Science and Sustainability: A Conversation with Nobel Prize Winner, Dr. Peter C. Doherty

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Yeah, pretty much. She haddone deeming drill people, she'd be telling
lies. So today it is mypleasure to interview doctor Peter Doherty, the
nineteen ninety six Nobel Prize winner inmedicine. So doctor Dorry, thank for
being a part of this episode.So, you know, in view of

(00:24):
such a eccectical career to story,you taking us back and telling us about
your background. My background is prettypretty unusual for a Nobel Prize winner.
I went through public schools. Igrew up in a sort of working class,

(00:45):
low middle class neighborhood, went throughpublic schools, then to the University
of Queensland in Australia. I'm I'mfrom Brisbane, Australia, where I studied
veterinary science, and I like theAmerican strategy for professions like medicine and vetery

(01:07):
medicine. We went into that straightout of high school. So I started
on that when I was seventeen yearsold and I graduated when I was twenty
two. And then I got intoveterinary research, but did a lot of
work on diseases of sheep and pigsand so forth. But a number of
years into that I decided I neededto learn more about immunology. So I

(01:32):
went to a basic medical research instituteto do some research there, and there
we made a big discovery that ledto the Nobel Prize twenty two years later,
and I switched for from being aveterary researcher studying diseases in domestic animals
to a medical researcher studying diseases inmice. So I became an MD,

(01:55):
a mouse doctor, and that transformedmy situation from being a total unknown to
being This big discovery made us prettywell known in the imnology field very quickly,
and I've spent the rest of myresearch career as a medical researcher basically

(02:16):
using lab mice rather than clinicing clinicalsubjects. But some of my young colleagues
have switched very much into human imminologyand I've been doing great stuff there.
So the Nobel Prize came twenty twoyears after that basic discovery. I see,

(02:37):
so, man, I know you'reyou're I know you work in the
immusis the few now. So myquestion was, like I saw a bile,
I was I was curious, likewhy you chose to become like a
vet instead like a scientist? Likewas it because you like my animals,
or why did I choose to bea vet Like many men and women in

(03:00):
my generation in Australia, less soin the United States. I think I
was the first generation to go toa university. I was very naive.
I was interested in the disease andgot interested in that, and I also
read a lot at high school.And I was also continuing considering an alternative

(03:24):
career as a journalist, which wouldhave been a very different life. But
I wanted to do something practical anduseful. I didn't want to be a
medical doctor because my only experienced medicaldoctors is they sat around in suburban offices
listening to people complain about their health, and I thought that would be very

(03:46):
boring. And I did want todo research because I had an older cousin
who was doing research on insect bornviruses, a medical scientist, and so
I decided. Then there was alot of talk about we'd have problems in

(04:06):
feeding the world. It was thetime of the Green Revolution, so I
thought i'd work on diseases of foodproducing animals. Now, of course,
with our consciousness changed very much aboutclimate change and so forth, I probably
would have studied plants rather than animals. But that's the way I went and

(04:28):
that led to a very unexpected outcome. I'm the only person with a vet
Rey qualification to a one Nobel prize. That's interesting. So I know,
during a time before it became signedas you were like a bet officer.
So what do you work on duringyour time as a VAT officer. Initially

(04:48):
I was working for the state governmentof Queensland on Australia. This was an
arrangement whereby to get young professional intothe remote rural areas of Australia. They
subsidized the courses for students, justas the for instance, the US military

(05:11):
does in the United States, andthey paid for my veterinary training and gave
me a stipend and then they couldhave sent me to anywhere in the rural
Queensland. I went to a towncalled Twomba for a while, which is
quite a big town. But thenthey got me back into the laboratory because
they had some funding to do aresearch project and the person who was supposed

(05:35):
to do it left, so thatset me on my research career. Initially,
I started a bacterial disease of cattlecalled Leptis borosis and wrote a masters
on that. Then I applied fora job. As I came to the
end of that contract, I appliedfor a job at a research institute in

(05:56):
Scotland, Edinburgh called the Mordun SearchInstitute, to be a veterinary neuropathologist both
and do research and to diagnostic workin that area. And much to my
surprise, I got that job.I was the only applicant and we set
off to Britain and I did myPhD while working actually for the British government

(06:20):
and doing research on a virus encephalitisof sheep called laopingle encephalitis. I see,
So do you work with other animals? I mean, I know Americans.
Do you work with like kangaroos,koalas or no? No, no
wildlife research here there is some workdone on I'm interested in infection and immunity.

(06:46):
There is some work done on infectiousdisease in wildlife, partly to protect
them, partly to make sure thatif we're got any viruses coming into Australia,
for instance, they won't infect ourword wildlife. But I very that
people don't do normally experimental work withwildlife. It's all to do with trying

(07:09):
to protect and preserve our unique Australianwildlife. No, I worked with lab
animals, which is of course howa lot of medical research is done,
and less so now we do alot more directly in people because the technology
is so much better. The technologicalapproaches we use in research have been totally

(07:31):
transformed since I started, and thenature of science is totally transformed, as
is the nature of communication anything else. So let's start moving to your I
guess the major focus so well thatinterested no researching immune systems. The immune

(07:56):
system is an enormously complex as vertebratesa human as of course we're higher vertebrates.
As human beings, we use twovery complex systems to adjust our interaction
with our external environment. The mostobvious, of course, is the central

(08:16):
nervous system, which is what we'reusing now, and we have consciousness,
vision and sensation, all those thingsthat go through the central nervous system.
But the other great complex system thatdeals with very challenges to us is the
immune system, the challenge of differentinfections, viruses, bacteria, parasites,

(08:41):
and it is also extraordinarily complex.Now, I'd been studying neuropathology and I've
been looking at immune responses and infectionsto do with the brain. So I'd
been combining both areas and it's alwaysfascinated me this comparison between the central nervous
system and the immune system. Ofcourse, with the nervous system, you

(09:03):
have a central processing unit the brain, which everything relates back to in one
sense or other. But with theimmune system, you don't have a central
processing unit, and it's not interconnectedand hardwired the way the nervous system is.
We're hardwired by the nerves. Theimmune system is a fluid system.

