My idea was to provide a place where young scientists could do important experiments and be offered jobs to move elsewhere. So, when people left, in a sense it was success, not failure. Until ’83 when Wiggler came and was offered a job at Princeton, and he’d just then isolated the first human cancer gene, and once you got to a certain size, it was getting a bit precarious. So, Mike got tenure. Whether he would have gone to Princeton, I think he knew he’d be a lousy teacher, but Princeton was big enough to have someone who just, you know, he didn’t make teacher because he added enough esteem to them. So I think he could have moved there without you know, he might have taught an undergraduate course for one year and you know, no one would have wanted to take the course the next year and it would have been over. Then Stillman got a job offer to go to Berkley and at that time I think I was running the genome project, so some tenure was coming in, and then we had got some money coming in. So, we got a gift of $8 million for a research fund, and that was, eventually was, you know, worth about $110 million. I think it’s down to about $60 million again with the market collapse. But the thing about Cold Spring Harbor is we were a success because we chose the right thing to work on, and also we had a disease. So, the neighbors, we could tell them we don’t understand cancer so they would enthusiastically give us money to understand cancer. Now things have changed. They want us to cure cancer, and Cold Spring Harbor isn’t a hospital and our people maybe they just think they can go on studying cancer. I think they will find that if the financial base falls away that after 50 years or so of studying cancer, don’t you know enough to cure cancer? Actually, I think we almost do. So, if I went into cancer research I'd only go in to cure it now, I wouldn't go in to understand it.
You think we understand enough?
Yes. I mean, you know, we understand Marburg effect, you know, and there are some pathways which really are only in early development which are really called into play in a number of cancers, so you get them and it’s not very toxic.
So you are optimistic about treatments?
Yes, I'm optimistic. I think the cancer community is more pessimistic than they should be. It’s just a way of life, studying cancer, and if they try and cure cancer, they will fail, whereas studying cancer, now, you can’t fail. You’ve got all these techniques, there are so many genes involved, you can always say the work is necessary and good. So, it’s just not at the frontier anymore.
So if you were dolling out funds you would fund direct attempts to treat?
Well, vaccines against cancer are going to work in some cases. So, and the Volkmann idea has never been tested. That is sort of my big goal now, is to finally get it tested. Unfortunately, I mean, because I don’t know where I can get it, the cancer community will never give it money to be tested, and the venture capital field isn’t giving any more money for anything except drug tests. So how we will fund this is not clear. But China has enough money, Singapore, you know.
So do you see vaccination as treatment or as prevention or both?
Probably best after you’ve had a cancer removed and you don’t have too many cells to kill. If you’ve got too many you probably can’t. The logistics are against you.
But even solid tumors?
If they’re small. So, you know, I think you are going to have to not have any too fixed beliefs. But I think what we have to really focus on is non-toxic things because your best really bet is prevention, or you know, no recurrence, yeah sure, surgery.