UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #224
RUSCH, HAROLD P.

RUSCH, Harold P. (1908-1988)
Undergraduate and Medical Student; Professor of Oncology; Director of McArdle Laboratory
At UW: 1927-1933; 1934-1938; 1940-1979

Interviewed: 1982	
Series: Life Sciences
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 55 minutes
[See Index for Key Words.]
Background
	Born July 15, 1908 in Merrill, Wis., Dr. Rusch is a graduate of Wausau High School and of the University of Wisconsin, where he earned the B.A. degree in 1931 and the M.D. in 1933.   He Interned at University Hospitals in Madison and taught physiology at the University for a year before holding a Jonathon Bowman Memorial Fellowship, 1936-40.   During this time he visited a number of leading cancer institutes in this country and Europe. Appointed assistant professor and chairman of oncology at Wisconsin in 1941, Dr. Rusch Initiated the cancer research program at McArdle Laboratory, and was named director five years later. His research interests have centered on cancer-causing agents and factors influencing carcinogenesis, specifically study of the biochemistry of growth and differentiation in Physarum polycephalum.   He has published over 100 research articles on the general subject of cancer.
	Some of his national activities have included chairmanship of the recent National Cancer Institute committee which planned the basic direction of cancer research in the United States, membership on the National Advisory Cancer Council, Pres. Kennedy's Committee on Heart Disease and Cancer, and the Board of Directors of the American Cancer Society.  In 1954 he was president of the American Association for Cancer Research and from 1950 to 1965 was editor-in-chief of the journal Cancer Research.  He is a member of the American Society for Experimental Pathology and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He is married to the former Lenore L. Robinson.   They have two married daughters.
Interview Session (1982)
Tape 1, Side 1
00:00:00
LS:	This is an interview with Dr. Harold Rusch in his office at the top of the McArdle Laboratory.   The date is the 9th of June,1982.  I'm Laura Smail --
00:00:17
	And my first question to you, Dr. Rusch, is since this is just a supplement to the very complete history you've written of the McArdle Lab and of the Clinical Science Center - and also of your own life to sane extent, I'd like to know why you wrote that. 
HR:   	The reason I wrote it is because I received a letter, as all professors do about the time they're to retire, requesting that any interesting information—letters, reports—that have been received or sent out during one's tenure in the University should be sent to the University Archives.  When I retired I started to collect this material and then realized that it would probably be put in boxes and filed away and perhaps no one would ever look at it so I decided that a summary of the material would be interesting—maybe a ten-page summary.   Well, I started writing this summary and before I knew it I was way beyond the ten pages, and I began writing it in first person because I was so intimately involved from the very beginning and after I had maybe fifty pages or so I thought well this is more than a summary.  I might as well go "whole hog" and write a rather detailed account of how the two cancer centers at Wisconsin started and the early period, because now I'm the only one around who was here for the beginning or indeed the preliminaries of the two cancer centers.  And by that I mean the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research and the Clinical Cancer Research Center.  I enjoyed doing this because I didn't want to just quit as soon as I retired.  I wanted something to do and this was rather enjoyable for me, to review the past and reminisce on what went on and look up the exact details. I had learned as I went along that I was off by as much as a year on what happened at a particular time and had to verify it by going through notes.  
00:03:18
	Fortunately I've kept a diary ever since, I guess, I started medical school or maybe even as a freshman in college—so I could refer to the diary for exact dates when this or that happened. 
LS:	Now that’s interesting. A personal at-home diary or an at-work diary?
HR:	A personal diary that—but it was mainly—well it was a little of each—personal things when my children were growing up.  I made comments about that, but also I always noted the things that were, you might say more than milestones, but various events—certain people visiting the laboratory and when I would be busy writing out applications and that type of thing.  So that was all in the diary.
LS:	That makes you unusual already.
HR:	Well, I don't know what will happen to this—
LS:	In terms of writing.
HR:	Yes.  It's not a diary that people would just get a great deal of joy reading because it's pretty set, mentioning various—exact things that happened without too much comment and no—little or no philosophy or that type of thing. 
LS:	What made you decide to keep a diary?
