Professor Baruch Blumberg

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My castaway this week is a scientist. Thirty-five years ago, he identified a virus, hepatitis B, which has killed tens of thousands of people a year. He won the Nobel Prize for his achievement and, rather more modestly but still uniquely, later became the first scientist and the first American to become master of Balliol College, Oxford.

Presenter0:45

Three years ago, at the age of seventy four, he embarked on another career as director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute.

Presenter0:52

In a life that's been varied and exciting so far, he describes his time at Oxford as perhaps the happiest time of my life. Maybe that's because there's a lot of the philosopher in him, too. In Jewish thought, he says, there's this idea that if you save a single life, you save the whole world. That affected me. He is Professor Baruch Blumberg, called Barry to those who know him, I think. So Barry it is. And Baruch is a Hebrew name meaning blessed, isn't it?

Professor Baruch Blumberg1:21

Yes, it is.

Presenter1:22

And you're blessed because you have in fact saved millions of lives, haven't you?

Professor Baruch Blumberg1:28

It it it is a blessing to be able to do that, yes.

Presenter1:33

Let's I'd like to try and just be specific as to how. First of all, there are those people who no longer die from hepatitis B. I mean, can we put a figure on them?

Professor Baruch Blumberg1:43

The figure that's often used is about a million and a half a year. That would include people who died from acute hepatitis, from chronic liver disease and from primary cancer of the liver.

Presenter1:57

And in the main these numbers are greater in Africa and Asia, I understand.

Professor Baruch Blumberg2:02

The prevalence of carias hepatitis B virus is very much higher in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia, particularly Eastern Asia and in Oceania.

Presenter2:16

Then of course there are the people who now no longer are given hepatitis B in blood transfusions, hemophiliacs or whoever has to have a blood transfusion, because now you can screen that blood and give them clean blood, good blood.

Professor Baruch Blumberg2:29

Yes.

Presenter2:29

Can you put a a figure on those people? I mean, how many is it in incalculable?

Professor Baruch Blumberg2:33

Uh well, uh I would put it in the order of tens of thousands worldwide, people who've received many transfusions and would have developed hepatitis and would have died. Indeed. So it so it'd be the order of I would say tens of thousands.

Presenter2:44

Indeed.

Presenter2:48

And then thirdly, there are the people who no longer die of liver cancer, whom you mentioned just now. But hepatitis B, as I understand it, is a primary cause of liver cancer, and therefore, in effect, your vaccine is an anti cancer vaccine.

Professor Baruch Blumberg3:02

Yes, that's correct. There's now some pretty substantial evidence that the vaccination program has greatly decreased cancer of the liver in the vaccinated population.

Presenter3:15

Well, I mean, I I don't want to sort of force you to be boastful here, but it as I say, it is a phenomenal fact, these millions of lives that have been saved. And for for a a Jewish boy who believed, as I said, that there's an idea if you save a single life, you save the whole world. What's it feel like to have saved millions of lives?

Professor Baruch Blumberg3:30

Well, it feels great. And it's uh good to think of it uh from time to time. You know, one tends to uh say, Well, that ha that's happened. You know, what's gonna happen next?

Presenter3:42

As if there's any more you could possibly do. Tell me about your first record.

Professor Baruch Blumberg3:46

This is David Bowie singing Space Oddity. It it's reminiscent of my experience working in the space program in my role as director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

Presenter4:00

Which is something you've been doing in later life.

Professor Baruch Blumberg4:02

Yes.

Presenter4:03

I want to talk to you about that. Let's pause for the music.

Presenter4:08

Yeah.

Speaker 24:09

Sound control to major tumult.

Speaker 24:15

Ground controls are major tongue

Speaker 24:22

This earth is blue and there's nothing I can do.

Presenter4:34

David Bowie, singing Space Oddity. I read, Barry, that when you were a boy you dreamed of being Charles Darwin or Ernest Shackleton, again, voyages of discovery, and in a way, of course, that's exactly what you've done. To an extent, this last job of yours we just mentioned at NASA, the space agency, you've been living out those dreams, really, haven't you? Because you've been asking those questions. What is life? How did we come here?

