| It was there, in 1951, that Djerassi directed the synthesis of the first oral contraceptive for women and became known throughout the world as the ``father of the birth- control pill.'' For this achievement he received the National Medal of Science and the first Wolf Prize in chemistry, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Since 1959, Djerassi has been professor of chemistry at Stanford University, while also serving as president of Syntex Research. He is the founder of Zoecon Corp., a company that develops approaches to insect control. Most recently, Djerassi has turned from practicing chemistry to writing books, publishing a collection of short stories, poems, a scientific autobiography, a collection of memoirs and several novels. Djerassi also runs the Djerassi Resident Artists Program near Woodside, which provides residencies and studio space for artists in the visual arts, literature, choreography and music. He spoke with writer Jill Wolfson and student Jay Chien.
Q Chien: The first thing I was told about you is that you are a science-fiction writer. Is that right?
A Djerassi: Terrible, terrible, terrible! I will never forgive you. It is science in fiction. I had never written a single word of fiction, never written a single poem, never written any non-scientific prose until I was past 60 years old. . . . You may ask why I decided to write. Because I wanted to lead one more very different intellectual life, and to a scientist, nothing is more different that writing fiction. Fiction is where you can supposedly invent anything; as a scientist, you are not supposed to make up anything. I mean, you can invent if it is a true invention, but you can't make up something. It is either true or it is false. There is no such thing as truth or falsehood in fiction. Everything is permitted.
Q Wolfson: The process of writing fiction, the creative process of doing science, you say they are different. And I think the general public would think of them as being totally different. But do you find similarities? A Djerassi: In one of my books, I really tried to answer that exact question. Sure, the process is a different one, in that one is an experimental process and the one is a free-flowing imaginative one. But the motivation and what drives people to do either the one or the other or what drives people to do any creative work is much more similar than people would like to admit. And I think the motivation, in particular, is self-centered, egocentric, the desire for fame or recognition. Man is simply obsessed by the idea of wanting to read his own obituary. I have often fantasized about this. . . . I imagine almost anyone would say that it would be fun to read one's obituary, because it would be fun to be a fly on the wall, and on the wall of rooms where you would not be admitted. Q Wolfson: Is this what still drives you? A Djerassi: Yes, very much so.
Q Wolfson: Have you ever met anyone who is not driven by ego? A Djerassi: I have probably met them, but I did not know it, because they must be so rare that they just simply escaped my attention. But the circles in which I cruise around, particularly among scientists, and among writers, I think they are all driven by ego. Many people pretend that they are not driven by it. I am just honest about it. Let's say you made it up to Mount Everest, and you climbed down again and told no one about this. That would be the equivalent to doing research, purely for research's sake, just to solve a problem, and not even announce it to the public. Now, in the case of a mountain climber, it doesn't make much difference whether he or she announces their climbing. In science, if you just do the scientific work and do not tell anyone about it, it makes an enormous difference. And this is where the fundamental difference between scientific writing and creative writing (comes in), because in science, you are always dependent on the work of others, and you have to publish it in order for them to know it. Whereas, this fiction writing is not dependent on other people, and if this book were never published, this would be no great tragedy, except to me. Whereas, the scientific papers, the number that I have published, it would be a tragedy if the work had been done and never been published.
Q Chien: People have described you as a ``Renaissance man.'' Have you heard that one before? A Djerassi: Sure. That comes from two kinds of people. The first one doesn't even know what a Renaissance man was. Second, the ones who say it as a compliment, and I take it as such, mean that I am someone who is also interested in art, and not just in science, someone who is interested in writing fiction, and not just in lab work. During Renaissance, people could be good and interested and productive in many different areas. That's so much more difficult now, because so much more has to be known. In just my own field, more has been done in chemistry in the last 20 years than in the entire history of chemistry. The same is true of physics, or biology, and so on.
Q Chien: Do you think that this society resembles the times before the Renaissance, and that people should start questioning things, take a look at the world around them more, instead of honoring accepted standards? A Djerassi: Do you think that we accept accepted standards? I don't think that is completely true. I think there is nothing wrong with asking questions. The trouble is that we don't seem to have the background. We don't teach people any more how to ask questions, particularly not in high school. I think all our problems start in grade school, and in high school. A lot of remedial work then has to be done in college, the things that should have been taught in high school. I think we should teach people to ask more questions, but based on facts.
Q Chien: How did you get interested in issues like birth control and the human reproductive system? Could you talk about the controversy over the use of the birth-control pill? A Djerassi: I don't think the problem of birth control is a scientific one. They are social, and political, religious, economic, legal. By having started in science and then realizing that some of the societal aspects are really more difficult and more important, I became interested in these. . . . I was already a graduate student before I came upon the male and female sex hormones, as a chemist. So I became, first of all, interested in the chemistry of these, and then in the biology of these and then, eventually, in the clinical application of these, and then into birth control.