HR:	I don't know.  I guess I'm just a methodical person and like to keep track of when things happened.  I certainly didn't start out with the idea that this diary would be of any interest to anyone other than perhaps my children and grandchildren and that's about it.  I didn't write it for posterity because it isn't that type.
LS:	You say you started it when you were in college? 
HR:	Yes.
LS:	Do you remember what—
HR:	I think I started it when I was a freshman.  I haven't gone back to look that far.  These are all in boxes and when I started writing this history the—I just dug back to a time that I started medical school, I believe, and didn't look in the other box where there were other diaries. 
00:06:06
LS:	So you're really—you're an historian.  Clearly you must have had an interest—because lots of people are—everyone you say is given that suggestion when they retire but not everyone settles down and decides to use their time writing up the history.
HR:	Well, I hardly classify myself as an historian, but I must say that of the reading that I have done, which is somewhat limited other than science, I don't get to read novels and that type of thing as much as I would like and what I have read all this time—outside—has usually been historical articles. 
00:06:51
	And I appreciate not the textbook histories, but articles written by the people who were there.   For instance, just one thing came to mind.   I read a book called A Trip Around the World by William Dampier who was a privateer and then became a pirate and did go around the world from 1670 to 1690, and it's an excellent account.   And that type of book where the person was there who saw it, to me is more interesting than a rehash of what must be put together by someone of accounts written by others. So—and I have enjoyed reading history and I've always thought when I retired that my chief reading would be along those lines.
LS:	How did you get onto that—to Dampier?
HR:	I received advertisements from—I can't think of the company, the publisher now that sends around ads for rather unusual books—Dover.
LS:	Dover, oh yes.
HR:   Dover Publishing. So I saw those lists and I ordered a couple of the books that—or several of the books that they put out or reprints of very old things that have gone out of print.
LS:	You'll have to get into all the Antarctica exploration diaries. They're simple fascinating—from 1903 and 1910.
HR:	I must do that, but since I retired not only writing the history but so many other things have come up that I really haven't had the time to do these things and I always say, "Well, I'm going to do that after I finish this or after I finish that," and I hope that—well I've been blessed with good eyesight thus far and I hope that continues because I do want to get to reading a number of these things.  Fortunately my memory is reasonable so that I don't forget—after I've read one page, I don't forget what I've read.  Of course that may disappear too after a few years.  I have to crowd many of these desires of mine into the next few years as rapidly as I can.
LS:   	Well that figures.  If you like to read history that's why you like to write it.  
00:09:53
	The practical question I have to ask you is about your view of the various presidents of the University in terms of how they assisted your work—you personally and the research organizations that you've headed.   You spoke of—did you have anything to do with Frank? Glenn Frank?
HR:	No I really—I think I met Mr. Frank on one or two occasions, but I was influenced by him inasmuch that he was an outstanding orator.   And in those days when I was a student here he gave talks from time to time that were attended—sort of an assembly—and it was just marvelous to sit and hear him talk about a number of things.    I don't remember too much now what they were.   
00:10:56
	But where I was very, very impressed was in 1936 when I was a cancer fellow, but before I really had anything to do with organizing a cancer center, there was a cancer symposium.   And this came about because of the money from the Bowman Fund— 
LS:	Yes, I think you talk about that in your book.
HR:	Yes, I have that in the book.  The fascinating part was to hear these people who came from the outside and who were really leaders in their field, but the introduction to the whole symposium was given by Mr. Frank and that introduction—I'll never forget the gist of the whole thing.   I can't remember obviously all the details, but I remember he said that cancer was the most hideously persistent and the most persistently hideous of all diseases. And those are just a couple of words that I remember.   The whole speech was filled with that type of forceful expression.   So by the time he got through with giving his, oh, I would say it was a 15 or 20-minute talk that spurred us all on to get out and kill the dragon, I was ready to grab the sword and slay the cancer dragon.   It was so impressive.   And that's really all I had to do with President Frank in terms of any direct contact.   I remember he also—the last day of symposium, we were invited, the speakers, who were all older and well known, were invited to his house for a reception. And I was also invited. That's the first time I had been invited to a president's house, and I was impressed and my ego was inflated by being included with these people.   