(09:24):
It works on cell expansion and multiplication, selection and cells moving around the body
and disseminating. So in some waysit's much more difficult to analyze than the
nervous system because we never know howbig it is, for instance, because
we don't know what cells are outthere in the tissues in our body,
organs and so forth. And wedo know how big the brain is.

(09:48):
You can post mortem, you cantake it out and weigh it. It's
not very difficult. So you know, I think, no, we just
passed whole COVID wave scheme in thetwenty twenties, the stuff, So can
you give everyone of like the simpleexplaniche of how our bodies in use cells
protect against like covid and also symblerviruses when we're challenged by a new infection.

(10:18):
Now with covid, what we're talkingabout is a respiratory infection. It
comes in via the respiratory tract andit multiplies in cells well, in epithelial
cells, firstly in the upper respiratorytract, in the nose and those are
pharynx, and then it gets downinto the lung. Also, unlike other
great that it causes a pneumonia,But unlike the other great pneumonia we worry

(10:41):
about a lot influenza. Influenza whenit gets in, gets in the same
way multiplies in the lung, butit doesn't go out of the lung to
disseminate around the body and the blood. Covid does. So Covid is both
a respiratory infection and what we calla systemic infection. The virus gets into

(11:03):
the blood, and because the bloodis the super highway of the body,
it can go to any organ andpotentially get into that organ. And also
covid causes blood clotting, which isa particular problem with this disease, which
we don't see in the same waywe say influenza. Now, when the
virus comes in, it starts getsinto cells. All viruses are what we

(11:24):
call obligate intracellular parasites. They haveto get into our cells to modiply,
and to some extent they take overour cellular machinery to reproduce them cells.
So it starts to multiply. Someof the virus then drains into what we
call the lymphoid system. If wetake in the nose and throat, that

(11:50):
would be the tonsils and the civicallymph nodes the glands in the neck.
If we're talking about a vaccine thatwe inject in the arm, for instance,
the material goes to the regional lymphnodes. It gets into what's called
the lymphoid flow, which is awe have two circulations in the body.
The blood areterial to tissue to theveins that we're familiar with, and that's

(12:18):
pumped around the body by the heart. But the other system we have that's
a circulation in a sense, iswhat's called the lymphatic system, and this
is the drainage system from the tissue. So, whether it's a virus up
in the throat, or it's avaccine in the arm, it drains to
what we call the regional lymph nodes, and these are organized tissues where the

(12:41):
virus or bits of the virus arebrought into contact with the immune cells that
are circulating around the body. Andsome of those immune cells will have receptors,
I mean the globular molecules in caseof the antibody response T cell receptors
in the case of the T cells, which are specific for that particular virus.

(13:01):
I've never seen it before. They'vejust been generated randomly, but they
just happen to have that pattern recognition. And once that pattern recognition occurs,
what happens in the lymph nodes likethe glands of our arm or the glands
in our throat, is that cellsstart to multiply the ones that are very
specific modifly they differentiate, and theywill differentiate to make antibodies which is secreted

(13:28):
into the drug which can block theinfection, or to make T cells which
help that response, or if there'sanother category of these T cells which will
kill off the virus infected cells.That has to be part of our immune
response because the cells that are sayinfected with the covid virus are acting as
factories producing new virus, and thecell mediated system bumps them off. That's

(13:54):
my area of particular expertise. Sothat's how the immune system works. When
we get a sense a through thenervous system, it comes in through our
sensory apparatus and it sends signals alongvarious pathways to the brain. The brain
integrates that sends other signals out,and we respond the immune system and the
virus itself gets into the body.It changes cells and is recognized as foreign

(14:20):
by the immune system because we've neverseen it before, and sells multiply and
divide, and then they circulate itin the blood. They go to various
places and they do various jobs,so they're very different in the way they
work. But an immune response,the specific immune response, which is what
I've been talking about, we calladaptive immunity, takes about seven to ten

(14:41):
days to get underway, and ahealthy young person that's when you'll start to
see, say the covid virus beingeliminated as the immune response cuts in and
it also sets up what we callimmunological memory. Now, with some viruses,
immunological memory means we won't get theinfection again, poliovirus is one,

(15:03):
but with COVID, unfortunately, thevirus has a capacity to change very very
fast, and it keeps reinfecting overprevious immune responses. Some of that immune
response remains rarely intact, the Tcell side of it does, but the
antibody aside keeps changing. So COVIDhas get presentatives with totally unique challenge for

(15:26):
a human pathogen. We've never reallydealt with anything quite like this before.
HIV, the AIDS virus is anothervirus that keeps changing, but it's a
different story because it integrates back intothe genome. The COVID virus doesn't.
It's just changing all the time.And of course with COVID, this was
a completely new infection for humans.So what we've had is in essense sense,

(15:52):
what we call a virgin soil pandemic, with this virus selecting for change
in human poper populations right across theplanet, and then of course with modern
air travel, we've got a verygood way of getting those viruses across the
planet very fast. So it's thefirst pandemic that of a totally new new

(16:15):
pathogen in the scientific modern era.If you like and as such we've learned
an enormous abount from it, butit's really challenged us and still does.
Yeah, so my next question isalso about COVID, but I think no
during COVID and also now there's peopleon the web and social media they say,
oh, if you've got COVID,No, you're going to have a

