UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #758
DAHL, JUNE

Narrator: 	Dahl, June
Interviewer: 	Sandy Pfahler
Date: 		2006
Location: 	Madison, Wisconsin
Oral History#:	758
Series: 		Women in Science and Engineering

00:00:00	Start of First Interview Session

Sandra Pfahler (SP): My name is Sandra Pfahler, and I'm from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Oral History Project. Today, Wednesday, April 12, 2006, I'm interviewing June Dahl, professor of pharmacology in the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

00:00:23 

SP:	Good morning. We'll start right at the beginning of your life, if that would be all right. If you could talk about where and when you were born, describe your childhood, your early schooling, talk about your family, any teachers, family members, or others who encouraged you in your studies. 

June Dahl (JD): I was born in 1930, in June, and actually in a hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota. My parents lived in a small town across the St. Croix river, Hudson. But for some reason, instead of being born in Hudson, I was born in Saint Paul. Which is pretty trivial. 

	The town I grew up in was very small. It was pretty poor, relatively speaking. The major source of employment was the railroad. The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad had a shop there where they built cars, and they had repairs. When that closed, it had a terrible impact on the economy of the town. 

00:01:33 

JD:	I went to a three-room schoolhouse. Grades one, two, and three were together, four and five were together, and six through eight were together. And then I subsequently went into a high school that was part of the larger-- what's called a city, where we lived in the village. North Hudson versus Hudson. A high school, which also, by the standards today, was very small, as well. There were only about 45 people in my graduating class. That was unusually small. 

	Now the city has grown, because it's become a commuter place, where people calling from their employment with Minnesota Mining and other companies that are in the area around Saint Paul and Minneapolis. So it's really that kind of a community. It's very different. 

	I was in this three-room schoolhouse, and I think my first grade teacher was quite exceptional. We had no enrichment activities. We learned reading, and writing, and arithmetic. We listened to Wisconsin School of the Air for our music, and there was-- I blocked his name, but he was on the air for a long, long time, and did these radio programs that could be picked up by small schools that had no kinds of resources. I think we did, at one time, play triangle and tambourines, or something of that sort. We had no other organized activities. We went out for recess, played vigorously, dodgeball and kickball and other things like that. 

	I remember all of my grade school teachers very well. Miss Hammond, Mrs. Rasmussen, Mr. Brennan. I remember that Mr. Brennan had us read passages from the Bible when we were in the sixth through eighth grade. Never thought about it seriously. We just picked something random. 

	I must say that when I look back upon things, I can even visualize Miss Hammond, my first, second, and third grade teacher, articulating words. And she was a great teacher. 

	And this may sound inappropriate, but I just had the good fortune to be smart. So that in comparison to the other students in the school-- and this was true in high school, also-- there wasn't any competition. Which I think is unfortunate. 

00:04:26 

JD:	But I was disadvantaged. My father worked for the railroad. My mother was a night telephone operator. The family was dysfunctional. My father was an alcoholic. But the one thing I remember vividly was that my father really had great respect for education. And I remember his taking me to the public library-- and there was a public library in Hudson. We had to walk several miles to get there, because we have no car. But I remember his taking me to the library, and I remember starting to read Nancy Drew and things of that sort. We had very few books in the house, because we had no money. 

	And it was something that was interesting to learn later on how disadvantaged we really were. But everybody was disadvantaged, and so one was not cognizant of this particular thing. It wasn't until I went to college where I began to see people whose fathers were bankers, judges, doctors, lawyers that I realized, you know, there's a whole different kind of world out there. 

	But I had a really good childhood. We lived out of town on about twenty acres of land. So we were kind of white trash, if you will. But the land of that my parents lived on, because it was hilly and diverse and it was on a lake, I could walk through, and see the change in the seasons, and pick wildflowers, and do just wonderful things. I talked a lot to myself. I remember now that I would walk home from school, and I would be talking to myself. 

	There also were some really neat neighbors who took a shine to me, if you will. I remembered a Swedish lady who baked sandbakkels, and she would always stop me on the way home and chat with me. And I guess I was really cute. I looked like Shirley Temple. And also, I must say that, fortunately or unfortunately, I was-- school was easy. That I would never challenged. But I do remember Miss Hammond, in particular, and her articulation of words, and her teaching us reading, and how to write, and so forth. 

SP:	Were you an only child? 

JD:	No. I have a brother who was almost six years younger. He, unfortunately, was challenged academically. I think he's dyslexic. It was not diagnosed at that time. He also had the disadvantage of coming after me. And so he never was able to-- whatever. And also, he just never had any ambition to do anything. It was very frustrating. 

	Now, of course, he says how much he wishes he'd gone to school and all that. Because he was very gifted mechanically, and how great if he had trained to be a mechanic. But he didn't do that. 

00:07:33 

JD:	In high school-- the high school was relatively small. Our class was the smallest of any of them. And I participated in every extracurricular activity that there was. I played basketball, softball. But I was hopelessly incompetent, athletically. Had no gift, whatsoever. But I did it. 

	And my mother had started me on piano lessons when I was in grade school, and I continued to take lessons, but I really didn't practice and there was no motivation to do that. Somehow or other she found an old piano which she brought into our house, which took up almost the whole living room, because the house was so tiny. 

	But in high school, it was interesting that we got grades at mid semester and then at the end of the semester. And the first half semester I was in the school, I was the only person who got straight A's. And that, of course, got the faculty's attention immediately. You know, I had no idea that this was a big deal. But it was, I guess. But it also kind of made things, in a way, good for me, because I got attention, and there were expectations. 

	And I participated in state speech contests. I have lots of metals for state speech contests. We used to actually drive all the way to Madison if we passed the district contest, and come here to give our extemporaneous talk. 

	I went to church. I went to the Presbyterian church, and I sang in the choir. I was a faithful attendee. And then, in high school, was there any people who really influenced me-- 

00:09:34

SP:	Was there an assumption-- I would think, if you had the straight A's and people noticed you, there must have been an assumption early on that you were going to be going to college. 

JD:	Yeah, there was no question about that. And the person who really helped to identify the school I went to was the Presbyterian pastor, Mr. Reverend Dr. Wright. And as a result of his influence, I went to a Presbyterian college that wasn't very far away, Macalester. 

	I didn't really have any knowledge of the general world. My view was very, very limited. 

	Macalester was-- now that I look back on it-- an extraordinary place. It was a liberal religious school, and although we had to attend chapel, and I sang in the choir, and I sang in the college choir-- the whole choir-- which did a radio performance every Saturday afternoon at one o'clock on the state public radio station. And I also was in what was called Choral Readers, which was run by a professor of English, Mary Beth Owens, who had us read together. So we read various poetry, and she taught us how to enunciate and articulate. And this was an interesting experience, also. 

	But I was pretty much a wallflower. I wasn't active socially or anything like that. And I clearly didn't have the economic wherewithal to be going off on skiing trips, or this, that, and the other thing as other students could who were more amply endowed with financial resources. 

	And I also felt an obligation to go home and try to take care of my family, and clean the house, and do things like that. That was the way it was. Kind of parenting your parents, because of the dysfunction. Which wasn't-- I thought everybody was dysfunctional. 

