Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

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Baltimore-99 BALTIMORE: No, there wasn’t any connection. LIPPINCOTT: Were you surprised to have been selected to get the medal BALTIMORE: I hadn’t been thinking about it at all. I was completely surprised and very gratified. I didn’t know I’d been nominated; I didn’t know anything about it. LIPPINCOTT: How about Clinton—did you get a chance to talk to him BALTIMORE: I did. And I guess I had met him once before that. I spent significant time with him; and it sort of laid the foundations for his coming out to Caltech, which he did in the last year of his presidency and gave the only speech he ever gave about science and technology [January 21, 2000]. LIPPINCOTT: Well, he was more scientifically savvy than George Bush, certainly. BALTIMORE: Oh, certainly more than George Bush. But he wanted to have [Vice President Al] Gore as his spokesman in the areas of science and technology, so up until the time that Gore left the White House to campaign for the presidency, Clinton never really spoke about science and technology, although he had done a little bit with AIDS. LIPPINCOTT: Who was his science adviser—do you remember BALTIMORE: Yes, he had two science advisers—[John H.] Gibbons in the first term and Neal Lane in the second term. And it was Neal who first contacted me and said that Clinton wanted to give this speech, and could we arrange it at Caltech; and I said yes, I could, and did. LIPPINCOTT: And that was a national speech BALTIMORE: Oh, yes, that was a big deal. It was really very exciting to have him here. I still remain casual friends with him.
Baltimore-100 LIPPINCOTT: OK. In the meantime, in 2005 your lab got a huge $14 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Your proposal was titled, “Engineering Immunity against HIV and Other Dangerous Pathogens.” That’s what you’re doing now. How’s that going, then BALTIMORE: That is going very well. We just had a review of that with a group of scientists who came in two weeks ago, and they were very complimentary about our progress. And the Gates Foundation—because we are coming to the end of that five years—is talking to us about continuing the work. LIPPINCOTT: Well, that’s good. I did want to talk to you about stem cell research and gene therapy and so forth. There was an incident in 1999 where a young man [Jesse Gelsinger] died at a gene therapy trial at the University of Pennsylvania, because—I guess it was the vector, not the gene—he was allergic to it. What was your involvement in the public reaction to that BALTIMORE: I didn’t, in particular, have— LIPPINCOTT: You didn’t stand up and defend gene therapy BALTIMORE: Well, I had defended gene therapy. When I discovered the reverse transcriptase in 1970, I saw immediately that it enabled gene therapy. LIPPINCOTT: And that there would have to be human trials BALTIMORE: Oh, I didn’t know what the path to its becoming a therapy was going to be—the regulatory path. But conceptually, it was clearly there, and I’d been following that ever since; and much of our program in engineering immunity is basically a gene therapy program. So I’m deeply involved in gene therapy—not using the kind of vectors that [Dr. James M.] Wilson used in that Gelsinger situation, an adenovirus. We’re using a different kind of virus with its own problems, but not that. LIPPINCOTT: Is this the kind of thing that can be tested on human beings at this point
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DAVID BALTIMORE (b. 1938) INTERVIEW
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CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Baltimore-iii 51-55 1975 Nobel Priz
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Baltimore-2 BALTIMORE: The family w
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Baltimore-4 LIPPINCOTT: Oh! That wa
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Baltimore-6 BALTIMORE: Suburban, si
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Baltimore-8 I remember a big thing
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Baltimore-10 college at that point;
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Baltimore-12 BALTIMORE: Yes. That e
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Baltimore-14 BALTIMORE: No, I don
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Baltimore-16 BALTIMORE: I did not w
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Baltimore-18 BALTIMORE: Yes, that
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Baltimore-20 LIPPINCOTT: How big a
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Baltimore-22 BALTIMORE: No, this wa
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Baltimore-24 BALTIMORE: That’s ri
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Baltimore-26 BALTIMORE: I spent all
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Baltimore-28 BALTIMORE: No, I think
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Baltimore-30 BALTIMORE: Polio and i
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Baltimore-32 LIPPINCOTT: So your Ph
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Baltimore-34 BALTIMORE: No, I’m n
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Baltimore-36 BALTIMORE: Oh, yes, I
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Baltimore-38 BALTIMORE: It was year
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Baltimore-40 LIPPINCOTT: No, it was
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Baltimore-42 DAVID BALTIMORE SESSIO
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Baltimore-44 BALTIMORE: The Cookery
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Baltimore-46 appears in Howard’s
Page 53 and 54: Baltimore-48 BALTIMORE: Yes, it’s
Page 55 and 56: Baltimore-50 The experiment I descr
Page 57 and 58: Baltimore-52 room and they didn’t
Page 59 and 60: Baltimore-54 LIPPINCOTT: OK. Renato
Page 61 and 62: Baltimore-56 all the pictures that
Page 63 and 64: Baltimore-58 and the profits from t
Page 65 and 66: Baltimore-60 contemporary. So that
Page 67 and 68: Baltimore-62 BALTIMORE: And that’
Page 69 and 70: Baltimore-64 BALTIMORE: No, it was
Page 71 and 72: Baltimore-66 understand that. Becau
Page 73 and 74: Baltimore-68 BALTIMORE: I still had
Page 75 and 76: Baltimore-70 LIPPINCOTT: Were they
Page 77 and 78: Baltimore-72 BALTIMORE: This was—
Page 79 and 80: Baltimore-74 LIPPINCOTT: You don’
Page 81 and 82: Baltimore-76 a biology school, in s
Page 83 and 84: Baltimore-78 LIPPINCOTT: OK. So on
Page 85 and 86: Baltimore-80 Judy’s book calls it
Page 87 and 88: Baltimore-82 never came to pass for
Page 89 and 90: Baltimore-84 BALTIMORE: I don’t b
Page 91 and 92: Baltimore-86 BALTIMORE: Well, he wa
Page 93 and 94: Baltimore-88 BALTIMORE: We intervie
Page 95 and 96: Baltimore-90 about this, but when I
Page 97 and 98: Baltimore-92 to announce it.” Gor
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Page 107 and 108: Baltimore-102 BALTIMORE: I had no i
Page 109 and 110: Baltimore-104 BALTIMORE: So I was g
Page 111: Baltimore-106 BALTIMORE: Well, not
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Interview with David Baltimore - Caltech Oral Histories

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