(16:37):
stronger immunity then to gain the codevaccines. So do you do? You
do you COVID? The COVID vaccinesthat have been used in the United States
all use gene technology to deliver onlyone bit of the virus to the immune
system. That is the spike protece, which is the is the protein that

(17:02):
binds to another protein on cell servicecorrell AISE two and allows the virus to
get into the cell. It's thereceptor. So it's a critical if you
can block that interaction with an antibody, which you can if the vaccine is
perfectly matched, then you will stopthat process happening. So unfortunately, though

(17:23):
this protein has an enormous this spikeprotein has an enormous capacity to change and
still be functional, which is veryunusual for viruses in fact, so basically
that that primes up the immune responsefor the antibody response, and some of
the T cell response. The Tcell response responds to little bits of the

(17:47):
protein, not necessarily the binding part, which are presented as peptides by our
transplant molecules. It's a very complicatedstory, but that's how the T cells
get focused onto cell service. Soyou've primed up part of the immune system
very specifically, but you haven't primedup a whole lot of other T cell
responses, which can be to internalcomponents of the virus that are never on

(18:12):
the surface of the cell but areactually presented peptides of them are presented.
So if we've had the infection,we've got primed up a lot of that
T cell response. But the problemwith the T cell response in preventing reinfection
is it's not immediately available. Ithas to be restimulated from what we call

(18:33):
iminological memory, so it'll take threeor four days to really get going.
So it won't stop us getting infected, but it can tend to make us
get better quicker. So people arestill advised, especially if they're vulnerable and
that means older or got some clinicalcondition or something. People are still advised

(18:56):
to get the latest vaccine. I'mthe latest vaccine. It's called the monovalent
of the moment that's in the UnitedStates. Is giving some protection against the
new strains. Not perfect, butI believe it is giving some protection.
But that's antibody protection, but youwill also have that T cell protection.
So it's very hard to know exactlybecause so many people have had COVID now,

(19:18):
it's very hard to know whether newstrains are more or less virulent,
for instance, because people are partiallyimmune and that probably is making the consequences
less severe in some senses. Thoughin some studies done in the United States,
it does seem that multiple reinfection increasesyour chance of getting that long COVID

(19:42):
problem, which can be very difficult. I see. So the next question
is asked for boy workers. Iknow you had that MHC. Is the
whys and walk of she so important? In the MHD or major Historic patibility

(20:03):
complex was originally started from the pointof view of tissigraph rejection. People started
to try to transplant tissues and theyfound they were rejected. And the studies
in mice and particularly and in humans, but in mice particularly where you can
do genetic breeding studies. You cando brother systematings, and you can isolate
various genes by classical genetics, notunlike the genetics that Mendel did with plants

(20:30):
our peas back in the nineteenth century. You can actually isolate bits. And
the transplant system is very well defined, both in humans but particularly in mice
where you have inbred lines of mice. Now, what we discovered and what
got us a Nobel prize, isthat what was called the strong transplantation anigens

(20:52):
the proteins on the cell surface thatare unique to you but are different from
mine. And there's a lot ofthese what's called very polymorphic, they're very
diverse. And so what we discoveredwas that these transplant molecules, these major
astic compatibility complex proteins in our calase, what we call the class one molecules,

(21:15):
the ones that are involved in graftrejection. Their real job is to
present little bits of foreign invaders tothe immune system to stimulate the T cell
response, make those cells divide andbecome the killers that then kill off modified
cells. So the actual graft rejectionreaction is similar to the rejection of virus

(21:37):
infected cells. Now that wasn't understood. It wasn't even suspected. Really,
it was a chance discovery on ourpart, but it kind of revolutionized about
half of our understanding of the adaptiveimmune system, and that's why we got
a Nobel price for it. Itwas what call. It actually overturned a

(22:00):
lot of previous thinking. So isso is that compact saus response for fighting
the many Chitas virus too, becauseI just stopped the vaccine for it.
Yeah, any infection will stimulate thatT cell response. It will simulate two
sorts of T cell response. Oneis the one that's involving the strong transplantation

(22:22):
eogens and another one is a responseinvolving what's called the class two molecules,
which are These are basically what wecall helper T cells. These are cells
that help promote the immune response,promote the antibody response. They're enormously important.
They obey the same basic principle.They present a little bit of the
virus or whatever it is to theimmune system, stimulates them. Then they

(22:47):
make all sorts of secreted products cytokinesee chemicins that actually promote immunity and also
can be involved in direct protective effects. Molecules like gamer Interferreon. So it
is a very very com complex system. I haven't even mentioned in ASI immunity,
which is an immediate response mechanism thatcuts in before this happens, there's
been at least uh well, there'sbeen one noble price for that fairly recently

(23:12):
for them. Mostly we're done infruitful actually because because a lot of the
mechanisms just grocery it similar. Somy next question is, I know I've
talked to me is scientists like Ithink back then they're not my time.
But back back then, you knowthere there's not make you working in the
field of immunology, and right nowI'm human scientists like a hot field or

(23:37):
a hot topic. So I meanI'm going to ask, so, what
are some ways to push, youknow, imnology to the to the right
direction where it starts getting more andmore funding. Yeah, I'm not I'm
not currently up on the immunology.I mean the funding of it works through
the way it works in the UnitedStates through National health is what's called study

(24:00):
sections. So you will have groupsof expertise reviewing grand applications. And I
think there are several in the immunologyarea. In my field, when I
was doing this sort of stuff workingin the United States at the New Children's
Research Hospital and earlier at the WestoneInstitute. I was involved with this from

(24:21):
the virology point of view, butwe would also look at immunology grants.
So that's the way the whole mechanismwork. Immunology is basically funded through the
National Institutes of Health. Other areasof science might be funded through National Science
Foundation or through an AH and thatof course you also have people like Darper