	So I'm going on and on and on. But I think the person who was-- I don't know. There was one high school teacher, Miss Hughes, who taught mathematics, who was really one who pushed me. She actually had a part-time job working for the Astronomy department at the University of Minnesota. And she used to go over there by bus. And she was always doing these calculations, and I'm not sure what she was calculating, but some kind of astronomical distances. And I mean that literally, not figuratively. And she was always with a slide rule and her notebook and doing these calculations, because BC days was very, very different. 

00:12:23

JD:	I worked in the summer. I worked in the canning factory. I had, therefore, contact with immigrant workers, and saw how they were mistreated. I did really mundane chores that they did, like take the cans and put them in boxes. And because I was quicker, I got promoted to box stitcher. So I would use this machine to staple the boxes together. 

	But I saw how they couldn't use the facilities in Hudson. The canning factory was across the river in Minnesota. In Stillwater. It was Stokely-Van Camp. But they were really excluded, and they lived in this horrible housing, and they moved back and forth from Wisconsin to not Mexico but Texas, close to Mexico, where they lived. And there were Native Americans there, too, who were even lower class in terms of the way they were treated than the Hispanics who came. 

	I had a girlfriend and got to work in the office, because her father was in insurance and he had some contacts with the company, but I didn't have that. I also worked for a lawyer one summer, taking care of his office. Scrubbed his floors, things like that. And then I worked in Saint Paul at the Toni Company, which made waving lotion. And I actually did that during college, and then they were bought out by Gillette. 

	And again, I witnessed what I felt to be ridiculously lax supervision-- you see I'm pretty hard-noised-- of employees, where the so-called scientists who were there just sat around and did nothing. 

	But it was interesting, because we measured the viscosity of waving lotion, and I got to see just something about how something was out there in the world. 

	And then when I was in college, I also-- and I'm going into your second question. 

00:14:33

SP:	That's OK. Talk about your undergraduate work. 

JD:	I went to Macalester. That was an OK choice. But my decision to go into chemistry was not thought out. I think one of my science teachers in high school strongly recommended that I go into chemistry. I really wasn't thinking about what I was going to do with this. And I guess one of the reasons that stupid. That perhaps I wanted to go into a field where I could demonstrate that I could succeed in something that wasn't typical for success. 

	Some of my high school classmates have told me that when I was six years old, that I-- and I don't remember this. I've always said that I wanted to, like, be a lawyer, or be something. They thought I was kind of strange in that regard. For some reason, apparently, this kind of a desire was there. I'm not sure it was conscious of it. 

	I think, as I look back on this, one of the great desires was to get out of this environment, where the chief avocation was getting drunk. And it was kind of helpless and hopeless sort of situation. And I don't know what was wrong. But I guess I was different. I don't understand that now, in retrospect. But this is the way I was put together. 

	Whereas my brother barely made it through high school with D's, and certainly was part of the Rod and Gun Club, and his biggest deal was going deer hunting. How did we get to be so different when we were in the same environment? Of course, if he was dyslexic, or is dyslexic, this certainly could have impacted greatly on his ability to perform in school. But anyway, it's an unusual thing. 

	My education was financed, theoretically, by my parents. But after I graduated, I found out that my mother had never paid the tuition. And so-- she paid some of it, but not all of it. And of course tuitions weren't what they are now. And I went to get my transcript, and I couldn't get a transcript, because I still had bills. 

	So I paid off my bills, and never said one word to her about this. But this is typical my mother, who always owed somebody something. She was just-- 

SP:	Did you live on campus, then, when you were--? 

JD:	The first couple of years, I didn't live on campus. I lived in a house that was close to the campus. Very close walking distance. And that was a nice thing, because there was a young woman living in a house close by. She was living in the home of her aunt and uncle. And we became very good friends as we walked back and forth to school. 

	Margaret Anderson left Macalester at the end of her second year to go to the University of Minnesota because of financial reasons. But she and I still are in contact. And she lives in Edina, Minnesota, and we see one another from time to time, and it's kind of like picking up where you were before. But she was the closest person I had. 

	I had another couple of close friends in college. One was a roommate who scandalized the school by falling in love with the choir director, who was a divorced man. He had to resign from his position because of the relationship with her. And so there's just all sorts of crazy things that existed then. 

	But the school-- some of the teachers were terrible. My chemistry teachers, by and large, were horrible. When I look back upon their teaching techniques and so forth. But the professors I had in other subjects, like English and Political Science and Psychology and so forth, were outstanding. 

	Walter Mondale's wife was one of my classmates. Joan had gone to Summit School, which is a private school on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul. Her father, Jay Maxwell Adams, was the college chaplain, and a very prominent figure on campus. And her husband, Walter, went to Macalester very briefly, but he had to leave because his father died. And his father was a pastor in southern Minnesota, I think. So he had to leave because of financial reasons. 

	[speaking to someone else] Yes, ma'am? Sure. I'm sorry. [break in audio]

00:19:33

SP:	Well, you said you majored in chemistry. Did you have any idea, when you did that, what you were going to do with that chemistry degree? 

JD:	Well, the expectation was that I would go to graduate school, because again, I got good grades. No thinking about career. Just as it was before. You get good grades so you go on to college, you get good grades so you go on to graduate school. And the chemistry major decision was something I would not redo, but again, I think I was trying to prove something to myself, and I didn't even know consciously that I was trying to prove something to myself, that it was more difficult to get a degree in chemistry than it was in biology, for example. 

	So again, my graduate school decision was influenced by the chair of this small chemistry department in the school. And it was not a good decision, in retrospect. But he had a student who went there-- 

SP:	Which is--? 

JD:	Macalester. Oh, Iowa State. And she had done exceptionally well. And so he was pushing all the undergraduates to go to graduate school there. And I could get a teaching assistant, and get my-- I never got a masters degree, because in the sciences, masters degrees are usually reserved for those people who can't get a PhD, except in some universities where a masters degree is part of the process. One of our sons has a PhD in physics, and they give them a masters degree when they pass their prelims, or their qualifying exams. It just all depends. But most of the schools don't give masters degrees, except for consolation prizes. 

SP:	I see. 

JD:	When it's chemistry, physics, and so forth. Or even biochemistry, stuff like that. 

	So I think one of the things that was most influential in college was an instructor I had in the second year, in analytical chemistry, who told me, this is a man, who was really not a professor. He was an instructor. Because he was also doing something at the University of Minnesota, so he was doing part-time teaching. Told me categorically that women belonged in science only as science librarians. 

	So that was a great stimulus to me. Nobody else ever conveyed that sort of an attitude. 

00:22:21

SP:	Were there other women in your chemistry classes? 

JD:	No. No. There weren't women when I was in graduate school, either. This has its advantages and disadvantages, because people knew you. I remember taking a final exam in statistical thermodynamics, and the professor said-- I was the only girl-- you wouldn't call them girls now, you'd call them women-- Well, June recommended these questions. We had three questions on the exam. That went over like a lead balloon, that I had kind of talked to him, and suggested these were the kind of things. 

	But again, I was not-- I know I was not taken seriously. I always had this feeling that yeah, it was OK to give her a degree, but. I remember during my final oral that one of the professors asked me, so, how's this going to help you in the kitchen? 