Professor Baruch Blumberg5:01

Well, the mission of astrobiology and NASA programs have mission statements. It is uh to research, to study how life originated, to ask the question, uh does life exist uh in places other than Earth, for example on Mars? And uh a third point is what is the future of humans in space? Uh

Presenter5:26

Uh

Presenter5:27

Getting any closer to the answers.

Professor Baruch Blumberg5:28

The yes. We're always getting closer. You never quite satisfy everything you want to know, but you end up knowing more than you did when you started.

Presenter5:38

But what's the time scale on this? I mean, when are we going to know the answers to these things?

Professor Baruch Blumberg5:42

In terms of origin of life, I think what we'll back up against is what do we mean by life? You know, we'll have to define that or characterize it in some fashion.

Presenter5:51

And you've gone in in search of this sort of origin of life, I think, to extremes, haven't you? You've been dealing in, I think you've called it extremophiles, things deep beneath the ocean and under the polar ice caps.

Professor Baruch Blumberg6:00

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg6:04

Yes. The the the notion is that early Earth was a pretty hostile place by our current standards. There were there were frequent uh impacts from comets and asteroids. There were enormous volcanic uh explosions. There wasn't much oxygen on the surface. So those are extreme conditions. Well, we want to look at places with extreme conditions in contemporary Earth on the inference that those organisms would be similar to the ones at the beginning of life on earth.

Professor Baruch Blumberg6:36

So, as a consequence, we go to pretty desolate places. I mean, I've actually gone on some of the field to some of the field locations.

Presenter6:44

So you're looking, are you, for the kinds of organisms that might have existed at the beginning of life on Earth four and a half billion years ago?

Professor Baruch Blumberg6:53

Possibly that early or or somewhat uh somewhat later.

Presenter6:56

Is the hypothesis then that there is or there could be life out there similar to ours in space and it might just be at any point of development across that four point five billion period, is it?

Professor Baruch Blumberg7:09

Except

Professor Baruch Blumberg7:11

To consider Mars in particular, that seemed to have not progressed uh in I don't know if that's the right term, the way that Earth has uh evolved. So it's likely that if there is life on Mars, or if there has been life o life on Mars, then it would be similar to what existed on early Earth. Now there's another possibility is that there's a totally different kind of life, which in an odd way we can't even conceive of now.

Speaker 27:31

Hmm.

Presenter7:39

Is it your hunch that we are not alone?

Professor Baruch Blumberg7:42

Uh well, let me put it this way, I think it's likely enough that I'm prepared, or a lot of other people too, are prepared to look.

Presenter7:50

Tell me about record number two.

Professor Baruch Blumberg7:54

California Dreaming by the mammas and the papas. I lived in well, initially in New York and then for the last thirty five years or so in Pennsylvania. But I've spent a lot of time in California and I've always enjoyed it there. And it's in California that I've been working for uh NASA.

Speaker 28:12

I don't believe

Speaker 28:15

And every day we play every day

Speaker 28:19

You never preach it like the cold

Speaker 28:24

He knows I'm gonna stay

Speaker 28:33

Yeah.

Presenter8:38

California dreaming, the mammas and the poppers. You're a New Yorker, Barry, born in Brooklyn in nineteen twenty five. You're a twenty fiver, which is apparently something to be, a child of the depression, huh?

Professor Baruch Blumberg8:50

Yes, and also a child of very positive and optimistic periods as well.

Presenter8:56

But what do you remember of the departure? You'd have been very tiny.

Professor Baruch Blumberg9:01

Certainly did. I mean, our economic s life, you know, changed as as a consequence of that and, uh

Presenter9:08

Your father was a solicitor. I suppose he had investments and they plummeted.

Professor Baruch Blumberg9:08

Fuck.

Professor Baruch Blumberg9:11

They decreased, uh you know, we we had a different lifestyle uh uh after my first five, six years of life.

Presenter9:20

How dramatic. I mean, what did you move to and from?

Professor Baruch Blumberg9:23

Well, we sort of had lesser and lesser accommodations for a while.