(24:42):
and so coming in and wanting amnologyimmunology expertise, or the military and so
forth. So there's a lot ofquestions out there in fact if you look.
But if you look now at thebig advances in therapeutics recently, a

(25:02):
lot of them are actually immunology products. You've got the monoclonal antibody therapies,
the immune checkpoint inhibitor drugs that areanything called a MAB, for instance,
is a monoclonal anybody if it's asillum on my mab or something. If
it's got a MAB at the end, it's a monoclonal anybody side from the
imunological side, And then of coursewe've also got what we're calling car T

(25:27):
cell therapy. These are these killertea cells that can recognize cancers, and
people are now making them in thelaboratory, individualized to a particular patient,
to a particular tumor. Obviously that'svery expensive, but it can be life
saving. So immunology at the momentis right at the front of a number

(25:48):
of applications in clinical medicine. Butpart of the problem is both the monoclonal
anybody therapies and the T cell therapiesare very, very expensive. It's putting
a lot of pressure on health systems. But on the other hand, it's
also bringing a lot of people backto productive life, So that's the positive.

(26:10):
But I think the whole healthcare environment, particularly in the United States,
is very very challenging at the moment. So I ran your bow. So
you made a major mistake of returnto the GCSMR. So I'm the first
of all like what were your intentionsgoing back to the GCSMR and why do
you consider it it's a mistake.Oh, I was well established at the

(26:33):
Westar Institute in Philadelphia. I wentback to the John Caton School too in
Canberra, which was a hard moneyfunded the organization, and I thought I
could sort of help get it movingforward and get more funding in and so
forth. And I wasn't able todo that, and that didn't work very
well basically, and so we endedup coming back to the United States.

(26:55):
It's a complicated story and it reallydoesn't have much general relevance to the American
situation particularly, but it didn't workout well. I'm still I support the
Australian National University where this is verystrongly. It's a great institution, and
we wanted a group of us triedto tried to set up a reform process

(27:18):
in place, which was strongly resistedby many of the people working there at
the time. The actual reforms werein fact enacted at about ten years later
and helped the place on, butfor the for my situations, I didn't
have sufficient power in the institution tobe able to do that, and so

(27:40):
it failed. And so I cameback and went to Injured Children's Hospital Research
Hospital and Memphis and spent fourteen verygood years there and i've been i still
continue as part of what's called theEmeritus Faculty. I'm still on that.
I've been going back with them forwardsthere for a very long time, wonderful
place. But American science it's incredible. I mean the health and vigor of

(28:04):
it, the dynamism, the andthe sheer intellectual strength of it. So
I know you have your own researchorganization called dorty is to So yeah,
it's not really it's not really mine, it's not really yours. You know,

(28:25):
I'm one of these terrible old whiteguys, famous old white guys,
but they named the institute after me. I have no control over it at
all. In fact, I amnow formally retired at age eighty three.
I did step down completely last year. I'm still ammy to write books,
but I'm not I'm not doing researchanymore. I think research, the research

(28:48):
funds need to go to younger peopleand bright young minds. And by young,
I mean people up to about sixtyfive. You know, young has
got a lot older. But I'mI've been very keen throughout my career to
promote the careers of young people,do help them build their own independent profile
and to emerge as strong and informedindividuals because we so much need scientific input

(29:17):
across society. The understanding of sciencein the general community is appalling. I
don't know what happens. Everyone studiesbiology at school, but many human beings
seem to understand almost nothing about theirown biology. Yeah, but I just
want to ask, can you telleveryone what you're the institute needed? After

(29:41):
years? It's called the Diary Institutebecause it's got my name on it.
I'm the patron, which means Iand through the COVID years, with the
acute COVID years from nineteen from twentytwenty to through twenty two, I spent
a lot all my time, infact six days a week doing public science

(30:02):
communication, trying to speak to thebroader public about COVID, trying to inform
them. I did a blog Iread one hundred and twenty blog pieces once
a week, and I wrote.I published a book on it in the
first year, called an Insider's playGear. So I had been doing a
lot of public science communication after theNobel Prize. Following the Nobel Prize,

(30:26):
though I was living in the UnitedStates at the time, I was made
the Australian of the Year, whichmeant I started. I came back to
Australia for the number of visits andwas talking to large public audiences, not
the sort of audience scientists usually talkto, but giving talks in town halls
and big lecture theaters to the generalpublic, which was a total re education

(30:51):
for me. Since then, I'vebeen involved as part of my job in
doing public science communication, not justaround infectious disease. I also put a
lot of time into finding out aboutclimate science, working with climate science,
talking with them, sharing committees,and so I've been trying to get people

(31:11):
aware of the issues around climate changebecause it is the major challenge apart from
Donald Trump, which is more acutechallenge that we're actually facing. So really,
I've been trying to get people tothink in terms of evidence and to
think in terms of what real,not in terms of opinion or in terms

(31:34):
of propaganda, but think of whatis actually real, because the real world
is, in the end analysis,what we confront. A lot of people
say reality is the political situation andthe economic situation, so that's undoubtedly true,
these are realities, but the ultimatereality is the reality of infectious disease,

(31:59):
of climate change, of physics andchemistry and biology. That's the ultimate
reality. And we have to confrontthat rationally and logically and act rationally,
and as we all know, itis extremely difficult to get human beings to
react rationally on mass That's true becausehumans react with a lot of times read

(32:23):
with emotions, well, they reactwith emotions, And of course I think
social media has really has really increasedthat tendency. Apart from allowing I mean,
social media and the Internet has beengreat for getting really good information out
there. I mean just going toWikipedia or being able to go into my

(32:47):
university library without actually going there anddoing your photocopy is fantastic. So you
can get information and material that wouldbe extraordinary to go to access, including
books that have long been out ofprint. I've written some semi historical stuff.
You can get these books because someonehas digitized them all, even though

(33:10):
it's almost impossible to find a copyso without going to one of the national
connected collections. So basically that's beengreat. But what it has also done,
of course is connected people with crazyconspiracy theories, connected people who are
basically nuts, and there are afair few of those, I think.