00:13:20
	And then the next--Dykstra came next.   And I didn't really have—well, I had very little—contact with Dykstra and the main reason is that at that time Mr. Fred was dean of the graduate school and he also, as dean, was on the committee on cancer which Glenn Frank had set up when Bowman money became available. That was in 1935—'34-'35—and Mr. Fred and Dean Middleton—and I think Dr. Meek was also on that committee—were the cancer committee.   So during this period from when I became a cancer fellow in July 1935 I would go to two people to ask for funds and help and aid—no three people.   One was Professor Meek who was my mentor—well when I was instructor in physiology from 1934 until '35 [discussion of dates condensed] and Dr. Meek was head of the department.   Then in—from '35 until '40 when McArdle was built I was a cancer fellow and I would talk to—continue going to Dr. Meek for advice but also to Mr. Fred because he was dean of the graduate school and had some funds which they made available—this was really very small amounts, probably $100 at a time—and also to Dr. Middleton who was dean of the medical school.   So those were the three people that I saw very frequently, who guided and gave me inspiration.
LS:	So you could go straight to Fred, the dean of the graduate school. 
HR:	Yes.
LS:	Even though you were comparatively young.
00:16:28
HR:	Yes, in those days there weren't as many people going to the dean requesting money and he was always very enthusiastic about what might—could be done in the cancer field and was extremely encouraging about wanting to help and as I say giving small grants.   And as I remember he just did this on his own—I don't believe there was a research committee.   If there was at that time, I never was aware of it.   I also would get some money from Dr. Meek who was in Physiology, but that money would be in very small amounts.   But he furnished eventually three rooms in the physiology department for my work and also part of an animal room up on the top floor of the Service Memorial Institute.   Dr. Middleton also provided a little money.   He was always more cautious than Dean Fred about handing money because he didn't have as much to --
00:17:55
LS:	Was Fred personally friendly to you—did you feel you got to know him? 
HR:	Oh yes.  Yes, I got to know him very well, and he was extremely encouraging.   He'd always ask me how things were going and whether I had made any important discoveries since the last time I saw him—I suppose I saw him about once a month at least—and then before— 
LS:	Was that sort of a jovial remark?
HR:	Yes.  Well, I'd be all set to tell him about what had happened, but before I'd get one or two sentences out, he'd start on something else, so I never really got to talk to him—
LS:	Everybody says that.   That when he asked them a question and they'd start to answer then he'd starting talking about something else.
HR:	That's right.   But he seemed—at the same time he seemed to know what was going on and of course I had written reports that would go to the three people—Meek, Middleton and Fred so he probably knew what was going on from looking at those written reports rather than what I told him. 
LS:	And you felt that he had read them and that he did keep— 
HR:	He must have because he seemed to know what was going on and as I say never gave me any chance to talk for any length of time about what I was doing. He was a great fellow, I enjoyed him.
LS:	So you must have been glad when he was made president? 
HR:	Oh yes, yes.   Then I didn't see him as often about getting funds, or not at all about getting funds, but I would see him quite often.   I was on the research committee for a while for oh, three or four years I guess, and that was when -- when Fred became president, Elvehjem was made dean of the graduate school and was head of the research committee.   So occasionally Fred would come into the room when we were discussing research applications and I would see him them.   Sometimes he'd just invite me up to just to have a brief chat while he was president.   
00:20:24
	One of the things that I remember very well about President Fred—or actually when President Fred retired—and all along, as I have already stated, he was very interested in cancer research and what we were doing and after he retired as president he knew that we were getting short of space in what we call the old McArdle which was situated on Charter Street, and one day—he was aware of this—and one day he came over and he said "Harold, why don't you work on getting more space for cancer research?"   And I said "Well, we do need more space but why didn't you say this to me while you were president?"   And he said, "Well, I was so busy then that I didn't have time, but now I think you need more space."   As a result of that a small committee was named—I guess by President Elvehjem—and this small committee with representatives from various other biological fields—people who were working on, you might say, growth-related subjects met and they all agreed that more space was needed because all of them would like to have more space. 