JD:	The funny thing is, except for the guy who told me that women only belonged in libraries in the science field, I was really insensitive, in a way, to these kinds of slurs, because there wasn't a women's movement yet. And so I was not thinking about any kind of overt, covert discriminatory activity. 

	But I must say that as far as college and graduate school are concerned, I never felt really discriminated against in any way. But I realized, in retrospect, that they didn't expect much of me. You know, they'd give me a degree, but that was it. 

	And in fact, when I finished my PhD, by that time, I had decided to marry. And my husband had the potential to get a job with one of the oil companies as a research chemist. And they would have, even way back then, they would have accommodated me. They would have found something for me to do. And at that time, also, there were some instructor positions available in women's colleges in the east. I did not consider those because of the fact that my husband was the preeminent person. I come from a blue collar family, so women work, but they do everything else as well. That's the way it is. 

	So when my husband was offered a position here, and there were lots of positions open at that point in time. It was the heyday of science in terms of the funding and the opportunity. There are still great opportunities, but it's tougher now than before. 

SP:	That was in the early '50s, then, or mid '50s. 

JD:	Late '50s, early '60s. Anyway. So he came to Wisconsin, and then I never even asked the question of, what am I going to be doing? The idea was that I would do everything I could to support him in his career. Which I did. I helped edit his papers. I did this. I relieved him of all responsibility for anything. And he's been very successful. He created a field, he's a member of the National Academy of Sciences, he's well-known throughout the world. But I really did make a lot of things easy for him. 

	Now, the odd thing is that he didn't demand that. In fact, he was the one who was constantly pushing me. Because I was very reticent. I didn't feel as good as the guys who were in the same area. I felt inadequate. 

00:26:17 

JD:	And in many ways, I was poorly prepared. I don't think my undergraduate training was good. I don't think I had rigorous training as a graduate student, and then I didn't do a postdoc. So I did none of the things which are essential for success in science. 

	And so now I question whether I really have science, is the thing that turns me on. I love science. I like the scientific method. I think it's been wonderfully valuable from an educational standpoint. But from what really gives me joy-- I don't think standing at the lab bench doing experiments, or even supervising other people's experiments, are things that give me joy. Now, that could be due to the fact that I had lousy training. So unless you have appropriate education-- and this is in the broadest sense. Unless you have good mentoring, you aren't prepared to do good science. So I don't know i I'm capable. 

00:27:24 

SP:	What about your teaching experience in graduate school? Was that a positive--? 

JD:	I taught in undergrad school, too. I did a chemistry laboratory. I taught nurses. Oh, God. The nurses used to come to Macalester from three nursing schools in the Twin Cities to take basic chemistry. Oh, man. They were really challenging. The nurses I know now are extraordinary, because I run with this cadre of nurses who are leaders in the country. But basically, these young women were pretty stupid, and they didn't have much common sense. 

	But that's when I started teaching. And so I taught lab. And I remember the room full of hydrogen sulfide, because we had no hoods. And of course, the good thing is that H2S smells at one part per gazillion, whereas cyanide does not. 

	And then when I went to graduate school, I taught because that's what I got. A teaching assistantship. So I taught freshman chemistry, and I really enjoyed that. Again, it was challenging, because-- some of the students we had were great, and some of them were pretty dismal. And the instructors-- the professors who were really teaching the courses, some of them were quite interesting. but that's a whole other subject. 

	So I did teach during both undergraduate and graduate school. I did that. 

00:29:03

SP:	Iowa State is in Iowa City--? 

JD:	No. It's in Ames. In the middle of a cornfield. 

SP:	What was it like in Ames? 

JD:	Hot. Horribly hot and muggy in the summer. I was really so focused on school that I didn't pay much attention to the lack of cultural whatever. Ames now has one of the finest auditoriums in the world for concerts. Symphony orchestras go there and say that the acoustics are special. Very special. Some family gave money and they built this. 

	It was also, still is, the headquarters of the Ames laboratory, which was part of what was then called the Atomic Energy Commission, and is now called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And it was at Iowa State that the rare earths were separated. And there a lot of people were involved in some pretty high-powered research that led to the development of fuels for some of the horrible weapons-- now we call them weapons of mass destruction-- that are available. So the Ames laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission had some pretty unique features, in terms of this-- especially with rare earth, which people rarely even learn the symbols for, because they're a special group of substances. 

	But there were still residues of that research. There would be parts of the chemistry building where over in the corner would be this huge glass cylinder that stretched about four floors and was full of ion exchange resin. And this had been used to separate the elements from one another, or to separate the compounds containing the elements. So it was interesting for me, at that point. 

00:31:15 

JD:	So I got some idea. I also had an interesting experience in graduate school in that I had the opportunity to get a research fellowship, so I didn't have to continue to teach, and could focus on my research. And is this required that I would get security clearance, so I could go into these laboratories where there was secret material, and where some classified research was done. 

	And I just didn't get clearance. And my husband-to-be was talking with his major professor one day, and his major professor said, I don't know if you want to be hanging out with that woman. She's a communist. And he said, well, why is that? Well, you know she didn't get clearance because her background is questionable. 

	So I demanded to have my case opened again, and it was. And I met with these two FBI agents with a tape recorder in this room without any windows, with a stack this tall of my files. Remember, we're talking about how things were. And even worse now, of course, but don't get me on the current administration. 

	But anyway, it turns out, when I was in high school, I debated. One of the questions was, should China be admitted to the United Nations? And because small towns don't have any entertainment, they would have the debate team come and talk to the Rotary Clubs, the Elks Club, the this club, the that club. So our debate team went and talked. And sometimes you talked for, and sometimes you talked against the question. That's with debate it's about. 

	Well, when the FBI went to my small town to interview people about me, to get clearance, there was questions about my loyalty! After all, I had supported admission of China to the United Nations. So I was viewed as a radical communist by some people in this small community. 

	Well, by the time we got done with our interview with these two FBI agents, we were all laughing. But I did get clearance, and I did get admission to this lab, because that's where my major professor had his major research laboratories. 

	One of the things about this that which serious is-- of course, at that point I was solely focused on my husband's career-- was that if I had had this questionable history which was not cleared, he went to get federal grants, and they found that he was married to this radical communist debater-- that there might be questions. We didn't know how the McCarthy era would end. 

	So anyway. That was one thing. When I was in graduate school, we would go to the union to watch the hearings on the television. I don't think many of us at that time really understood the historical significance of that. 

00:34:28 

JD:	The same as, I was here in '69 for the demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and it routinely came in every morning, where there were busloads of National Guardsmen stationed at Camp Randall, and then they came out and lined the streets, and the students marched down here. 

	I was actually in this building, way back then, in a laboratory, down on the third floor, over in this section. And my husband, who was in the chemistry department, many times-- his graduate students were exposed to tear gas. Because they weren't involved in any demonstrations. They were just trying to get to school. They were trying to get to the lab, to work. 

	And of course, his graduate students were-- one of them spent a lot of time thinking about leaving for Canada because he was so dismayed. He's now, and has been for some time, vice chancellor of Arizona State University, and has had many high first faculty positions, but then administrative positions in academic science in this country. So it's intriguing, when I look back upon how these things happened. 