(33:30):
And it also though social media hasmuch more emphasized the emotional personal interaction.
I think of a lot of theuse of social media, people are staring
at screens, but they're not actuallydoing anything it's just gossip over the back
fence, and so you don't listento what the professional scientist is saying or

(33:52):
the doctor's saying. You listen toit's like getting all your information from the
person next to you in the supermarketqueue, which is so I think it's
also encouraged. I believe an incrediblespectrum of narcissistic behavior. So I don't

(34:12):
think of this as just the anthroposyor all the rest of I think of
it to some extent as a narcissisticyor something of that sort, because people
are very inward looking and looking atthemselves the selfie for instances everywhere. So
I know you wrote a book calledKnowledge Wars, So may I ask history
advice to give to you know,scientists sort of general public and how to

(34:36):
analyze research and tick ash based onit. I tried to do the knowledge
Was. I tried to do that. I don't know how available it is
in the United States. It wasavailable as an e book through Amazon and
the Knowledge Was it is available Ithink through my Australian publishers, Melbourne University
Publishing, which is that you canget an EE version of it. Basically,

(35:00):
it's trying to tell people very broadlyhow science works, how it came,
how modern science came about. Andit also goes through on how to
look at a scientific paper and whatit means, and how to if you're
trying to With open access science,anyone can access many of the science publications,
but I think it's very difficult forpeople who are not familiar with that

(35:22):
writing style and with the values toactually understand why it's written the way it
is and what it's about. Andso there are very good lay science type
filmats like Scientific American and so it'sreally great. National Geographic does a lot
of good stuff, and many otherthings, and a lot of television programs

(35:45):
that are terrific. But really,if you're actually trying to look at the
science, I don't understand what itmeans, because people who are malevolent will
often misquote, deliberately misquote, anddeliberately misinterpret scientific papers. And so you
So I was trying to explain howit worked, But this book was written

(36:06):
in twenty fifteen, so I hada a chapters on it on deliberate ignorance
and invented narrative. But this ispretty trump. And then we get Trump
and fake news and so it's kindof dated in that sense, but I
think it a bit predicts the powerand the malevolence of that type of approach.

(36:34):
Yeah. So like my next questionis, you know, I think
in your book where I talk thisis about climate change specifically, and I
know, like we are we're seeingthese rising sea levels, right, But
I think at the same time,the public and the rescue we're seeing that
rich people are buying houses near theocean or the water. Boy, so
we're all so and so we're allwondering, like, yeah, whats going

(36:57):
on? Like you know, yeah, yeah, I think I think the
whole field actually, and I'm notI have no primary expertise in climate change,
except that climate change divides into twothings. Really, there's the climate
science of cause. The climate scienceof cause pretty much rests with physical science
scientists addressed with oceanographers, oceanographers,meteorologists, ice and glacier scientists, and

(37:27):
people who study ocean currents, peoplewho study wind currents and so forth.
So it's it's in the physical science. These are physicists, and they're a
very straight up, very correct community. I mean, these people to some
extent the medical science are a bitseduced by medicine and the fact that going
off and be big money there andvarious things. If you transition from being

(37:50):
a scientist to taking one of yourdiscoveries and making starting a new company,
that doesn't really happen in the physicalsciences. Basically, they're all about hard
science, and they're they're the brightestof the bright many of them, as
you know. I mean, thekids are going into physics and all that
stuff. They may be a bitodd at times, but they're smart and
they're very, very, very veryethical. So there's that area, and

(38:15):
so I talk to those people totry and try and get a better understanding.
And of course the power of theirscience is massively being an increased by
satellite technology and all this modern stuffwhere they can measure the depth of depth
of ice sheets, the extent ofice sheets. So it's a revolutionary area
basically, but extraordinarily complex and difficultto understand and difficult to predict. You

(38:38):
can prect long term consequence, youcan protect if the world continues to get
hotter, all the ice will melt. But in the short term and short
term maybe is one hundred years oreven a thousand years, it's not that
difficult easy to predict. So basicallysea level rise initially, and the discussion
was basically overemphasized. That's very clear. But we also face the possibility of

(39:00):
major tipping points where suddenly it willstart to rise rapidly, because if the
Anarctic, for instance, continues towarm and the underlying water warms, then
you may get these major tipping pointswhere suddenly you get a sharp shock.
And we're all wondering whether the lossof Antarctic sea ice last year is going

(39:22):
to continue as a further trend orthere'll be some reversal or what we'll see,
and that will be very interesting throughthis year. But the other side
of climate science is the effect ofit, and that's all about biology.
I mean, none of us arereally interested in the effect of climate change
on rocks. The rocks will befine. It's people and complex organisms and

(39:44):
so in a sense, the biologists. And so when you've got the IPCC,
this thing that reports on climate everyyear, what you have is the
physicist, the marine biologists, thebotanists, the ecologists, all of them
writing to try and make a synthesis. We've never done anything like this before

(40:05):
in the history of the planet.I mean it's a totally unique enterprise.
They work only from published materials,so they're always a bit out of date
peer reviewed published material. But basicallyit's a unique enterprise, and of course
the bad players in this have donetheir best to discredit that, and of
course among the bad players, unfortunately, we have some of the major energy

(40:28):
companies. So yeah, I've ourquestion was also of a climate change.
I think recently there's such just stopoil protests in England or something, and
I think on social media I've seenthese people, i think protesters bluing their
hands on the road or blocking carson the road. So I'm asking those
because those protesters, they're saying thatthey're actually trying to provoke the dangers of

(40:52):
climate change, right, So doyou think they're trying to help climate change
or are they also trying to justfrom I've never been involved in that sort
of activism, and I think unfortunatelyyou can often be counterproductive if you inconvenience
people. But there is such alot of disinformation out there and people are

(41:13):
trying to shock, so I understandit. I think it can have a
good effect if it's very targeted toa particular situation. I think that sort
of inconveniencing people who like has tobe very done with a lot of forethought.