LS:	You must have gone into that—
HR:	Yes, and I've gone into that in quite some detail in the history.
00:22:08
LS:	All right, well how do you—you saw Elvejhem and Fred then in the same positions both as graduate dean and as president—how would you compare them? 
HR:	Well, Elvejhem was more direct and got to the core of a problem very rapidly and when he'd ask a question he would expect a direct answer and wouldn't interrupt.   He was also very concerned and interested in what we were doing at McArdle.   One reason I'm sure—beside the work we were doing—but his—either the first or second graduate student of his was Van Potter. And of course Van Potter was one of our very leading lights at McArdle, and Roz Boutwell and Jim and Betty Miller had both come from the biochemistry department so he had a fatherly interest in the sense of wanting to see the graduates of that department do well and they did do well.   Also for a while Fred Stare was one of his graduate students.    I'm not certain at the moment whether Fred Stare got his Ph.D. before Potter or not, but they were both I think the two earliest graduate students of Elvehjem.   So this gave him a very keen interest in what we were doing.
00:23:55
LS:	Did you need Fred's help at all when you were applying for—I guess you hadn't done it by that time—applying for larger amounts of money from outside?
HR:	I think I should go back and say that when the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda was founded in 1937, it wasn't known exactly how they would spend the money.   They used some of the money to put up an institute there—a building—but then there was also money that was to be distributed to various universities throughout the country.   
00:24:48
	Both President Fred—or at that time he was dean of the graduate school—and Dean Middleton had correspondence with several friends on the National Advisory Cancer Council—the Council of the National Cancer Institute—and contacted them to inquire just how the money that they had would be distributed.   And I have letters that they wrote to some of the members of that committee to inquire whether the money was available now, at that time, or when it would become available.   And I know that President Fred or then, as I say, he was dean, went to Washington to inquire about this on a couple of occasions and Dr. Middleton went one time to inquire. 
LS:	Did you have a hand in that?   I mean did you tell them that this was happening and that there would be money—might be money and they should write about it?
HR: 	I knew that this was happening and I encouraged this but actually Mr. Fred was very well acquainted with it because he went to Washington quite frequently and knew some of the members of this National Cancer Advisory Council. So he was better acquainted with the actual details of what might be going on than I was, and at that time I was more of a bystander just hoping that he and Middleton would do these things, but I didn't have any direct correspondence myself at that time.
00:27:00	End of Tape 1, Side 1
Tape 1, Side 2
00:27:02
LS:	What about President Harrington?
HR:	Well after Elvejhem died my contact with Harrington was less than with Fred or Elvehjem mainly because he was not a scientist.  But I'd known Mr. Harrington from years before he became president when I was first married and my children and the family lived on Regent Street out across the road from the cemetery, and the Harringtons lived up on—I believe it's called Ridge Road, which was about two or three blocks from where we lived.   And he had—some of his daughters were the age of my daughters so they would stop by on the way to school or on the way home from school—that is the ones who were of age. So we knew one another as parents of children who were the same age.
LS:	Oh, that's interesting.
HR: 	And I also appreciated hearing his lectures over the radio on history. He was certainly an excellent lecturer and my interest in history, too, fit in with what he had to say.
LS:   	When did you have time to—were they in the evening?
HR:   	I believe some of them were in the evening or at noon hour.   I don't remember for certain just when and I didn't hear all of them.   I regretted that I didn't hear all of his lectures.   So when he became president we were old friends but I didn't have the same contact with him that I had with the previous presidents.   
00:28:59
	With President Young I again—
LS:   	Chancellor.