	And then my husband had a graduate students who went back to Saigon and was professor at what is now in Ho Chi Minh City, and was one of the last to get out of Vietnam before they closed everything down. 

	So in the context of-- we can't live in this country or in this world without having our lives affected by the very significant international or national events but sometimes they come very close to home. You know, the war at home, which was focused in Madison, was really an incredible experience. And watching the police clash with students, in the guards chase the students up the streets-- remembering the banners-- I just wish people would take to the streets again. 

00:36:39 

JD:	But anyway, that's off the subject of what you want to do. Why did I come to the University? I came because just my husband got a job, and I came with him. 

SP:	And that was right after graduate school. 

JD:	Yep. I didn't have a full stack. He was ready to be hired. And I tried to get a job with Rayovac. There weren't many places to go. I went to the Forest Products Laboratory, I went to Rayovac, they had no interest in me. I had a PhD in Physical Chemistry, and my research had been on the surface tension of molten salts. My research background didn't fit into anything. The chemistry department, which employed my husband, offered me essentially a position as a TA, that is, what they give to people who are coming in to work on their PhD. 

	And then there was an ad for a postdoc in the department of Pharmacology, and even though I wasn't qualified, because I didn't have any background in biochemistry, I was hired, because I think the faculty member who hired me was pretty desperate. He had been looking-- seriously! He had been looking for people, and he couldn't find anybody. 

	So I was brought on as a postdoc, and I spent many years being a professional mistress to department faculty members or chairs. 

	So that man left and went to Brown University. And then Jack Strominger came. But it was at that time that in fact the whole department of Pharmacology left and went to the University of Minnesota. Dr. Shideman was the chair of this department. It was not-- there was no molecular biology. It was really physiological pharmacology department at that point in time. He got mad at the dean of the medical school about some tissues about teaching pharmacists, which he didn't want anything to do with teaching pharmacists, because the requirements were that there has to be a laboratory. So he and the dean could not ever resolve this conflict, and so Shideman picked himself up and he went to Minnesota with almost all of his faculty. Except for one. That one person was the person who had hired me to work in his lab. 

	So the department went. The school is left with this dilemma that they have to teach medical students, and they don't have anybody to teach, because Bob Park is by himself. And he had a couple of MDs who could do a little teaching. 

00:39:20 

JD:	So anyway, he turned to me to see if I could teach something. And I could teach acid-base balance and diuretics, because this is really based on physical chemistry. So I could teach a little bit. And then I taught a little more, and a little more, because they were desperate. 

	Then Bob left and went to Brown. And Jack Strominger came, who was the person who discovered the mechanism of action of penicillin. And this was a stop-off point for him, because he really wanted to go to Harvard, where he still has, and is doing fabulously. Just celebrated his eightieth birthday with a big, big party. Has this stable of graduate students and postdocs. Sixteen to twenty people work in his group. Really dynamic guy. 

	Anyway, so he came, and he really didn't give diddley squat about teaching, and created this crazy pharmacology course for first year students that didn't cover any of the subjects of pharmacology. But because he was kind of desperate for teachers, he asked me to teach something. Then he left and went to Harvard-- where he'd always wanted to go, as I said-- and then Lowell Hokin came from the department of Physiological Chemistry, now called Biomolecular Chemistry, to chair the department, because they didn't have any money to recruit from outside. And here I was, sitting here. And he hired me to be kind of a lab person. 

SP:	Now what year would that have been, approximately? 

JD:	What year did Jack leave? Probably in the late '60s, 1968 or something like that. And again, he had a course to teach. And then the curriculum was undergoing revision. So here was a body. And also, in that interim, I did do some teaching in chemistry. I was a temporary, part-time-- very clear-- temporary, part-time instructor in the department of Chemistry. I taught freshman chemistry, I taught analytical chemistry in the second year. And I went to a faculty meeting, and one of the professors said, wow, we've never had a woman here! But anyway, it was clear I was temporary, part-time. 

	So I had these two half-time jobs. Half time teaching chemistry, halftime kind of working on Bob Parks's-- is this is before Strominger came-- Bob Parks's research group. Because Bob decided to go off to here, there, and everywhere, and his graduate students were kind of left up in the air. So I helped to write their theses, and did some of the mundane things. That's why I say, in a sense, you could describe that as being a professional mistress. 

	So anyway, I've always been here. 

00:42:08

SP:	But you're a full professor now! How did that happen? 

JD:	Well, I was never formally hired. It could never happen now. I was not qualified. My husband got a Guggenheim, and we went to Munich for his Guggenheim experience. Because he'd had a lot of collaborations with professors in Germany. It was 1970. We left during the height of the Vietnam garbage. 

	And we had three children then, and we lived in a second floor apartment, or maybe it was third floor. And it was a struggle. Because the way washing is done with German washing machines, where it's not timed, but it turns on the heat of the water-- the cycles depend on on how hot the water is. That determines the time. There were no dryers-- 

SP:	Now what city were you in? 

JD:	Munich. We were outside, in a small village. But anyway, it was an interesting experience. And during that time, I began to think-- holy cow. I don't think I could be a hausfrau. And then I started to think about, what do I want to be when I grow up? 

00:43:34 

JD:	So I came back to Madison and said to-- by that time, Lowell Hokin was chair of the department-- said to Lowell, I have just learned that the wife of a faculty member in the department of medicine had gotten an appointment in the Pharmacology department. And I thought, why in the heck is she getting an appointment? I think I'm reasonably as good as her. 

	So I went to him and said, could I be considered to be a part-time assistant professor? I could not work eighty hours a week. I could not. Not with three kids and a husband who worked eighty hours a week. 

	And he said, well, I'll talk to the faculty tomorrow. There weren't very many faculty. And I said, sure. 

	So I became a half-time assistant professor. And that's how it all started. I had no field. No field. Starting from a blank slate, if you will. So I thought, what am I going to do? Well, I'd been teaching-- by that time, I got into teaching drugs that affect the central nervous system, and I'd been reading about pain, and other things. And I thought, well, maybe I'll look at something related to the mechanism of action of morphine. Or analgesia that's produced by non-drug methods, like stress-induced analgesia. I don't quite know how I got into all of this. 

00:45:11

JD:	And I actually did write a grant and got funding from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. It was a terrible grant! But things were really-- money was really available. There was lots of money. It was the golden age. And so crappy grant proposals got funded. Boy, no more! No more. Really a tough world out there. 

	So I got this money. Then at the same time the department of Pharmacology and the School of Pharmacy had written this joint grant to support graduate students. And lo and behold, two of those graduate students came to work with me. Even though we really, none of us knew what I was doing. 

	Well, one of them's a professor of biochemistry at LSU, unfortunately. I don't know what's going to happen to her laboratory. She's been quoted many times in Science about the devastation of Katrina, and the effect on science in New Orleans. 

	But anyway. So I had these two graduate students. I've never had any since then. But that was the time when I really did do science. And Molly Carnes, who is very prominent on campus, actually-- when she first came to Wisconsin, did science in my lab. Extraordinary, when I look back at that. 

	Anyway, that was a tough time. And really, it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I just didn't have the skills, the technical skills and know-how. I hadn't any time to sit back and reflect, to develop ideas, anybody to really fly them by. But the students did manage to-- 

00:47:17 [End side 1; begin side 2]

JD:	So I'm answering a lot of your questions as we go along, because I've read them in advance. But I'm just doing this sort of chronologically. 

