We set to work doing the structure, and after... oh, three years... three and a half years, we were pretty close to finished. Rodney Porter, who of course shared the Nobel Prize, was working on the structure of the heavy chain, and he was of course in every sense a much greater expert than we were. He... he was a student of Sanger's – a very good protein chemist. A man who finally got converted over from instructionism – I think I helped there, or maybe, as he thought, hindered – who was remarkably virtuoso. In fact he did not finish the heavy chain before we finished the whole molecule, and that goes to show you the luck of the draw. It's worth saying something about how we got the sample.
It hooks up to what I said about myeloma proteins – remember I said myeloma proteins are gamma globulins or, if you will, antibodies that haven't yet met their antigen, and that huge amounts of them are made by this tumor, multiple myeloma, which is... is.... grows in such a degree out of the bone marrow that it causes holes in the bone and actually lyses the bone, and this is this mollities ossium of Macintyre and Watson, the Scottish physicians. Well, there was a patient, Mr Eubanks, who had so much myeloma protein in his blood that it was hindering the circulation of his digital arteries and it was threatening gangrene in his hands, so they were going to do an exchange transfusion – that is, put in other blood and take out his myeloma blood. Well, it wasn't a cure but it was a palliation. When I heard of this I said, 'I'll give my blood.' And I came away with about a half a pound of pure antibody in my hands, and that enabled us to go and do this structure.
Well, we did this structure, and I remember quite clearly that it was announced at Atlantic City, at the Federation meetings – I had been offered a lectureship there – and I remember it was my first encounter with what I'll call the style of science reporting in those days; it was the reporter from The New York Times, Walter Sullivan, who was most impressive. It was in fact a big issue; it was a whole page of The Times. He came to me with 30 questions and he said, 'We don't want to talk now; you look over the questions. Anything that's silly throw it out; anything you can answer, answer; those that you can't answer, just say no.' And he came the next day and he gave still what I consider one of the best interviews I've ever had of a science reporter. Those were the days in which you did not have a coterie of science reporters, but maybe it was better; I'm not sure.