(41:35):
I think younger people, particularly inthis country, are very conscious of
the fact that the worst effect isclimate change are going to come down on
them, and they're much more engaged. It's my generation that's kind of stuck
in the past off and it's notdoing very well with it. But it's
an enormously difficult problem. None ofus should underestimate it. It's tremendously difficult

(42:00):
for the world with eight billion people. You know, the population of the
planet in nineteen hundred was one pointsix billion, So over one hundred and
twenty years, the population of theplanet has increased by a factor of five.
I mean, this is an extraordinarystressor. And it's not just that

(42:21):
it's not the large numbers. Largenumbers are often in developing countries. They're
not the people who've been driving climatechange, but as people become more prosperous
they do so. Basically, weneed to be thinking differently. We need
to be thinking of sustainable solutions.We need to be thinking in terms of
circular economies. We need to bethinking of consumption that's consuming things that can

(42:45):
be processed through a circular economy,or are consuming things like well, like
what you're doing when you're watching ascreen. If we get the energy equation
right from the point of view ofgenerating in because it uses a lot of
energy. But if we can getthat right, then this is a relatively

(43:07):
non toxic form of consumption if youtake it. I mean, it's not
producing enormous amounts of gadgets and bitsof plastic and all the rest of it.
And if that can all be recycled, then we can look forward.
So I think what we need isa kind of optimism that says, yeah,
we really have to change, andwe have to seek the opportunities for
change and change the way people think. But people do not like to be

(43:30):
asked to change, and some arevery resistant to changing any sort of interpretation
they have of the world. Andthat is extreme difficulty. It's hard for
me to people like me to understandit because we're constantly changing and if you're
a research scientist, you're abandoning ideas, taking up new ideas, all the

(43:52):
rest of it. That's the life. But that's not the life of most
people live. They want to livein what they think is it kind of
stay situation. We are not livingin a stable situation. Reality is changing
and we have to change. Butthat's very discomforting, and especially if there's
a major political movement that says,oh, you don't have to change,

(44:13):
everything's fine, this is all justscare mongering, then it's very hard to
get people to react. But thisis I think the biggest challenge that humanity
has faced. And of course alot of the problem you know, we
face stress situations before, but maybeyou talk about ten thousand years ago,

(44:35):
maybe there were twenty million people onthe planet. Now there are eight billion,
so it's a very different situation,and they're living in vulnerable areas.
With effect to sea level rise,it hasn't really kicked up all that much
yet it's happening. It's slow progressive, and we're seeing effects, seeing effects
on Pacific islands in countries like Bangladesh, and the severity of some of the

(45:01):
big weather events off the East coastof the United States where you get a
combination of big winds and high tidesand all the rest of it. But
the real consequences we're seeing as faras water is concerned now as River Iron
River en flooding, and that we'reseeing now, we're seeing bigger and bigger

(45:23):
floods because the prediction has been fora long time from the climate science we'll
get maybe less rainfall, but itwill be in very intense events, and
that's what we're seeing. We've justbeen seeing it in Northern Australia and we
go almost from major floods to bushfiresas we're expecting hot summer. It's really

(45:46):
constant and dramatic and it's not thatnecessary. The weather event is bigger than
any before. Though it turns outthat many of them now are it's that
they're more I'm more constant, morefrequent. Yeah, so I think one
thing I see with the young peopleis that like, yes, you want

(46:06):
to support climate changes, but atthe same time, you know, we're
also seeing some other stuff. Ithink. I think I think there's some
people that all the world's going toend like three two years or something,
and you know, I think someonesayd eighty nine, it didn't really happen.
Yeah, so my question, Imean, yeah, people have been
predicting the end of the world forever. The world's not going to end unless

(46:27):
that we're hit by an asteroid orsomething, or the sun. The sun
dies, but the world will end. The world will be fine. Whether
it'll be there where we're there isanother matter. So but I think,
you know, there's a hell ofa lot we can be doing, but
we have to change and we haveto to emphasize different things. I mean,

(46:47):
I'm finding young people, particularly actuallyare in East in Australia, are
emphasizing different things. A lot ofthem are not. You know, everyone
growing up in my generation, firstthing you want to do is get a
car and be able to drive around. A lot of them don't care about
that. They're not that interested inhaving a car. They may need it

(47:08):
because the public transport is so bad. But the big growth here among young
people has been in bike's, electricbicycles, the electric scooter, all this
sort of stuff. So I thinkthe at least in Australia, the politics
is changing, and I think it'schanging in the United States too. I

(47:30):
mean, I think one of thereasons for what's happening currently in the United
States is that the political right,the hard right and the reactionary right.
If you say, looks at thepopulation and they say these groups that are
coming into Australia, these immigrants arenot necessarily going to be supporting our sort
of politics, and you've got thisvery distressing suggestions of moving towards totalitarianism,

(47:58):
which I think is insane. ButI think the right is afraid of losing
control. So question goes back.I think you told me that you did
some research in America, So Imean, why do you choose Memphis as
a city to do research. Ichose Memphis because children are such hospital as

(48:20):
an absolutely unique and extraordinary institution.You know, it's known for treatment of
kids cancer. It has an enormousfundraising operation. It's always been supported by
Hollywood. It was started by aHollywood figure called Danny Thomas, always been
supported by Hollywood, has enormous supportthrough the American population. And it's actually

(48:43):
a wonderful place to do science becausethe significant amount of the resources that come
in, most of it goes topatient care and looking after kids and treating
them completely free. It's a wonderfulinstitution to work in. A medical institution
that takes no account of what itwill cost to treat a patient is extraordinary.