HR:   	Or Chancellor, that's right, Chancellor Young.  I again reestablished a closer relationship because of his interest in cancer research.  I don't believe I went up to see him too often about what we were doing, but we were friends from—in other ways.   I remember one time we went fishing together. It was a practice for oh, maybe 10 years—a group of friends and I would go up to Canada fishing.  This group was Dr. Curreri and Dr. Ansfield and—they were really the two standbys—and there would always be three or four extra to make it inexpensive enough to charter a plane to fly up to Canada.   And one time Chancellor Young—I don't remember exactly how he got involved, who mentioned this to him—but he came along with us—I think there were six of us that flew up to Canada to God's Lake, a wonderful fishing lake that you could only get to by float plane.  I didn't know whether he was an experienced fisherman or not.  We talked about other things.  I remember the first morning there were three of us in the boat, Ed, myself, and the guide, and we'd started out—usually we'd fish for either Northerns or Walleyes—and we'd gotten a place—you get to know where there may be walleyes—and I began telling him about how to go about fishing for walleyes and before I caught one he had about three. They were beautiful walleyes.   So I said "Had you been fishing before?", which was a really dumb question because he's really a very experienced fisherman.
LS:	I suppose being from Maine he must have had plenty of experience. 
HR:	That's right and he knew much more about it.  Well, this became sort of a joke because he took it good naturedly and I got over my embarrassment in a hurry.  
00:31:43
	But then I guess so far as the cancer research is concerned, in 1971 when the National Cancer Act was passed, one of the items was that there were to be fifteen new comprehensive cancer centers.  Now McArdle was a very well known cancer center but it's what is called a “specialized cancer center” because they were involved only in basic research.  A “comprehensive center “was one which was to carry on basic research, clinical research, and be involved with treating cancer patients.  Congress felt that there had been enough research going on, or not enough but at least that a more practical approach to the cancer problem should take place.  
00:32:39
	Then Chancellor Young asked me whether I felt that there should be a comprehensive cancer center on the campus. 
LS:   	You mean he called you into his office and—
HR:   	I don't remember the details but anyway I guess I must have gone up there and I said yes I thought we should have a comprehensive center. I'd already discussed this with Dr. Pitot, who was acting dean of the medical school, and with Dr. Robert Johnson who was acting head of the Clinical Cancer Center which had been under the direction of Dr. Curreri for many years.   All of us agreed that this would be a good idea, and I don't know whether Dr. Pitot called Young first or just how this came about, but anyway this was called to Young's attention and then he asked me whether I felt we should have one and I said, "Yes."   He said well would I be willing to be a director.   At that time I was 62 years of age and one can—supposedly the rules are that you can serve as officer or a dean or a director of the University until you're 65—and I said that it wouldn't be possible to be director and accomplish very much in three years so he said well, they would—if my health was good I could be reappointed as director each year.   So I said well under those conditions I would accept this and take on the task of building up and organizing a comprehensive cancer center.   So in that way Ed Young played a key role in encouraging this venture to get underway.
00:34:54
LS:   	You must have been a very good administrator.    I mean you after all got several of these things going.   Were you, and did you then look at other administrators like the presidents and chancellors and think that they might have done things better?
HR:  	 Not at the level of presidents or chancellors, only as a director or department chairman.   I always had the idea that an administrator should first of all get good people—well, first decide on what subject matter should be studied and then get the very best people who were available to head up the particular project.   Perhaps if I've done anything it is to select—or in the beginning when I was really the only one who made the decision for some of the early people, although I had help from—advice from others later on, of course from the whole department, but from the beginning in getting Potter and the Millers and Boutwell—I was really the only one—and Gerry Mueller—I was really the only one at that time to make the decision.   And then after one has good people, to do everything you can to make life happy and comfortable, to provide a good environment for them to work in and to put one's own research as a secondary item.   I feel that a director of a science laboratory should also be doing research because in that way you have appreciation of what others are doing and you're better able to judge what they're doing.   But that your own research should not be foremost—that you should work for other people. Also I think one must encourage an interchange of ideas among the people.   In general people don't flourish if they're on their own and just working in an isolated area.   This isolated area could be in a huge building where you don't have contact with others or it could be out in a small university in an isolated place.   So we had frequent weekly meetings of the department— 
LS:   	You said that once before, but you said also that it wasn't a good idea to have too many people doing research in the same place—
HR:   	Yes.   What I meant by saying that is that I don't believe in having huge institutions like some are, because the director cannot know what's going on in an intimate way.   So I think that it's better to have ten institutions, let's say the size of McArdle, than one institution as large as ten McArdles. And just numbers of people and square footage does not necessarily make, and may even hinder, a good cancer center.