Presenter9:27

But I wonder what effect it had on you as a child. And I don't mean material effect. I did it leave you with a a fear of financial insecurity or?

Professor Baruch Blumberg9:37

I think my generation are kind of still parsimonious, you know. So I got the idea early on that I'd have to be prepared to work hard and uh to to get what I wanted to. On the other hand, I n I never had any great ambitions to make uh a great deal of money. I mean, I liked the idea of having it and being comfortable, but

Speaker 29:51

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg9:59

I wasn't uh driven by having a large amount.

Presenter10:02

But but the counterbalance to that kind of worried side of your existence would have been, as you implied earlier, I suspect, that kind of optimism of of this Jewish immigrant family. I think your your your grandparents came from Eastern Europe, didn't they think?

Speaker 210:13

Yeah.

Speaker 210:16

Yes.

Professor Baruch Blumberg10:16

Uh

Presenter10:16

That kind of view that they were going to there was so much on offer here, so many opportunities that they might never have otherwise had.

Professor Baruch Blumberg10:24

America was the golden land, you know, and it's proven to be that. That is, it is a place of opportunity.

Presenter10:32

But that that kind of optimism was in you, was it?

Professor Baruch Blumberg10:35

In me and I think in my generation as well.

Professor Baruch Blumberg10:38

Most uh well, all all my nineteen twenty fiverr friends. I have a club of nineteen twenty fivers. They were all in the military. Uh they were part of that enormous uh energy that people who lived through the w World War Two and after all was a successful venture.

Presenter10:56

Now you were obviously quite a a a serious young man, more more in the libraries than in the pool halls, I think you said. What did you read? What sparked you? What turned you on?

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:06

I used to get kind of fixed on things like Arctic exploration, then uh under sea uh uh adventures, you know, about submarines and so forth, and I'd do that for a while and then uh the high school, the school that I went to was uh very uh kind of literary and very intellectual.

Speaker 211:16

That

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:25

And uh you were constantly spurred on by your classmates who were reading everything. And you'd turn up at a some sort of an event and you'd say, Well, my God, you haven't read Proust yet

Presenter11:31

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:37

Uh

Presenter11:37

I gather that high school produced two other Nobel Prize winners as well as you. Must have been some school.

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:37

I guess that

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:41

Yes, three Nobel laureates from this one high school.

Presenter11:43

Nope.

Presenter11:45

And what were the other subjects of the

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:47

Yeah

Presenter11:49

Amazing. So there must have been a good physics teacher knocking around there somewhere.

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:52

Very good.

Presenter11:54

Tell me about record number three.

Professor Baruch Blumberg11:56

This next song is Willie Nelson singing uh City of New Orleans. Uh and uh, you know, back in the forties, fifties, uh people went places by train. And actually I've traveled on the City of New Orleans.

Speaker 212:10

Riding on the city of New Orleans

Speaker 212:16

Illinois Central Monday Morning Rail

Speaker 212:23

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders.

Speaker 212:29

Three conductors and twenty-five sacks on pave.

Speaker 212:35

All along the southbound hard sea

Presenter12:39

Willie Nelson singing City of New Orleans. And in the basement of your family house, Barry, when you were fourteen or fifteen, you had your own laboratory. Did you wear a white coat?

Professor Baruch Blumberg12:50

Uh, no, I don't think so. And I I shudder to think of the fire hazard uh that it was being down in the basement of a wooden house.

Presenter12:59

But I understood that you invented a new kind of refrigeration down there. Well, that's my impression anyway.

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:03

Well, there was a sort of student contest and I uh developed as a kind of demonstration uh something that was actually known about uh liquefied sulphur dioxide, pretty noxious stuff. And when it evaporates it's a coolant. And about that time uh refrigerators with that general design were being used as

Presenter13:24

Mm.

Presenter13:25

And you won a prize that was your first scientific prize.

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:27

It was my first scientific praise, I must say I'd forgotten it.

Presenter13:32

But it was it was in the end I mean, that was your chemistry, then the maths and physics you were interested in. In in the end you did a physics degree, didn't you, when you were in the Navy. So when did you decide to turn to medicine?