	So that was the about 1973, I think it was, when I asked, could I be a part-time assistant professor in the department? And he said yes. So then came the time for me to get tenure. And things were pretty, I think, lax then, too. 

SP:	You were still part-time? 

JD:	I was still part-time. I never would have given myself tenure, I can tell you that. I am hard-nosed. But somehow or other, I slipped through. There was only one problem, and that was that I was part-time. And the university had never given anybody tenure part-time. 

	But I really need to go back to what was the real stimulus for my asking if I could be a part-time assistant professor. And that is, my husband was up in the graduate school, talking to Bob Bach and other people. And talking about his wife, and how she didn't have a position. And he understood there were rules against husband and wife being on the faculty, and he couldn't understand how the pair, who were named Bach-- and he was a prominent personality in immunology-- how they could get dual appointments, but somehow or other, there were supposed to be a rule against it. And somebody laughed and said, Ah! We just say that to keep the women outside of our hair. You know, something like that. Big joke. 

	And that really was what set me up saying, well, this is a bunch of crap. I'm going to ask the department. I forgot that little thing. Serendipity. 

	So everything in my life has kind of been serendipity. It's like that jerk when I was a sophomore in college who said, women only belong in science if they are science librarians. 

	So anyway, in 1977, a significant event occurred. Now, during this time also I was teaching more and more, because they didn't have faculty to teach. They just kind of, you know-- there would be a subject, and nobody to teach it, and so they'd say, can you do this? So I remember when I had to teach antiarrhythmics. I hardly knew where the heart was. But I learned. It takes, you know, if you focus. Couple of weeks, I not only where the heart was, but I knew the genesis of cardiac arrhythmias, and I learned the drugs sufficiently to teach the students. 

	And actually, it's an advantage to be dumb. Because then you really get to understand what you have to stay in order to make people understand, because you went through this process in trying to understand yourself. And there's advantages to being ill-informed. 

00:50:18

JD:	So in 1977, I was appointed by the governor of the state of Wisconsin to the Controlled Substances Board, the state's regulatory authority. That was really a significant event. Why was I appointed? Well, because the legislature, when they created the Controlled Substances Act for the State of Wisconsin, which was then chapter 161 of the statues, I don't know what chapter it is now, said that all these people should be on the board representing state agencies, but there need to be two governors' appointees. One was a psychiatrist, and one was a pharmacologist. That's not a pharmacist. That's a pharmacologist. 

	The guy who helped to write the controlled substances act was a professor of medicine. He just died within the last year--Joe Benforado. Joe ran Rebos, the detox center for alcoholics. Joe was the first appointee as a pharmacologist, because he had helped to create the board. And he and I had been teaching together in a course, and I had suddenly began teaching drug abuse. God only knows why. Because somebody needed somebody to teach drug abuse, and they asked me if I would do it, and I said sure. So he said, well, if I look around at the faculty, all the rest of the faculty in the department of Pharmacology only do science, and only know basic science. And then things were becoming more and more molecular. So you seem to be the only person who has some knowledge of what goes on in the real world in the field of drugs. 

	So he recommended me and I was appointed. And I served on that board until I just couldn't take the time anymore. Until actually the state had wrecked the board by moving it from the Department of Health and Family Services into the Department of Regulation and Licensing, and taking away its staffing. 

	But anyway, in the context of that board is where I began to work on the things I work on today. So it was all serendipity. I still was working in the lab, then. I continued to work for a long time. I was doing a collaboration with somebody in the different of anatomy, and that's where the money came from to be able to do the research. I really didn't make an effort to get grants on my own to do science, because I knew I didn't have the resume that would qualify, and I didn't have the time to get the data. I would have to take a sabbatical, or something like that. 

	So the Controlled Substances Board was an interesting experience. There was a very wonderfully dynamic, capable, able staff to the board. And board success or failure depends on the quality of the staff, as you know. So he and I teamed up, and we did a lot of projects together that really related to abuse of prescription drugs. And there was also a conference on cocaine, which I had little to do with. 

	But it was that board experience that led us to consider a law introduced in 1984 in the congress to legalize heroin. And I knew enough pharmacology to know that that was just a red herring. That heroin is converted in the body to morphine. And the reason why pain was poorly treated was not because we didn't have drugs, but because they weren't being used appropriately. 

00:54:02 

JD:	And out of that, in 1984 and 1985 and then formally in 1986 was created the Wisconsin Cancer Pain Initiative. And I've been working in that area ever since, doing different kinds of things. First starting out just here in the state, and then expanding so other states have similar organizations, then moving to look more broadly at issues. Like we had done a lot of education, and it was clear that education doesn't change the way that people practice. And I felt that you've got to give them some carrots, but you have to give them a stick. 

SP:	So you were educating medical people, doctors, nurses. 

JD:	Yeah. Primarily physicians in the beginning, and also nurses. And some pharmacists. But then I said, we got to get a stick in. And I went to some pain summits, and I chaired a subgroup at that meeting, we're just trying to figure out how to change physician practice. And I concluded that-- and that was 1996, by that point in time. There had been a lot of things going on. Or 1995. No, it was '96. And I said, I think what we need to is have standards. So that there are requirements that pain has to be managed, has to be assessed and treated. And I said, I'll approach the joint commission. I didn't know what I was talking about, but that's all right. That was in September. 

	In October, the joint commission came to do their survey of UW hospitals and clinics. Because I'd been involved at the local level with the pain team at UW hospital, I went to the presentation that one of our great, great, great nurses had made to show the kind of program that had been developed at UW hospitals and clinics to assess pain, to manage it as appropriately as possible. Isn't all succeeded yet, but UW was way ahead. 

	And at the break, I went up to one of the surveyors-- you're not supposed to do that. But I went and talked to him and said, wouldn't it be wonderful if every hospital in the United States had a program, had a commitment as UW does? He said, I agree. My daughter died of breast cancer just a few weeks ago, and she died in horrible pain, and it shouldn't happen. He said, I'll have somebody call you. 

	On Monday somebody called me from the joint commission. And I didn't know that people from the American Pain Society and other folks had been trying to break into the joint commission and get them to pay attention to this. And then, somehow or other, I got hooked up with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, because-- gosh, what's her name. There was a person who used to be here who became an important staff person at Robert Wood Johnson. But anyway, I got talking with them, and they said, look. If you can get the joint commission to agree to work on this project, we'll fund it. In fact, we'll fund-- they'd already funded us in a previous iteration to have a project to grow state pain initiatives. 

	I can't remember quite the history of where I talked up with them, but I hooked up with Lou Sandy, who is no longer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. But anyway, then you kind of dialogue for a long time. You have to court them. You have to do all sorts of negotiations. But anyway, there's this is wonderful staff person who said, if you can get the joint commission to agree, we'll fund this. 

	So I wrote a proposal, I took it to the commissioners of the joint commission in June, and that was to allow us to work on a project to put pain assessment and management into the standards that they used to accredit the nation's healthcare facility. 

	The joint commission commissioner said, no. Can't do that. It's OK if you write standards to take care of people at the end of life, but that's it. 