00:38:34
LS:  	 Excuse me, I interrupted you—you were saying that at meetings— 
HR:  	Yes, I think it's very important for the people to—the heads of various groups—to get together once a week and discuss their problems and receive and accept and encourage constructive criticism from the others in the group because no one can think of all the answers or the problems that arise so it's important to get suggestions from your fellow men.   And in this regard people here have always cooperated and gotten along very well in getting suggestions. 
LS: 	Are you watching the Oppenheimer film? 
HR: 	Yes, I am.
LS:   	 It must be very similar in the approach to the work. 
HR:  	Unfortunately, I missed some of the key parts of it.   But I think—as I gather you did, that they had the same type of enthusiasm, of people working together with enthusiasm and helping and assisting one another to accomplish a goal.   So it's similar.
00:39:57
LS:  	 I wanted to ask you what is the severest problem for cancer research now, whether—either in the University or nationally or both. 
HR:   	Well, perhaps, I would say maybe a lack of sufficient good ideas.  There are many good ideas, but unfortunately we don't yet know which is the best direction or the best idea that should be followed with the most money and the most vigor and the most assistance.   In the beginning we had to try many attacks in different areas.   Today it's narrowing down and I think that's very helpful.   I think that the knowledge about how cancer is formed, both by chemicals and viruses is very exciting.   Recently there's an example.   There has been a virus isolated that does cause human cancer—a type of leukemia that is quite rare, but nevertheless this is a very important step.   For years many people had thought that leukemia probably was a viral disease but it's been extremely difficult to prove.   We knew that many animal tumors and tumors of fowls are caused by viruses but to pin this down in people was another story.   That has now been done and that's very helpful and will lead to a great deal more intensified research in that area.   
00:41:56
	Another area that's an old idea which is now coming to be more encouraging is the idea that one could target a particular cancer-killing material—target that directly to a cancer cell.   I remember we talked about this thirty years ago or even forty years ago, but the techniques weren't really available to do it.   Many attempts were tried but it was always more of a shotgun approach rather than narrowing in with a rifle approach.   But recently by making monoclonal antibodies to a specific type of tumor these antibodies—these monoclonal antibodies—people are now putting Chemotherapeutic agents on those, hopefully to zero in on the cancer cell without harming other cells.   This is in a very experimental stage but at least it's getting closer to solving the problem.   Now those are examples of two types of approaches that can receive much more fundamental and meaningful type of research.   There are others too, for instance the Millers—all of the work they've done on chemical carcinogenesis—have shown that certain enzymes are involved with changing a chemical to a carcinogen—have been very helpful in understanding how chemicals produce cancer.   Why they do in some people and why they don't in others. 
00:43:55
LS:  	 Do you still go to the meetings?
HR: 	Yes, both -- I go to the seminars, the Friday noon discussion at McArdle, and I go to the various seminars in the clinical center, and I also have been going to the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. This last April—the last week of April—I attended the 75th anniversary of the American Association of Cancer Research and along with two other people who were some of the older members, like I am, of that association, we each gave a talk on some of the early days of cancer research. 
LS: 	Did you write that up?
HR:	Yes, I wrote it up but this was given in a 25-minute presentation and it was taped so they have it on tape and I also—
LS:	You told some amusing stories that you were going to include in it. I was hoping you had a copy of it.
HR:	Yes, I do have a copy and so that was an interesting session too. 
00:45:16
LS:   	And you still feel on top of what's going on in cancer research? 
HR:   	I couldn't say that I feel on top of it because advances come very rapidly and it's difficult to have an in depth knowledge of the various fields. So, no I can't stay on top of it.   I know in a general way what's going on but the details I've lost out on and I think this is not unusual because most fields—specialized areas of science—advance so rapidly that I think if you don't read the new articles, within six months you're sort of out of the field. So I can talk to the people, I understand what they're saying. 
LS: 	That's what I meant—you still understand what they mean. 
HR:	Yes.
00:46:15
LS:  	 Do you—if you look back over what you've done, what do you regard as most important?