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:32

But they

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:38

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:43

I suppose it took me a while to realize it, but I did think I'd kind of do well in physics and math.

Presenter13:49

I didn't think you Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:50

Uh

Presenter13:50

Uh

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:50

Uh

Presenter13:50

Good enough.

Professor Baruch Blumberg13:50

That was part of it. I'd I had led a pretty uh I wouldn't say a social, but I'd sort of lived inside myself a good deal more. And then uh the time I spent in the Navy, you know, you you had to interact with a lot more people. Uh you you couldn't live inside yourself. You were living with uh you know uh other people, you know, uh weird uh

Speaker 214:08

So

Professor Baruch Blumberg14:13

A ship, you know, you had uh thir twenty, three people, you know, with crowded together in the same compartment. So I realized that it was kinda interesting dealing with people.

Presenter14:24

So you thought you'd do well in a hospital?

Professor Baruch Blumberg14:26

Well, I thought I'd I thought I'd do well in a in a science that you you have more exposure, that you're just more looking at log logarithms.

Presenter14:30

But if you're

Presenter14:33

But I I read stories of you, you know, a as a young doctor leaping out of the back of ambulances and sort of a bit like in a bee moving, you know, where's the body?

Professor Baruch Blumberg14:41

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg14:43

Yes, and particularly when working in a large city, as I did in New York City, and uh uh it's pretty dramatic. Uh are you familiar with the radio programmes on emergency ward and that well, hospitals are like that.

Presenter14:56

And you enjoyed that. You'd enjoyed the drama and as you'd say the human interaction.

Professor Baruch Blumberg14:58

But then also you felt you were doing something, you know, you were kinda you were kind of part of life. You weren't watching it, you were you were there. And of course the doctor patient relation is a very kind of g good one.

Presenter15:10

But then nevertheless, spool on a few more years and get you to the age of, what, thirty, and you take this major decision not to be the physician, but to be the teacher, i. e. the the researcher, to go into research science. Now why did you decide to do that?

Professor Baruch Blumberg15:25

I'd always had a sort of

Professor Baruch Blumberg15:27

understanding with myself, I would do research. And I thought I might get bored, you know, if I continued with clinical work. Um it's um mind you, it's not boring doing that, but I thought I'd find research more exciting.

Presenter15:40

But it's also a one-to-one thing, whereas what you really were after was the bigger picture, was it?

Presenter15:45

the wider application, as it were, what you could subscribe.

Professor Baruch Blumberg15:46

I see.

Professor Baruch Blumberg15:49

And yes, it was, and uh that's what happened too.

Presenter15:54

Yeah. I got number 4.

Professor Baruch Blumberg15:55

So number four is uh take the A trade. That um at least in my understanding was the number of the underground that I used to take to go to medical school.

Speaker 216:42

Uh

Presenter17:06

Take the A Train, that's Duke Ellington and his famous orchestra. That was recorded in 1941. What's interesting, Barry Blumberg, as one traces your professional path, is that there is this very firm, very direct line really in many ways to your Nobel Prize winning work. First of all, this fascination in boyhood for exploration and adventure, which came together in your twenties with the interest in medicine. But then that took you to the tropics in South America, where you, in fact, learned a very important lesson in basic science, didn't you? First of all, where were you?

Professor Baruch Blumberg17:40

At a aluminum mining town deep in the rainforest in Suriname, South America.

Presenter17:47

And what was it like? I mean, swampy.

Professor Baruch Blumberg17:51

It was uh swampy, heavily forested, we were remote from any other place, so all coming to going was by river boat.

Presenter17:59

But the people were very special, weren't they?

Professor Baruch Blumberg18:01

People are very heterogeneous. The history of Suriname had been that there was a indigenous American Indian population. Several tribes lived there. Europeans came there. And they over time brought slaves from Africa, migrants from what's now Indonesia, a few Chinese and then a relatively small European population.

Presenter18:27

So quite an exotic little cluster of people who lived a long way away from anybody else, as it were. Perfect for medical research.