(49:04):
And they do that because of thegenerosity of the American people. And
it's a story that can only happenin the United States. And if anyone
ever sort of bad mouth's the USAto me, I tell them, tell
them this story of Saint June.So it's a wonderful place, wonderful place
to do science. And there area lot of really top scientists have been

(49:25):
working there and increasingly so. Becauseif you're the type of science who just
wants to do the science, whodoesn't want to play university politics or all
that's any of that sort of stuff, this is a fantastic place to do
science, great place for a youngscientists to train, and a great place
to do science. But it's youknow, it's unlikely to be it's unlikely

(49:47):
that's in the American South. Butit is still a great place to do
science. Well, I mean,I know, you live in Australia and
the US the worst in major forassist between living in the Australia and the
US for your personally in many ways, it's very similar. If you live
in Australia's most Australians are city dwellers, big cities. We have many many

(50:14):
fewer large inland cities because you know, most of Australia is a desert.
So whereas in America you have biginland cities we din't, and so mostly
people around the coast. I thinkCanberra, the national capital, which is
about I think less than one hundredmiles from the coast, is our biggest
inland city. And a lot ofthe country is very, very desolate,

(50:37):
and you fly over it, yousee red earth. You fly over the
United States at night, fly overAustralia at night, you see very little.
Once you leave the coastal fringe,you may see a few lights occasionally
a mine, a cattle station,something like that, but you see very
little. Fly over the United Statesat night, and you'll see towns below

(51:00):
you right across and villages right acrossthe countries to get the rockies really and
so it's vastly different political landscape.So most most Australians are urban dwellers actually
in big cities. There's only twentyfive million of us. Australia is a

(51:22):
country the size of the Contiguous States, you know, the continent of the
United States excluding Alaska, so it'sthe same size. It has twenty five
or twenty six million, you've gotthree hundred and thirty five or three hundred
and forty million. So a totallydifferent type of society and with many,

(51:43):
many fewer people in rural constituencies.And you can see the way politics goes
in the United States if you lookat the big cities and you look at
the coasts, they're all more liberal, more open, and more likely to
accept change, whereas the rural communitiesare very different. And you see that

(52:07):
play out in the politics, particularlythe politics of the electoral college. So
Australia is very different from the UnitedStates in the sense it's a parliamentary system
based on the British system we did. It was federated in nineteen hundred and
one federation of six colonies of theBritish colonies. Essentially first colony was set

(52:29):
up in seventeen eighty eight. Soit's quite a young country in that sense.
But then we have we share thecountry continent with the oldest continuing culture
on earth, the indigenous Australian Aboriginalpopulation that have been there for sixty eighty
thousand years. Who knows even longer, We're not quite sure. It constantly

(52:49):
gets pushed back. So the politicsare different in that the parliamentary politics we
don't have a president, a primeminister can be replaced overnight. All party
has to decide is to say,oh, we don't want this guy as
our political leader in the parliament.He's a prime minister, he's not a
president or a king, and theyjust change it. They just have a

(53:15):
vote and you've got a new primeminister. So you can do that anytime
you want. And the selection ofthe prime minister is down to the parliamentary
party or the political party, notdown with the presidential candidate. You're involving
the whole of the membership of thatparty. So an individual there is no

(53:35):
way, let's say, an individuallike Donald Trump, who was not wanted
actually by the hierarchy in the RepublicanParty, would ever emerge as leader.
So it's difficult. Different politically,we did borrow the model for the US
Senate. We use a somewhat similarmodel there and it's a review house.

(53:58):
But then the social dynamic is alsodifferent. The history is different. The
history of the United States is manymore of the people who came to the
United States as immigrants were quite welloff, reasonably wealthy, and when they
brought some wealth in and also it'svery dynamic and very open, and the
American sism of government with a divisionof powers is very open and very flexible,

(54:21):
which is allowed I think the USto prosper in the way it has.
But the Constitution of the United Statesis written by men who were and
the amendments as well, who wereembedded in the thinking of the European Enlightenment.

(54:42):
It emphasizes freedom and liberty above all. And it's that Enlightenment thinking that
pervades the US Constitution, which iswhy some of what's happening at the United
States at the moment is so atodds with I think the intent of the
US Constitution there was also because therewas a rebellion and it was set up

(55:02):
as a consequence of throwing the imperialpower out, the British power out.
There is an absolute determination to avoida totalitarian system, to avoid having a
king, and that's very prominent inthe actual way the Constitution is written,
and so any suggestion of a totalitarianstate in America is totally contrary to the

(55:28):
intent of the Constitution. Australian constitutionsrather a land document that's not inspirational in
the sense the US Constitution and Billof Rights are, and the Decoration of
Independence. Then the other thing thoughthat the primary dynamic in Australia at the
time that we formed our federal governmentwas that the value of the worker,

(55:53):
and we had the first labor governmentsin the world. Fabian socialism, not
communism. We've never had a communistgovernment. We've had Fabian socialism, which
is it's kind of that socialist pushthrough political change, and that has the
oldest political partner in the country isthe Australian Labor Party. The difference from

(56:15):
the United States is people in Australiaexpect a lot from government. So we
have a government, a national healthcaresystem which is funded through the tax system
essentially, which works pretty well.It's one of the best on Earth,
I think, and there is amuch more expectation. There's not this rhetoric