	So by that time I'd made a great acquaintance with one of the members of the standards department, Carol Patterson. She was really committed to this on a personal level, she said. We'll do pain and the dying newborn, we'll do pain in the dying this, we'll do pain in the dying that. We'll just move ahead. 

	So in September, we started the process of working with the standards department. And you have to go through a bunch of processes. You have to create a documentation of the need for the standards. Then you have to go to various professional technical committees, like there's a hospital PTEC, a long-term care PTEC, a this PTEC and a that PTEC. You have to convince them that this is OK. And then you write the standards, and they go through these committees again, and then they go out in the field for testing, and all of this. And we did in two years. 

SP:	And you did that without funding, or--? 

JD:	No, no. We got funding. And the smart thing-- oh yeah, we got at $1.6 million grant. And by then-- Robert Wood Johnson is really smart. They said, you ask for money to pay for a staff person of the joint commissions. Because if we're paying for staff, they're always saying they don't have enough money. Then, you know, they're so smart and I didn't think of that. 

	But anyway, the first committee we went to was the hospital committee. And I remember going down to the palace of the joint commission outside of Chicago. And low and behold, Mike Miller, who was head at New Start here in Madison, was chair of that hospital PTEC! 

SP:	Oh my goodness. 

JD:	I didn't know. Well. Turned out he was absolutely opposed to this. He said, what are you doing here? What are you doing here. He recused himself from the chair so that he could speak against it. And we went around the members of the committee. And Dennis O'Leary, the head of the joint commission was there, as were a couple of other critical people. So the proposal was presented. Not by me, because I wasn't an official part of joint commission, but by one of the staff people with whom we closely worked. And of course, the people had that documentation in front of them in their big book. I have some of the books, in fact, saved. 

	And various people spoke against this. Some spoke for it. One guy said, look. We don't need standards. We assess patient satisfaction, and that is all we need to do. If they're satisfied, fine. 

	Well, I was supposed to talk, but I could not keep my mouth shut. So from the peanut gallery, I said, sir, I have to respectfully disagree. Because there's study after study that shows that patients are well satisfied with their pain management, even if their mean pain score is seven out of ten on a zero to ten scale, which means they have severe pain. Because their expectations are low. Et cetera. Patient satisfaction has been studied with regard to a variety of indicators of quality of care. The only thing that it's valid for is the quality of the food. Nothing else correlates with patient satisfaction. Doesn't tell you anything. 

	And so anyway, ultimately this committee said no. But there was a guy sitting behind me who was an alternate member of this PTEC. he sends me a note on a little scrap of paper. I still have it. It says, Hang in there. 

	So then the next thing was to go to the long-term care committee. And they said, resoundingly, yes! The next committee we went to was home health. Yes! The next committee was I don’t know what--Yes! So there was a resounding yes. So we ignored the hospital PTEC and went ahead. And I had this wonderful colleague who had been a surveyor who really went and helped to develop these standards. 

	But they didn't come out of thin air, because prior to that, we'd written a manual called Building an Institutional Commitment to Pain Management. It was a big spiral-bound book to help health care facilities develop a program to manage pain appropriately. 

	But anyway. So the standards got written. And again, they went out into the field for testing. And some changes were made, and in June of 1999-- we started this in the fall of 1997-- the commissioners of the joint commission said yes. The approved the standards. 

SP:	And the hospital standards were included? 

JD:	Oh. I'll get to that. The standards for all facilities. And the commissioners forgot that they told us we couldn't write standards, except for people dying. And I saw Mike Miller later on. And he said to me, I thought we told you no. I said, yeah, you did, but we just went ahead, and it seems like it worked out OK. 

	So anyway. That was the story of the joint commission standards. And it hasn't changed the face of pain management yet. 

SP:	So when were what standards--? 

JD:	They begin to be scored for compliance in January of 2001. 

SP:	So how many years did that take? 

JD:	It took from the fall of '97 to June of '99 to get the standards. But then the joint commission commissioner said, people aren't ready for this. We have to give them a little time. And we agreed. 

01:04:23 

JD:	But now we recognize that people are assessing pain. They are documenting the assessment and they don't know what to do. So the next phase of our work, and I just got a grant from the Mayday Fund, is writing a manual, another manual, another version of our manual, that will provide guidance to people as to how to deal with specific pain problems. And we're going to use the nurse as a target for these educational interventions, because nurses are really key to putting policies and procedures in place to getting appropriate pain management strategies. Physicians just don't get involved in these kinds of quality improvement efforts. This is not something they care about. 

JD:	So anyway. So where's my-- 

01:05:11 

SP:	Well, I think we were at tenure. Did you earn tenure here? 

JD:	Yes, I earned tenure. I earned tenure actually when my husband and I went to China with a delegation in 1979, and I got tenure as a part-time assistant professor. The culture of the department-- that kind of questions is really hard to answer, because-- God. We have a very interesting department. And I don't think it's relevant to me. 

01:05:39 

SP:	OK. Well in the beginning, you said it just about changed completely, right? At one point, when everybody left? 

JD:	Yeah. But then what happened is, we got a new chair after. When Lowell Hokin was chair, there was a small group of faculty. Very small. And they really didn't want to change. They were intransigent. And then Arnie Ruoho became chair, and he has really built the department. He's brought in great researchers who are bringing in lots of federal dollars, which is one dangerous measure of success. 

	The culture of the department is hard to explain. It's not relevant to me. Collaborative work is encouraged among members of the department. All of them are scientists. Some of them write grants together, publish papers together. There's a great-- Arnie is a really dedicated chair. He's one of these totally unselfish individuals. They are a rare beast. But he always thinks the department first, and himself second. So there's a lot of collaboration there. 

01:06:43 

JD:	I've taught courses. A lot in the medical school, but I also always taught in something called People, Chemicals and the Environment. And it was once called Man, Chemicals and the Environment. My late son said to me, mother, how can you allow a course to be named man, chemicals, and the environment? So it got changed to people. 

	How many students have I mentored? My teaching has changed, because the medical school teaching has changed. The expectations of the students have changed. The curriculum has changed. We could talk about that for hours. Because I don't think any of us really understand how to teach medical students effectively now. 

	I think-- boy, there's been a change. Because these are students who are raised on thirty second sound bytes, who expect instant kinds of things. It's a very different world out there, and we could talk long and long about education today. It t'ain't easy. It really isn't easy. Students don't go to lectures. They want everything spoon-fed, and I think the administration, in a way, encourages spoon-feeding. There's so much information overload for these poor people. Nobody has stepped back and said, what does a second year medical student really need to know? 

	Who do I mentor? Well, one of the fun things is that there have bee all these medical students, and I will go out to give a talk at a small hospital, and someone will come up and say, Hi, do you remember me? And I remember something you've said, and it's always been a part of my practice. This is a really wonderful thing, when a doc comes up and says, you made a difference in my life. So those kinds of things stand there. 

	And the students that I had as graduate students, there were only two of them. And one of them, Iris Lindbergh, has been extraordinarily successful, and is a professor of biochemistry. But her future is really in doubt. Because the labs were destroyed. All of her materials were destroyed in Katrina. Freezers and freezers full of cells that she specially developed. I don't know what-- she hasn't answered my e-mails recently, so I don't know what's going on. 

