Ahead of the Curve: David Baltimore's Life in Science

  • Shane Crotty
University of California Press: 2001. 372 pp. $29.95, £19.95
Credit: DAVID NEWTON

Many of his peers regard David Baltimore as the most important living figure in biology. His co-discovery in 1970 of the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which makes DNA from an RNA template, opened the way for, among other things, recombinant DNA, the modern understanding of cancer and most of what is known about HIV. All too often, a scientist's significant research ends with such a seminal Nobel prizewinning discovery. But not only has Baltimore's productivity continued unabated, his work has left “a lasting impact on virtually every realm of modern biology”, according to one colleague. His distinctive teaching style — a combination of frightening confrontation and passionate loyalty — has attracted and trained a large and elite corps of scientists who are now leaders in many areas.

And Baltimore's achievements extend beyond the research bench. He has served as president of two of the world's leading research universities: Rockefeller University, from which he was forced to resign, and the California Institute of Technology, where he now presides. He started and effectively ran the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the most productive and innovative models for public–private research cooperation. He was involved in most of the prominent science-policy issues of the past 30 years, including the US government's declaration of a 'war' on cancer, the initial perceived dangers of genetic engineering, the response to the AIDS epidemic and, of course, the most famous and protracted allegation of scientific fraud ever — the Imanishi-Kari affair or, as it is often called, 'the Baltimore case', in which the researcher Thereza Imanishi-Kari was accused of falsifying data for a paper co-authored with Baltimore and published in Cell in 1986.

Because of that case, or perhaps because some people use it as an excuse for other agendas, Baltimore — to put it mildly — faces detractors every bit as fervent as his supporters. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and the embodiment of biology for the US public, actually campaigned to have Baltimore's Nobel prize rescinded and to have him expelled from the National Academy of Sciences. Others who were once considered Baltimore's close friends have behaved with only slightly less rancour.

Reading Shane Crotty's excellent book, we do not necessarily understand such horrid behaviour but we come to appreciate the context. Baltimore embodies molecular biology over the past 35 years, during which it evolved rapidly from an observational science to the Messiah of medicine, capable of delivering us from deadly degenerative diseases. It has become a magnet for so much money that even those marginally involved, not to mention the leaders, routinely make sizeable fortunes. This makes it fertile ground for monumental egos, and, much to the dismay of many of his contemporaries, Baltimore's powerful intellect and supreme, often abrasive self-confidence remained intact during the most trying times.

“Brilliant, eloquent and personable, Baltimore is a man whom even his closer friends refer to as arrogant and ruthless,” Crotty, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, tells us early on. Unfortunately, we get little sense of the origins of Baltimore's personality. This is not a psychological biography. We learn that Baltimore adored his mother, but she, along with his father, is not even named in the book. The mother pushed David into biology by suggesting a high-school summer programme at the Jackson Laboratories in Bar Harbor, Maine. Throughout his training, Baltimore seldom attached himself to one mentor for long, possessing a keen appreciation of those who could teach him something and great disdain for those who could not. From his earliest days as a graduate student he was “a pain in the ass”, one teacher recalls.

But the reader will find few personal anecdotes here. At one point Crotty quotes Baltimore about his time as a graduate student at Rockefeller University: “I'd go to the movies occasionally, had some love affairs and things, but — I did an awful lot of lab work. Loved it!” That's as juicy as it gets. Baltimore's first marriage and divorce, and his subsequent marriage to the prominent virologist Alice Huang, merit only a few lines. Because of this lack of personal detail, the reader gets little insight into Baltimore's emotions during the many vicissitudes of his career.

What the book does offer is fine science writing. From Baltimore's first experiments with mouse genetics during his high-school summer to recent efforts to accelerate the development of an effective AIDS vaccine, Crotty describes clearly the underpinnings of each stage of Baltimore's career in language accessible to the educated layman, but not condescending to the practising scientist. As a result, we understand not only the research, but also the policy issues and personality conflicts it generated. By the time we are told about Baltimore's discovery of reverse transcriptase, we can thoroughly grasp its importance and the reason for the excitement. When Crotty details the experiences in Stanford biologist Paul Berg's lab with the animal tumour virus SV40, it is easy to understand the initial terror Baltimore, Berg and others felt at the prospect of recombinant DNA experiments.

Crotty's retelling of the Imanishi-Kari affair also benefits from this clear detailing of the science. With the precisely focused lens of hindsight, and in enormous detail, Daniel Kelves' book The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character (Norton, 1998) demonstrated the great injustice done to Imanishi-Kari and Baltimore. Crotty tells a more human story. The facts were not so clear at the time, and in the fog of misinformation Baltimore changed his own story more than once. This infuriated many who thought he went too far in attacking his critics, especially John Dingell, the bombastic Detroit congressman who chaired the congressional committee investigating the case. Although science itself was never on trial, as Baltimore and others alleged, Baltimore's ultimate exoneration was critically important for science because it restored one of its greatest practitioners to his deserved status. Crotty's book brilliantly illuminates this pillar of molecular biology, and should be read by anyone, whether scientist or not, who cares about the modern research enterprise and the politics that drive it.