Arguably one of the biggest names on the DLF ticket this year was Harold Varmus MD, a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for his cancer research. We decided to have one final conversation with Dr Varmus before the curtains went down on the festival.
DT: Scientists have a reputation of understanding the world only through the language of science. But you studied literature as well. How does that inform your view of the world?Varmus: I am not unique. People have this idea that if you are a scientist then you are not anything else. Most of my colleagues, my friends, have very rich cultural interests. They are interested in music, art, literature and theatre. So, I think it’s a mistake to say that if you are scientist, you have no interest in arts and in humanities. As for how this influences my world view, I don’t know, for it depends on who you are. There’s no simple answer to that question. For me, most of my cultural interests are mainly a pursuit of pleasure. I enjoy hearing music, the theatre, reading books and learning about other cultures, but there’s no simple answer to that question.
There has been unfathomable advances in the study of natural sciences and yet, as a species, we are threatening our own destruction through nuclear warfare or climate disaster, which scientists now know is irreversible. Why aren’t we concerned?Yes, true. I agree with that. But some of us are very concerned. You have to understand that taking steps politically for whatever required is very difficult. Frankly there are two issues, one is trying to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that we put into the environment, and that is the result of using energy. People want to use energy because they want to take advantage of the things that science and technology have provided. They want to have lights, they want to have heat, they want to have fuel to run their cars. It’s very difficult for people to say that countries which are emerging, like Bangladesh or India or China, should not use energy, and only European countries and America should. So, to be fair, we are going to have to find ways to develop sources of energy that don’t contaminate the environment. And we have not been very successful in doing that.
I think that most of the major countries are under-invested in developing alternative sources of energy that are less damaging to the environment. I agree with you entirely that we have been successful in decreasing diseases, that we have made life healthier and safer, but in my own lifetime, the population of the world has gone up almost two and a half fold, and that’s a very serious problem. We have also developed many uses for energy that have resulted in high CO2 levels in the atmosphere with a threat of temperatures rising to a point where oceans will rise. Glaciers and icebergs are diminishing as well.
The second way to cope with that is to think about what my friends call adaptation. That’s expensive. Bangladesh, in particular, has a major threat because of how low the country is. In many areas it’s at sea level or below. Hence, adaptation is a useful way to recognise that it’s going to be very difficult to reduce the change in the climate, assuming that these changes are at least partially due to human influences.
I think that is the scientific consensus.
Should the scientific community do more?
The scientific community would do more but it needs the resources. And to say to somebody that we need better sources, more efficient sources of energy and that nobody can do the research to try to find those resources without money to pay for the laboratories, is difficult. I think virtually all countries, including the US, are underinvested in that kind of research. I personally think, right now, it’s more important for our species to seek those alternative sources of energy than to do medical research.
As the co-chair of the PCAST (President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) you praised President Obama’s Cairo speech hoping that it would create more scientific partnerships. What would a more internationally interlinked scientific community look like?
Well, I think the scientific community is quite international, but what I was hoping to see was made difficult because the Arab Spring didn’t work out as well as we would have liked. What all of us were hoping for, I think, was that the leading American and European scientists to go to countries where science is still in its early stages of development, and help them. Egypt being one of those countries, with many others as well, we hoped to develop better scientific training programmes, build laboratories, build collaborations between northern countries and southern countries. Indeed, at that time, PCAST was hoping to develop a programme for having [what was] called scientific envoys, with leading scientists of the US going to many parts of the world to encourage the development of scientific programmes and build collaborations.
You are a passionate advocate for free dissemination of academic knowledge. Do you think that open access publishing can become a mainstream practice?
I think it has become mainstream. We need to talk about 'open source,’ for it means a lot of different things. My primary objective was to be sure that the scientific literature is widely shared and I think we have made a lot of progress there. Making data open was not a matter and on that regard we have had partial success. Part of the difficulty is that some of that data is sensitive, some of it personal. So, you have to respect privacy and the right of patients to keep their own health data private if they wish to. So, all of us are working on ways to de-identify and secure the identity of people from that data. The reason why people don’t want their health data to be made public is because it might be used to discriminate against them in appointments, in health insurance and life insurance. So, I think all of us want to respect the rights of individuals to keep that information private. Other forms of data may be a little less sensitive, but scientists in general want to be sure that they get full value from the data that they have collected before it’s shared with everybody. And that’s the balancing difficulty of the act.
You performed with your son’s jazz band. One of the performances (at Boston Museum) is actually on YouTube, put up by the WGBH forum. We wanted to know more about that...
It’s an interesting combination. I think it was reasonably successful, putting scientific ideas and some interesting images from science with music. I think it works pretty well to tell a story about how cells work and how cells behave badly when they undergo mutations and about to turn into cancer cells. I think we explained cancer pretty well together. But even though it’s interesting, [it is] very difficult to put that show together; takes too much time and it’s expensive. So, we don’t do it very often. Happily, YouTube now provides it for everybody.
Science understands how the cell behaves but literature attempts to understand how the “self” behaves. Should we put more emphasis on the studying of literature on a national level?
I don’t know enough about the Bangladeshi education system to know what you should do. I would say that considering your country [having a population of] 160 million people, contributions that are made to science from Bangladesh seem rather small. And I know it may be expensive to support science but I think for reasons we were discussing earlier, it’s important that certain kinds of science be practiced here as you may suffer, more than others, from climate change and the rising demands from people for better sources of energy. So, having people working here in Bangladesh on diseases that are common in the country, on problems of environmental contamination, atmospherical change, better sources of energy, things that are critical to your economy...food science...all these things seem to be good things for Bangladesh. You’ve got lot of smart people; a lot of people. It’s seems to me that focusing some of your resources to nurture the talent of people here who have an aptitude for science would be a good investment. Economically it pays off, helps to support other kinds of industry and has the benefit for a better way of life.
What would be your advice to a Bangladeshi student who wants to go into serious research work?
Well, I never give advice to everybody because it doesn’t count. But for somebody with an aspiration to become a scientist, depending on the kind of science, it would require an educational system that allows people between the ages of, say, five and fifteen, to learn something about the principles of doing experiments, rational thinking and learn about how nature works. And then, at a certain point, you develop a system of higher education where people can learn what’s going on in the world of science or you have an opportunity for people to go abroad and learn the frontiers of science. You know, it’s one thing to learn what science taught us 10 or 20 years ago, and there are plenty of good books and things available online. But if you have to do science, you have to know what’s happening now; where the frontiers are, where the new discoveries are being made. That means learning to work in a laboratory, working with somebody who understands the frontiers in any field. And if you can’t provide that in Bangladesh it is necessary to go abroad, to Europe, to Australia, to India, to the US and learn where the frontiers are. The good thing is that, when people do that, at least some of them come back begin to develop a scientific community here in the country. That is certainly happening in India and China. Their scientific programmes are advancing rapidly and it’s good for the country. They have pharmaceutical industries, they have start-ups in bio-tech, and they have companies specialising in information technology. All these make money for the country and also provide a richer culture.
Finally, are you enjoying your stay here in Dhaka?
I’m having a good time but I do feel that I’m not as free to move around as I would like because of all the security concerns. I’m regretting that because when I go to a new place, I like to feel a freedom of movement. But one of my ambitions was to come to see the Louis Kahn buildings, specially the parliament. It’s really a fantastic place to visit, and I was able to do that. I have been to the war museum and visited the Kennedy Centre. So, I’ve seen some things. But mostly I’m here at the festival and the hotel, and not really getting around much.