	My current work is funded by primarily private things. 

01:09:19

SP:	Now, what's the Mayday? You said the Mayday Fund. 

JD:	Mayday is a family that decided to honor their mother by spending her legacy in supporting pain-related activity. 

	So in the early 1990s, after being involved in all these educational activities, I-- and along with a lot of other people, it wasn't original with me, said, education alone doesn't change practice. Let's help people change practice by giving them a cookbook. This is how you do it. And so this is the manual. And this was paid for by a grant I wrote to Mayday in 1996. Small amount of money. $30,000. This is the second edition. But I've always had the most incredible colleagues to work with me. I've just been blessed with the kinds of folks who come out of the woodwork and say, sure, I'd like to work on this. 

	So Mayday is this family that really gives these funds to relatively small projects. Because the current money we got was just $79,000, to create the next version of this manual, which will move beyond just, this is how you get the procedures in place, to this is how you manage pain effectively. 

	So Mayday is this family, and they've been very generous, and they had a major impact. Other sources of funding-- Robert Wood Johnson has given us five or six grants, which is pretty unusual. First a grant to get pain initiatives formed in other states, and to help them grow. Then the standards grant. Then they gave a grant, again, focused on enhancing the work of the state pain initiatives. Then they gave us a grant to help enhance our collaboration with the American Cancer Society. Then they gave us a grant to work on some projects with states to improve the laws and regulations with government prescribing of controlled substances. 

00:11:51

SP:	Now, where would you rank Wisconsin, then, among the other states, in terms of the pain initiatives, and what you're doing here? 

JD:	Well, our pain initiative, interestingly, flourished greatly beginning in 1987. We're twenty years old. But we're not formally organized as other states are, because in fact, so much has been done that the question is, would creating an organization and having meetings mean anything? We're evaluating that right now. We're doing some things that are sort of models. We're working on a project to translate some assessment tools into a known language. We're going up to Wausau on the twenty first to talk with the people there, to see if we can test the utility of these choices in assessing pain and depression there among the patient population. 

	We just did a survey of Wisconsin managed care organizations to try to see what they pay for in the pain arena. Because one of the big challenges today is access. It's access to providers, but also access to the money to pay for-- I was just at a conference in Rockford-- that's not in Wisconsin, of course-- last Wednesday, and many people were talking about the fact that although there's evidence for the benefit of acupuncture in certain kinds of pain. There's no money paying for it. 

	We've moved from focusing just on cancer to focusing on pain broadly. Because we did, with money from Robert Wood Johnson, a project nationwide with 235 hospitals to try to improve the management of post-operative pain. And we've done projects in nine or ten states with state pain initiative focused on small healthcare facilities. Long-term care facilities from health and hospital, to not only educate them, but also to get them to change the practice in their setting. And we're doing more of those. 

	And we've done videos to teach nurses-- there's seven videos, it needs to be updated-- teaching nurses some basics about pain. Each one is about ten, twelve minutes. We've written patient education materials. I don't know exactly where this money came from. Medtronic Foundation gave us money for this. 

	So a lot of our money, now that RWJ is no longer focused on pain and palliative care, has to come from industry. We just got a nice grant from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Three years of funding. We are reaching out to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. I've been having conversations, and we've sent them a bunch of material, and I hope we can go to Texas to sit and commiserate about the way they can help us work out things. 

	So the funding comes from a diversity of sources. But we were blessed that Robert Wood Johnson gave us this hunk of money that really make a difference in our ability to work. 

	We've also, we're blessed that Purdue Pharma gave us a significant amount of money to keep things operational here. Purdue Pharma has fallen on hard times, first because their product, oxycontin, has been abused, but more importantly, because they lost a lawsuit that another drug company brought against them, accusing them of stealing patents, or things like that. Now, that's a confusing thing, because first the court ruled in favor of the company that was suing Purdue Pharma, then subsequently another court reversed that decision. And now it's again under investigation, and we don't know which will win. 

	But I can tell you that the consequences of these lawsuits are very, very significant. Purdue had to lay off, when it lost the lawsuit initially, about three quarters of its staff. If the company that originally sued them loses this next round, they may go under. Because Purdue will undoubtedly sue them for billions for, you know, the damage that the suit caused. 

SP:	Now what company is that? 

JD:	Endo Pharmaceuticals. So anyway. But the funding is a constant problem. And what we're trying to do is to get more diverse funding. And I don't know how to do that. Everywhere I go, I ask, do you have $5 million? 

SP:	[laughs] I don't. Sorry! 

JD:	Well, I’m out of here. [laughs] The most significant developments in this field-- again, this would take a long time to explain. Because the last fifteen to twenty years, we've seen an incredible series of advances in the science and medicine of pain. And there's just many, many elements that have come into play. My involvement in faculty government's committee work-- 

01:17:25 

SP:	Just can we back up? What do you consider to be your most important contribution to the field? I mean, I can see a lot of it right here. But what would you point to? 

JD:	Hm. I've really just been a catalyst. I bring people together to do things. So I think serving as a catalyst for action is what I've done. 

	I guess a major commitment that I've always had in the field is to make sure that we are scrupulously accurate. This is a field that is filled with misinformation, hyperbole. People are fearful about addiction when they use certain medicines for pain control. There's an exaggeration of things. A misunderstanding of a lot of things. And so I guess one of the things that I've always stressed is that it's essential to be extraordinarily careful and accurate. And anything you say has to be based by the best facts you can find. So I guess that insistence, that kind of standard. 

	But basically, all I've done is to bring people together to do things. That's been my contribution. Still trying to really motivate the American Cancer Society. 

01:18:59

SP:	Now, I have to ask. Are you still part-time? It doesn't sound that way. 

JD:	Oh, I haven't been part-time since-- When did I go full time? Jeez. Probably in the early '80s, I began to work full time. 

SP:	And is full time eighty hours a week over the course of a year? Probably, huh? 

JD:	Well I work between ten and twelve hours a day, and I work almost seven days a week. So yeah. [overlapping voices] I'm not very efficient. That's my problem. 

SP:	I doubt if that's the reason. 

JD:	That's my problem. 

01:19:37

JD:	So in question number nine, because I know your time is fleeting-- I have served on-- you could look at my CV. I've served on various search committee. I served on the admissions committee for the medical school. I've declined the invitation to serve again several times. I don't want to do that. I'm not a masochist completely. I served on the Biological Sciences Division. I worked for making decisions about tenure, and about courses, and things like that. There's been a lot of reorganization of those committees, at this point in time. I've served on a lot of committees related to this department. Like space committee-- and then everybody ignores what I concluded. Tenure committees and that sort of thing. The typical type of thing. I served as chair of the promotions committee for the medical students for several years. That was not fun. I remember getting sued for umpteen million dollars because we kicked a student out of school. 

SP:	Were any of them fun? I mean, did you enjoy any of the committees that you were on? 

JD:	I enjoyed the divisional committee. I liked the people, and I liked getting another perspective on things. 

SP:	Sure. 

JD:	I haven't done a lot of service, and a lot of that is because I've done a lot of service outside the University. So that sort of has led me to be good at saying no. And also, I'm aged at this point in time, and I think they use young blood in those kinds of activities. So the less I am involved at that level, the more I can do in other places. 