(56:35):
that government is really what damages you. It's a rhetoric that you know,
we government, an industry and soforth work together. That's come under a
bit of stress as we've been exposedto some of the craziness of American thinking
on this issue. So I'm I'mgoing to ask the same question to ask
for the previous winners. So on, how do you find the the Nobel

(57:00):
Prize, like I assume was byphone or yeah, yeah, we're living
in Memphis of the time. Wegot to call it four in the morning
and they said you've been My wifepicked up the phone and the guy said,
this is Nils Ringets from the NobelFoundation, and my wife said,
this is for you. So wethought we we sort of knew we could

(57:20):
be in the frame, but Ididn't think we win it. You know,
Australians are not not very optimistic inthese sort of things that I was.
We won the Lascar Award the yearbefore the Alaska is the big American
biomedical research fight prize, very prestigious, but and half the people who win

(57:44):
the Laska Basic Science Award, whichwe did, we shared the Laska Basic
Science Award go on to win aNobel Prize. But I was telling me
myself that, well, half thepeople who win the Laska Basic Science Award
don't win a Nobel Prize. Soso we got the call and the following
year, so it was a bigIn a sense, it was a big

(58:06):
shock because though I knew about theNobel Prize, I had no real understanding
of what was involved, what wasrequired, what effect it would have on
someone. If you're at say ainstitution like Harvard university, whether a number
of Nobel Prize winners. You probablyhad a chance to observe these people close
quarters, but I hadn't been exposedto that. I knew people who won

(58:29):
Nobel Prize, but really had noparticular insight into it. So do you
ever meet and work with the otherwinner of your doctor rolfs No, not
any formal sense. They're actually talkingabout trying to set up something a bit
more formal now, but that's frequently. There are kind of networks that do

(58:50):
do sort of sign petitions and allthat sort of thing and try to try
to do the right thing. I'mnot sure how much effect that has.
The prestige is in the prize itselfas much as in any of the Nobel
prizemens themselves. And the Nobel Prizesare kind of different. I mean,
you've got the Science Prizes are allyou know. I think it's a very

(59:13):
thorough and rigorous process. You havethe Peace Prize, which is awarded by
the Oslo Parliament, much more political, often used in a way to try
and influence global politics in fact.And then you have the Literature Prize,
which is another thing as well,so and economics No economics is considered as
one of the science prizes, butthey are very influential. Yeah. Well,

(59:40):
by the question is like, Iknow when you won, you had
you had a daughter winner that splitfor the prize as well. Yeah,
you ever work do you ever workwith him? Or oh? Yeah,
we worked together. We made thebasics discovery together. We were both He's
Swiss. He'd come out to Australiato go to place where I was at

(01:00:00):
the John Curtains School, which hada very strong profile in immunology at the
time and a strong profile in senatorin minology. He wanted to learn that
and he was just starting out.He's a medical graduate. He's three and
a half years younger than I am, and he'd been doing a bit of
research but hadn't done much. I'dbeen doing research for almost ten years,

(01:00:22):
and because I started a lot younger, because of the way the system worked
and we just having to share alab together at this place, we worked
together. We made this big discovery. We wrote a lot of key papers.
We only worked together for a coupleof years, but that dose several
years of work with the basis ofthe Nobel Price, and then we both

(01:00:45):
kept working on it, taking differentsomewhat different directions. Time's coming to somewhare
different conclusions. But we're good friendsand I've got a lot of respect from
him. He's been retired. Heretired at age sixty five about I've just
finally fully retired at eighty three,so he actually retired earlier than I am.
But he's been very active, climbingmountains and things. So what advice

(01:01:09):
would you give the students you wantto pursue biology. Well, I mean,
if you want to pursue a researchcareer, you've got to be cus.
You've got to have that curiosity.You've got to have a lot of
drive. It's hard work. You'vegot to be prepared to fail because we

(01:01:30):
ask a lot of questions. Ifyou're doing original research, you know a
lot of questions might not be quitethe right question, or you get it
a bit wrong, and something youthink will turn out to be speculactor or
interesting turns out to be very boring. Though often it should be published because
it's a step in the process.But I'd say the things that you need

(01:01:50):
to be a research scientist is youneed to be pretty tough in various ways,
intellectually and emotionally, because you haveto be able to deal with the
fact you will fail. You haveto be able to deal with rejection because
your grand applications are going to berejected, and that can happen if you
won a Nobel prize. I meanbasically, because it's a very independent and
tough minded process research papers. Also, you've got to deal with rejection.

(01:02:15):
So you've got to be emotionally strong. You've got to be curious and have
the idea that you know what youthink is right may be quite wrong,
and you've got to be prepared tooverturn it. So you've got to have
some guts, and you also thinkyou're in it for the long haul.
So it's not not a career thatsuits everybody by any means, but for

(01:02:40):
those that like it and do it, it gives you great personal freedom.
In fact, if you're good enoughand you bring in research funds, now
universities and institution will leave you aloneand let you get on with it,
which is a pretty unique situation.And you're the primacy is and the data.
So the other thing is that Itell young scientists don't get too obsessed

(01:03:04):
with all the theory and stuff that'sout there, but look at look at
what you're actually finding, look atthe data to live with it and do
smart experiments, and be prepared tothink differently and look for something that is
different because often in biology, particularlywhich is very complex because of evolution,

(01:03:24):
evolution doesn't always follow the rational path. It builds on what went before,
so it's a very complicated situation.Be prepared so for the scientists, be
prepared to be instructed by nature.I mean, and that is in the
data that you generate when you doexperiments. So be on the lookout for

(01:03:47):
things that don't really fit because thatcan be the very interesting observation. Yeah,
so thank you doctor Door for beingprot this absolutely giving me the opportunity
to talk to you so people andget to know more about insight into immune
systems. O

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