Professor Baruch Blumberg18:29

Australia.

Professor Baruch Blumberg18:30

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg18:33

Yes, and in this town those populations were living uh very often under very similar environmental conditions.

Presenter18:40

And so the important lesson in basic science that you immediately were able to learn there was the one of diversity, that different people react differently to the same infections.

Professor Baruch Blumberg18:51

That was a striking feature of what we of our research. We were looking at infection with uh an organism that causes elephantiasis.

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:03

And we found a very big difference in the way that different populations responded uh to exposure to this.

Presenter19:09

Elephantiasis being this sort of huge massive swelling of the limbs and the

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:14

Yes, these nematodes uh get into the lymph system.

Presenter19:18

Worms

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:19

worms and they uh clog it up essentially and as a consequence you can get enlargement of legs and uh genitals.

Presenter19:20

Yeah.

Presenter19:25

A gem

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:27

But a lot of people were carriers of the silver.

Presenter19:29

Carriers, but they didn't develop it.

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:32

until later in life, or some might develop and some not.

Presenter19:36

Hmm.

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:37

Again, a very interesting observation. You know, why did some get sick and others not, even though they were all infected?

Presenter19:41

Yeah

Presenter19:44

And the other important thing, as I understand it, about doing that kind of work in such a place is that you do get these extremes. Nature is very bold and very dramatic in that kind of extreme climate, isn't she?

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:53

Dramatic

Professor Baruch Blumberg19:56

One of the exciting things about the tropics when you're looking at biology or human responses to it is its enormous variation and the differences in the way that people respond.

Speaker 220:02

Uh

Presenter20:02

Is

Presenter20:09

Echo number five.

Professor Baruch Blumberg20:11

Number five is the opening of Elgar's Enigma variations and it reminds me of the many years I spent in Britain and particularly in uh Oxford.

Presenter21:17

That was the opening of Elgar's Enigma variations, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, and memories of your time at Balliol, which I want to talk about later. But it was when you were.

Presenter21:27

in the States, I think later at the Fox Chase Cancer Institute, that you researched in the sixties into something that you then called the Australia antigen, which turned out, of course, to be the hepatitis B virus.

Professor Baruch Blumberg21:40

The research started off as a basic scientific investigation of inherited variation in the serum proteins, proteins being one of the major constituents in the blood.

Professor Baruch Blumberg21:53

One of the techniques we used was to use the blood of a patient who'd received many transfusions on the notion that if they developed an antibody against a protein that was present in one of the donors but they didn't have, then we could identify some of this inherited variation.

Presenter22:14

So you'd take a haemophilia course, someone who'd had lots and lots of blood transfusions over lots of years and was likely to have all of these.

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:17

Yeah.

Presenter22:20

Unusual serum.

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:20

Are you sorry?

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:21

We found another antibody, different from the initial one that we had studied.

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:28

That was a reaction of a transfused patient against a hepatitis B virus that was present in the blood of the donor.

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:38

Now that doder

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:40

Was infected with hepatitis B virus, had quite a lot of it in his or her blood.

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:46

But had no symptoms.

Presenter22:48

So you didn't know they had it. They'd given blood. This had been given to the haemophiliac.

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:48

So

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:51

Ready?

Professor Baruch Blumberg22:52

Exactly. That identified the hepatitis virus again because of this variation between people.

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:00

One person, the carrier, when he was he or she was infected, became a carrier of the virus.

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:07

The patient, when infected, developed antibody against it. They had totally different reactions, based probably on some inherited and acquired and environmental factors that they'd been exposed to.

Presenter23:20

So where does Australia come in?

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:23

The Cerab that one of the Serb that we initially founded in was from an Australian.

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:29

And we gave it a geographic name.

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:32

Yeah.

Presenter23:32

How long did it take you between ha getting that reaction from the Australian, from an Aborigine, in fact, I think it was, wasn't it?

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:38

Yeah.

Presenter23:40

and realizing that this in fact was this killer virus.

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:44

I'd say about two years, let's say, or three years. Let's say about three years.