	But I enjoy the opportunity to interact with people, and to figure out what they're up to, and to learn from them. You can't learn about how to function well on a committee by reading about it. You have to have that experience. So it's been educational from that standpoint. But it's been something in which I haven't recently probably done my service as well as I should. 

01:22:17

JD:	The climate for women. Well, it's improved dramatically, as you know. Departments are very anxious to hire women. It's tough. Spousal, partner hiring business is really tough. Certainly in-- we have two women in this department. One has got a joint appointment in Pediatrics. The other was a hire. Offers have been made to other women in the search process, and we've lost them. And sometimes it's because their husband has a job in another place, and this university cannot provide them with a job that is equivalent to what the woman is getting here, a real faculty position. 

	Something just came across my desk a couple of weeks ago, and amazingly, the husband is willing to accept the job as academic staff. That makes it very easy. But most of the time, that's not an acceptable option. And so it's a challenge everywhere. 

	It certainly is a refreshing change from the way it used to be, but there still are problems. And those have been well-articulated by people on campus who have been studying this issue. It's women who take care of children the vast majority of the time. 

	I had one interesting experience, because I did serve as a sometime mentor to one of the women in another department in another school. And I strongly advised that she extend her tenure clock. She would not. Because she felt if she did, her male colleagues would not think that she was really taking the job seriously. I can tell you that my sense was she had a jerk of a husband who was not going to help her with anything, thank you. And she had a young child, and for some reason, there were some sleep problems. She wasn't getting any rest. When I saw her, she was extremely fatigued. 

	But still, you know? You hand out these wonderful little morsels, saying, oh, you can extend your tenure clock. But then I think people step back and say, well, what does that say about me? I'm not as good. But I should have much more challenging things than that. And these have been well-studied by many distinguished university committees. 

SP:	How do you get women to get involved in science? 

JD:	Well, we've got a problem, and it's not just with women. We have a very anti-intellectual atmosphere in this country. We have an administration that just-- says oh! Science is-- I don't believe that. You know? That just totally trashes scientific studies. They don't understand the scientific method. I think this is the population as a whole. They somehow think-- they don't understand that science-- how science is done. It's not beliefs and superstitions! It's hypotheses, and then you work on them. And maybe the data don't support the hypothesis. That's the scientific method! 

	But this population is really, really interesting. I think it's becoming more and more of a theocracy. And that scares the hell out of me. Excuse my language on your tape. 

	We've got to really do some major things. Because young men are not going into science. And of course everybody in this country wants to get rich fast. And everything has to be done quickly! And you can't establish a career in science overnight. It's a long, slow, slugging process. 

	We aren't doing a good job of educating young people in science at the grade school level. It has to start there. I know that the National Academy and the National Science Foundation and other major scientific organizations are really working on this. 

	I'm really interested in what's happening to some of my husband's graduate students. He's had almost a hundred PhDs. And some of them are close to retirement age, as you expect. And some of them also got let go by their companies in the reorganization process. Like they were in the chemical industry or in the oil industry. 

	And many of these have gone into teaching in high schools. And they are doing exciting things! 

SP:	Well, that's nice to hear! 

JD:	Oh, yeah! I'll tell you. Because the quality of education in the sciences in many places is terrible. All this garbage, education education, doesn't say that someone is qualified to teach a subject. And these people are. They have PhDs in chemistry. They have years of research experience. 

	And we just got a mailing from one of my husband's former students who's creating this foundation for science education in the public schools in New Jersey. It's really great. He wants a donation, of course. 

	So it's not just girls. It's boys and girls. It's the public has to get out of this business where they trash knowledge. They trash learning. And I'm not saying it right. But you know what I mean. 

SP:	No, I understand what you mean.

01:28:24 

JD:	What professional organizations do I belong to? Well, I belong to the American Pain Society, and the International Association for the Study of Pain. And I no longer belong to the Society for Neuroscience, because I just can't go to their meetings. I guess in terms of professional organizations, I don't belong to a lot of things. I interact with a lot of professional organizations, but I'm not necessarily a member. 

	So for the American Pain Society, I served on the board of directors. And for other organizations, like a Federation of State Medical Boards, I will serve as a consultant. For the American Society of Addiction Medicine, I will serve as a consultant. For the American Cancer Society, I will review documents, I will go to committee meetings, I will do things to try to encourage people to work on pain. Things of that sort. So that's my involvement. 

01:29:29 

JD:	So what do I do when I don't work? I garden and read mystery stories. My children are not here, and I guess I'm not a very good example of a balanced life. 

SP:	Do you travel? 

JD:	I travel a lot. 

SP:	It sounds like you travel for your job. Do you travel for fun, too? 

JD:	No. I don't care for travelling for fun. I have no desire to do that. Travelling is not much fun anymore. It's become a real tedium. So the only thing I would travel for fun, is to see my grandson. That's the only thing I would do. Otherwise, I'm kind of boring. And unbalanced. 

SP:	Well, it doesn't sound like that to me. So is there anything else you want to add to this? Because I think we got through most of the questions. 

JD:	Yeah. 

01:30:30 

JD:	It's just so funny, because I was never formally hired. I just got-- I just slipped in. Very shortly thereafter, rules began to evolve so that there would be affirmative action. And the way we do searches now, my God. People have to practically walk on water to get an offer. I would never have gotten an offer. And then, the way I earned tenure, I wouldn't have given myself tenure. 

	But those were not the good old days, but maybe the old days. Things are very, very different now. And I think that's good. I think everyone is more careful, more rigorous. And there is a very, very sincere effort to recruit women and to make sure that those women will be successful. There are mentoring committees for any beginning professor in a department. I just got asked to be on our new assistant professor's mentoring committee. And their progress is looked at every year very critically. Suggestions are made for change. People help them with their grants. 

	I never got any help with anything! But it wasn't done. Nobody did anything. I don't think my husband got any help. He just was lucky, in that his professors said, you can take your work with you. So he continued what he was doing as a graduate student. But he had a good, good education. Sound training, if you will, if you can talk about training somebody. 

SP:	Now did he go to Iowa State? 

JD:	Mmhm. That's how we met. We shared an office. 

SP:	Oh! 

JD:	So it's a different world. A really different world. In some ways it's it's not-- it's tougher. Much, much tougher. Because the number of people who are seeking federal funding has increased, the quality is fabulous. But when you look at the real dollars that are available, there isn't that much. You know. That's gone up. So I don't know what the future will bring. 

SP:	Well, if I had $5 million, I would give it to you. Because I think the field you're in is so important. Absolutely. I was really looking forward, because I had read some about you on your website, and I was really looking forward to this morning to hear more about it. 

JD:	Well, we really didn't talk a lot about pain. We talked about myself. 

SP:	Well, that's what we're supposed to do, talk about you! 

JD:	But it really is sad. I just got a call two days ago from a woman who's with the American Cancer Society in Kentucky, and she talked to me about her mom, who is seventy seven, and has diostenosis, and was put on oxycontin. Appropriately. But then she had a spinal cord-- epidural steroid. And that gave her pain relief, so her doctor took her off the medicine. She went through horrible withdrawal. And my friend is just in such distress about her mom, because her mom doesn't understand 

01:34:12	End of First Interview Session