HR:   	I would say getting good people together.   Then letting them run the show and above all taking—asking for and accepting their suggestions and working together as a team rather than being dictatorial.  I don't know whether any directors are dictatorial today—I know they were in the past—but this has to be a team effort and you must rely on the top notch people that you've selected because they know more about the area than you possibly could know. 
00:47:15
LS:   	But how do you compare that to, for instance, serving on some of the national committees and making some of the—being in on sane of the big decisions that were made about financing research?
HR:	That's at a different level—deciding on the particular types of areas that should receive support.  As an example, how much money might be used, what percentage of the money might be used for construction of new centers, or what percentage for fellowships, or how much for in-house that's used in Washington, or for extramural which is an entirely different level.
LS: 	But I mean you were there.   Do you think you had an influence on the kinds of decisions that were made or not?
HR:  	Well, I would say there were about fifteen people when I first served on the National Advisory Cancer Council, from '54 to '58, and then I was on the National Cancer Advisory Board, had changed its name, from '72 to '74—and again there were about fifteen people who would be present.   There were maybe a total of twenty people on each committee—so I would say that I had about one-fifteenth say and I would express my views and they would be intermingled with other views and then we would finally come out with a decision.  I think I had most to do when I would be chairman of a committee or subcommittee. As an example, I was chairman of the subcommittee of the board that had to do with establishing cancer centers—that is, comprehensive cancer centers. So as chairman I had quite a bit to do with what the criteria should be, maybe a fifth say, because there were five of us on that committee.
00:49:23
LS:	I'd like to ask you—we're at the end of the tape—what as a scientist you think is the major problem facing the world today?
HR: 	I think the major problem is caning to seme agreement on trying to prevent war and people fighting.    I don't have any good ideas of how this should come about.   If we can live peacefully and spend more money on things that we would like to do, then we'd all be a lot happier.   But it's not an easy problem. 
LS: 	Have you been active in any of the organizations that are—Physicians for Social Responsibility—?
HR:	No, I haven't.    I just haven't had time and I've felt that this is such a complicated problem and people fight among themselves—some people as individuals and as groups—and I just wish I knew some secret formula of how to get people working together nationally as a whole.   Scientists of all countries meeting together get along very well and have excellent discussions in science.   And even if you discuss politics, scientists more or less agree, or if they disagree they don't say very much.  
00:51:08
	 If they're very far apart—usually Russian scientists don't like to get into discussion, to my knowledge—at least the ones I've talked to.  We had a Russian here in 1964—spent about six months with us here at McArdle and all the time he was here we were very friendly but I did not broach the subject of politics with him because I didn't want to embarrass him.   I remember one time though I—he brought up the subject—I was complaining because as time went on more red tape was brought into the picture in the University to have something done than was true in the past.   We had to have a wall—a very small wall—put up dividing a whole room into two smaller rooms and it took about eight months to accomplish this.   Ten years before, that could be done within a week.   And I mentioned this to the fellow.    I said, you know there's all this red tape that's going on.   He said, "You know that's getting just like it is in Russia." So—and we both had a good laugh about this.
LS:   	Do you correspond with him?
HR:   	No, I don't.   For a while we did.   But again I always felt that I might embarrass him by corresponding.   I sent him a scientific journal that he wanted for several years but finally discontinued it.   He was head of the Institute for Antibiotics, and during the war he was in charge of getting out such antibiotics as penicillin and similar types of things.   Then after the war he felt that you could probably make antibiotics against cancer.   So that was his main interest when he came here.    It wasn't to do research, it was to write up this work in solitude and as a matter of fact he occupied the office right next door here on the 11th floor and spent most of his time writing. 
LS:   	I gather he didn't achieve anything, I mean—antibiotics are not used against cancer.
HR:   	No, that's correct—well sane you might say antibiotics, yes, are used as chemotherapeutic agents, but they haven't done as well as he had hoped they might and as well as others had hoped might be the case.
LS:   	Well this is close to the end of the tape and—thank you.
HR:   	Well, you're very welcome and if people want more details they can read the history.
LS:   	Yes, I hope the book will be available and there will be a copy for the Archives.
HR:   	Yes, there certainly will. 
LS:   	Good, thank you.
00:54:30		End of Tape 1. End of Interview
END