the past 6 months perhaps more so than at time since things first got started with the Vitamin C and with your own publications that there's been a consensus shift in the scientific world.

LP: That's right, starting with the symposium that the National Cancer Institute arranged in September of 1990.

TH: Yes, and the publication just came out about 6 months ago.

LP: Things are moving along. But Matthias Rath and I are especially pleased that the precedent of the National American Heart Association stated a month ago that mega-doses, the first reference by one of these establishment people, that mega-doses of Vitamin C and Vitamin E and beta-carotene have value. His name is Brown, Dr. Brown. That's a big step forward for the establishment.

TH: Well, what you hope of course is that some grant money will follow this 00:55:00change in perception. And that-

LP: Well, it may take some time yet. The National Cancer Institute still hasn't funded a program of research on Vitamin C as an adjunct of conventional therapy in the treatment of cancer. So it may take some time.

TH: Linus, I don't want to keep you any longer today, I know that you have other things that you are working on. But I hope that maybe in a couple of days, to take some more of your time.

LP: Matthias Rath and I have a paper being published in the Journal of Applied Nutrition probably in a couple months in which we say that the primary cause of cardiovascular disease is deficiency of Vitamin C. But this is not true for 00:56:00cardiovascular disease in general for coronary heart disease and strokes. There are also other diseases that involved the peripheral circulation. Well Vitamin C is important there too but in coronary heart disease and strokes the first step is a tear or a lesion in the blood vessel. And of course it is a deficiency in Vitamin C that makes the blood vessels weak because there is not enough collagen. And then there are efforts by the body to repair that. Fibrin and Fibrinogen are laid down and various things happen including laying down 00:57:00lipoprotein(a). We published a good bit on that. And uh, the synthesis of lipoprotein(a) which varies from person to person is too effective, there's too much lipoprotein(a) then you get atherosclerosis. We published that. But the primary cause we say first apoprotien(a) is made, lipoprotein(a) because of ascorbate deficiency. But second it is these lesions that cause coronary vascular disease. Initiate the coronary vascular disease.

TH: Sure, always always always the first step in atherosclerotic genesis is that initial tear.

LP: Yeah, well that seems to be accepted by the cardiologists.

TH: That's the, that's certainly the current model that you always hear.

LP: I think this work on cardiovascular disease will be the most important work that I've been involved in. Matthias Rath started it, but I've been helping. Because, I think it is much easier to control cardiovascular disease than cancer. Heart disease is a pretty simple problem. The heart is a simple organ compared with most organs and diseases of the heart are simple compared with cancer especially.

TH: Have you changed your own dosage since your diagnosis?

LP: Well, I started to increase my intake and have stopped because my bowel 00:59:00tolerance. I am at my bowel tolerance already. And although seriously ill people often have very high bowel tolerance, apparently I am not that seriously ill, so I haven't gone above my 18 grams.

TH: Eighteen. And then you were taking 12-18 before anyway.

LP: Oh, I've been taking 18 grams for several years.

TH: So you haven't been doing anything else different dietarily or nutritionally or-

LP: I am taking a drug which suppresses hormone formation by the adrenals. So it is the only drug I've taken, ever taken perhaps in a systematic manner. Well for 01:00:0020 years or more I haven't taken any drugs, only vitamins But I am taking this substance, Flutamide.

TH: Is this considered a chemotherapeutic drug?

LP: Yes, it suppresses the synthesis of hormones, male hormones by the adrenals. This is supposed to shrink the prostate.

TH: I see, so sort of post standard, postoperative therapy for-

LP: Well, it will have to be continued indefinitely unless I have a prostate operation. On the 20th, a week from now, we'll find out whether it's been 01:01:00successful at shrinking the prostate.

TH: Now, when they went in, after your diagnosis in December, you had operations to actually remove the cancerous tissue, is that correct? In both the prostate and the rectum?

LP: Yes. No, the prostate operation, there was no operation on the prostate. Prostate cancers in the prostate are slow growing especially for old people.

TH: Yeah, and they're so common. So the decision was made just to treat that one with the drug.

LP: Yes.

TH: So if you're going to go back up on the 20th. I would sure like the chance 01:02:00to talk to you again this week before you go back up. What day would be good, is any day better for you than any other day?

LP: Well my portable phone is being repaired, so sometimes when I am working I don't hear the phone but early morning up to 8 o'clock say, or around 8 or 9 you're apt to catch me where I hear the phone.

TH: Okay, well let me try that. I may try that tomorrow and see if it's possible or, we can work it out then. Listen, thank you so much Linus, I really appreciate your time.

LP: Okay Tom.

TH: Okay, talk to you later. Bye-bye.