Presenter23:48

And of course, it's hugely contagious, the hepatitis B virus, and it's true, isn't it, that someone in your laboratory actually went down with hepatitis B during the course of that research.

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:56

Yes.

Professor Baruch Blumberg23:57

And before we realized it was hepatitis, fortunately she recovered fully.

Presenter24:01

Yeah.

Presenter24:02

But i in exactly the same way that, of course, people in renal units were going down with it as well. I mean, because we just didn't know, did we, how virulent this thing was.

Professor Baruch Blumberg24:03

The

Professor Baruch Blumberg24:13

And after we'd uh identified the virus using this rather crude technique, it took a relatively short time for it to be to go into common clinical use.

Presenter24:20

Britain

Presenter24:23

And very quickly, I think, blood for transfusion was screened because it was so quickly realized that your hypothesis was correct. I mean, it would have been immoral not to get it through and on at work, wouldn't it?

Professor Baruch Blumberg24:29

It was currently a very good thing.

Professor Baruch Blumberg24:34

The people who worked in this field, my colleagues in Blood Transfusion and others, took a a big interest in this issue and moved it forward, I think, faster than I would have expected.

Professor Baruch Blumberg24:48

Record number six.

Professor Baruch Blumberg24:49

Okay, uh number six is uh something of a departure. It's uh when Johnny Comes Marching Home, which is a Civil War song. My wife's great grandfather was a sergeant in the Union Army and uh for for the last thirty years or so we've had a farm along with some uh partners in western Maryland, which is on the site of one of the major battles, the Battle of Antietam.

Speaker 225:55

See

Presenter26:09

And Johnny comes marching home with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the great Mormon Tabernacle Choir conducted by Eugene Ormondy.

Presenter26:16

Your hepatitis B vaccine, as we've mentioned, has turned out to be an anti-cancer vaccine because it prevents the development of primary liver cancer. That's the big message, you say. Are there, to your knowledge, more anti-cancer vaccines in the pipeline?

Professor Baruch Blumberg26:33

There's one very exciting development, and that's with the possibility of preventing cancer of the cervix by developing a vaccine against certain strains of papillomavirus.

Presenter26:44

So it's the same principle as yours. It's actually inventing something that attacks the virus which causes the cancer.

Professor Baruch Blumberg26:51

And the virus also causes other diseases. So the there's an advantage to uh having a vaccination because it can prevent this uh quite common uh uh venereal infection.

Presenter27:04

So you would see young girls rather th as they're injected against the development of rubella being injected, what, age ten, against the development of this human papillomavirus?

Professor Baruch Blumberg27:07

Yes.

Professor Baruch Blumberg27:13

Well my guess is they haven't decided on the optimal period of vaccination, but they are going through with major trials now. The initial studies indicate that it is protective, that it prevents the infection.

Professor Baruch Blumberg27:28

And in time it'll be possible to find out if it prevents the cancer. But you can't extrapolate that if you prevent the infection you could eat you could prevent uh much of the cancer in the serving.

Presenter27:39

Quite because you know that the cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus.

Professor Baruch Blumberg27:43

Yes, it has a major role in it. There'll be other factors as well, but this should have a major impact.

Presenter27:47

So do you think then it is possible that every form of cancer in the various different parts of our body has a different cause? Because that's what we seem to be suggesting here. If hepatitis B causes liver cancer, if the human papillomavirus causes cervical cancer, is that what scientists are now looking for?

Professor Baruch Blumberg27:47

Uh

Professor Baruch Blumberg28:06

If you have a virus or consumably a bacteria causing a cancer and you can we know how to make vaccines, they don't always work obviously, but we know how to do that. So that's a very clear direct direction one can take. And I think if this papilloma virus work proceeds, that's going to spur more interest in looking for other infectious agents that cause cancer. And we already know of others.

Presenter28:34

And what uh sorry, which p which other cancers do we know?

Professor Baruch Blumberg28:37

Well some of the uh there's probably a kind of leukemia, human T cell leukemia, uh which is uh fairly common in uh some parts of the world, uh not so common here, and uh that's due to a known virus. Uh and there's several others.

Presenter28:51

Hmm.

