Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

  • Kary Mullis
Pantheon: 1998. 222pp. $24
Mullis: as a Nobel laureate “no door in the world will fail to open for you at least once”. Credit: AP

In addition to scientific immortality and a wad of cash, the Nobel Prize provides an irrevocable licence to pontificate publicly on any topic, relevant or not to the recipient's expertise. Winners at other great competitions, for example, the Academy Awards and the Miss America contest, may assume an unrestricted right to mount the soap box and pronounce on issues of the day. But, for drawing a respectful, guaranteed audience, no honour can match the Nobel Prize. And no Nobel laureate comes close to Kary Mullis in the exercise of the accompanying pontifical rights.

Mullis earned a place in scientific history in 1983 as the inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which quickly became the indispensable laboratory technique for genetics research. For this achievement, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Beyond that distinction, Mullis stands out for a number of reasons, including behaviour that oscillates between merely eccentric and obnoxious, and utterances that, when not loony, are reminiscent of the child who exclaimed on the emperor's state of undress. He also has an unrestrained penchant for faecal and copulatory terms.

Without the Nobel Prize, proclaimed on a book jacket that pictures Mullis shirtless with surfboard, it is doubtful whether this bizarre pottage would ever have found a publisher. But here it is, an easy weekend read that includes charming recollections of his childhood tinkerings with chemistry, hair-raising accounts of trips on LSD and other drugs, disbelief in HIV as the cause of AIDS, and denunciations of those who do not share his respect for astrology. (“There's no proven body of facts in the social sciences”, he asserts, “that says human behavior does not contain elements that are related to planetary positions at the time of birth.”)

Along the way, Mullis also provides pithy insights into the workings of modern science, observing, for instance: “Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research.” And: “When the National Institutes of Health makes an announcement through one of its many spokespeople, who checks out the credibility of that statement? Checks and balances are hard to come by in a scientific establishment that is supported from outside by a populace unskilled in the scientific arts.”

Mullis recounts the well-known tale of how the PCR breakthrough occurred to him during a long, night-time drive to his northern California cabin, a girlfriend at his side — one of many girlfriends sprinkled throughout his book, along with the three wives who preceded his current spouse.

Mullis acknowledges the Nobel Prize's power to suspend critical judgement in otherwise sensible people he encounters. “Once you have been given that accolade,” he notes, “no door in the world will fail to open for you at least once. It is a free pass for the rest of your life” — even in the case of Mullis, self-described as “a loose cannon on the deck”.

His recognition of the “at least once” limitation on doors opening for Nobel laureates is based on experience. Several years ago, Mullis was invited to lecture on PCR to the European Society for Clinical Investigation. According to an indignant report by the outraged president of that organization, Mullis's “only slides (or what he called his art) were photographs he had taken of naked women with colored lights projected upon their bodies”. The president added that, in remarks to the audience, Mullis “accused science of being universally corrupt with widespread falsification of data to obtain grants”. In a published warning to colleagues, the president declared that his society “will not be inviting Dr Mullis to further meetings”.

For those who might be similarly offended by his words and slides, Mullis later announced that for a minimum of $500 he would refrain from lecturing at any institution. He explains that he derived the concept of payment for not appearing from his experience with the Glaxo pharmaceutical company, which had acquired Burroughs Wellcome, the manufacturer of AZT. Glaxo, he writes, had offered him a $1,500 speaking fee in 1993. When he responded that it was not enough, Mullis reports, Glaxo accepted his demand for $3,000 and two first-class air fares. Glaxo then cancelled the invitation, he writes, when it learned that “I would speak about the fact that there is no scientific evidence that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS and that I believed people taking the drug AZT were being poisoned.” Whereupon, Mullis continues, he demanded $6,048 to compensate for loss of “income from other potential engagements” that he had coupled to the lecture trip. Glaxo promptly paid that amount, he reports, providing the inspiration for a Mullis programme entitled “Have Slides, Will Stay Home. Yes⃛ But You Must Act Now⃛ Special Offer”.

Abandoning research, Mullis now writes, consults and lectures about science. The immense wealth generated by PCR eluded him. The Cetus Corporation, where he worked when he invented the PCR technique, paid him only $10,000 for the patent, which it later sold to Hoffmann-La Roche for $300 million. Neither firm has ever sent him a birthday card, he complains, adding, with characteristic Mullis bravado: “Screw Cetus and the Swiss”.

What might have happened if Mullis had captured the riches of PCR? Would he today be dispensing scores of philanthropic millions through the Kary Mullis Foundation? Who would get the money, and for what? Interesting to contemplate; or maybe horrible.