Presenter28:54

Reichle number seven.

Professor Baruch Blumberg28:56

So number seven the pipes piece, Fleurs of the Forest, reminds me of a funeral that we had for one of my students at Balleyeli. As you said earlier, that was one of the happy periods of our life, but

Speaker 229:09

This is what they have.

Professor Baruch Blumberg29:12

There's uh sadness with all uh happiness, and uh this young man died and uh

Speaker 229:12

There's a

Professor Baruch Blumberg29:18

They played the pipes at his funeral.

Presenter29:51

The Highland Pipes playing Flowers of the Forest and Memories of Your Time as Master of Balliol in the early nineties. I am interested that you do describe it as the perhaps the happiest time of your life. I wonder why that was.

Professor Baruch Blumberg30:02

IFO

Professor Baruch Blumberg30:04

It was very exciting. I uh lived f three minutes by bicycle from where I worked. The college provided us with a very nice, uh, comfortable house right in the middle of Oxford, uh, you know, so you could get anywhere by bicycle in fifteen minutes I had to go to.

Professor Baruch Blumberg30:22

So it was

Presenter30:22

So it was it was sort of friendly, it was cosy, it was warm.

Professor Baruch Blumberg30:27

Yes.

Presenter30:27

In a way that as I read about you you you know, life has not been for you since you were a boy, and you say that in fact as a boy in Brooklyn there was something of that cosiness. It's obviously what you like, isn't it?

Professor Baruch Blumberg30:40

Yeah, I one enjoys that. But and of course the you know, it's it's great working with students. And we the students at Balliol were just a joy to be with and uh the fellows were an interesting bunch.

Presenter30:52

But in the end you had to go because you were overage.

Professor Baruch Blumberg30:55

There's compulsory retirement in uh in Britain for academics. Uh and actually they were able to extend it a little bit more.

Presenter31:03

I was going to say yes, you you got extended a couple of years, I think.

Professor Baruch Blumberg31:05

Thank you.

Presenter31:06

Yeah.

Presenter31:07

Anyway, I don't know how cosy and friendly you're going to find this desert island, but um you'll be living possibly in extremes of temperature. Brilliant. Um but you're good at roughing it, are you?

Presenter31:17

I

Professor Baruch Blumberg31:17

Yeah, I've been pretty good. I, you know, uh done a lot of backpacking to, you know, carrying all the stuff on your back.

Presenter31:23

Hmm, hmm. You can cope with all of that and uh um I mean I suppose you'd learn adaptation'cause it's what survival's all about.

Professor Baruch Blumberg31:31

It is. I mean, just living requires that. On a desert island or not.

Presenter31:39

Last record.

Professor Baruch Blumberg31:39

Well, the last one is the opening aria of the Mach's Goldberg variations.

Professor Baruch Blumberg31:48

I like Bach uh a lot. It uh in funny ways it reminds me of Dixieland as well. It's it's well, you you have this kind of ordered

Speaker 231:53

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg31:56

Presentation of the music. You can be analytical about Box uh Bach's music. And as uh scientists, you know, they they're uh the way we do things is to be analytical. Take a big problem, breaking it down into little ones, study the little ones. Tough part is putting it back together again.

Presenter33:10

The opening aria of Bach's Goldberg variations played by Charles Rosen. Now, Barry, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:19

I think I'd take the city of New Orleans. It's it's it's a trip, isn't it? You know, it's a voyage of travel.

Presenter33:27

What about your book? We give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of charity.

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:30

I thought I'd take Ulysses, uh James Joyce.

Presenter33:30

Yeah.

Presenter33:35

And what about your luxury?

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:37

I would request a flat water kayak, but suitable for some fairly rough water with a skirt and so forth.

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:45

So that I could explore.

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:47

Uh

Presenter33:47

All right, but you're not going to escape in it, are you?

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:47

Yeah.

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:49

You probably

Presenter33:49

You promise this?

Professor Baruch Blumberg33:50

I'll be happy there.

Presenter33:52

Professor Baruch Blumberg, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Presenter33:57

Thank you.

Speaker 334:04

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.