Q Chien: As a student, did you have any role models of your own? A Djerassi: The strange thing is that I didn't. I think one of the reasons was that I was in too much of a hurry. I started so young. By luck, not because I was a genius at all, I graduated from college when I was 18 years old. So I had my Ph.D. before I was 22 and I had worked in between. I was in a tremendous rush and didn't have enough time to have a role model. I read about Madam Curie, and Louis Pasteur, but I can't say that these were my role models. I had to do it sort of on my own.
Q Chien: You were not born here, but in Vienna. What did you think the United States was like before you came here? What did you think of it after you got here? A Djerassi: I literally came as a refugee. I came during the Hitler days. Both my parents and I were Jewish, so we had to leave. It was a question of wanting to go somewhere where that danger does not exist. At that time, America was -- and still is -- considered one of the places where you find shelter. I didn't know very much about the United States. This was in the pre-TV days. In Europe, you didn't learn very much about American history, any more than Americans today learn very much about European history. I was 14 years old when I left Vienna. I can tell you an amusing story: Mrs. (Eleanor) Roosevelt, the wife of the president at that time, was to me sort of like a queen of America, like Queen Elizabeth of England. When I was 16 years old, I wrote a letter to Mrs. Roosevelt. I said: `Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, I need a scholarship.' Can you imagine? It would be like you writing a letter to Mrs. Clinton and asking for a scholarship. First of all, the chances of her ever getting it is very slight, and getting an answer would be even slighter. But actually, I got an answer. The letter was not written by her, but by a secretary. And she actually got me a scholarship! This is how I ended up in a college in the Midwest, in Missouri, a place I didn't even know existed. So that became my idea of America. It was very idealistic, a place where you wrote to the queen and the queen actually did something for you. This is, of course, why I am in great favor of receiving immigrants.
Q Chien: I find the title of your autobiography very amusing. (``The Pill, Pygmy Chimps and Degas' Horse.'') Could you explain what it means? A Djerassi: The Pill is, of course, obvious, it's about birth control. But what the hell has the Pill got to do with pygmy chimps? In my mind, it has a great deal to do with it. This is because I've done a lot of work in Africa, and I've always been very much interested in work with lesser-developed countries. Pygmy chimps live in only one country, which is basically Zaire. When I was there, we were interested in animal models for reproductive biological research. Pygmy chimps, it now turns out, are the closest relatives to humans, biochemical and in every other way. Degas' horse? Edgar Degas is a very famous French painter and artist, and also a sculptor. There is a small bronze horse that Edgar Degas made which I gave to the museum in San Francisco. So I use this as my example of an interest in art. So, it's scientific work, Third-World-country interaction and art. Maybe that is a Renaissance man.
Q Wolfson: What has been your biggest screw-up? A Djerassi: My successful marriage was my third marriage. I don't think it should be necessary to be married three times before you have learned all the lessons; even twice ought to be enough. The role of parent that I played was a very traditional one, and it is not one that I would probably play now if I were to do it all over again. Of course, I don't even know whether I would want to have children if I were to do it over again.
Q Wolfson: What is your most treasured possession? A Djerassi: You mean, other than other human beings? Probably my collection of Paul Klee. I collect other artists, but Klee is an obsession. But otherwise, I would say that physical possessions are not of enormous importance to me.
Q Wolfson: Describe your version of happiness. A Djerassi: I don't know how to describe it because I'm not sure that I was ever truly happy. I can probably describe it at best as satisfaction and contentment. But I have tremendous ups and downs along these lines. I don't think that I am an inherently happy person. But I'm certainly not a bitter dark person, either. I fluctuate very much. I have had a number of real tragedies in my life, by far the biggest one was the suicide of my daughter. And I have a fused knee from a skiing accident. When it happened to me, it seemed like a terrible tragedy, yet it kept me out of the army. So in that respect you can say that I was lucky. This was why I was able to get through college earlier and I was able to do things that my colleagues could not do, many of whom didn't survive the war. You might even say that if this guy Hitler's disaster had not happened in Europe, I would not have been a scientist. I would probably have been a practicing physician.
Q Wolfson: How do you think your friends, the ones who know you best, would describe you? A Djerassi: As a very ambitious person. They would say it probably in a positive context rather than a negative one. They might use compliments saying that I managed to accomplish so much in their eyes. . . . But I think I have paid a price for that. My door would not be open, people would not just pop in. Now, of course, I also know the value of human interaction. I don't think I learned that until 12 years ago when I was about to go on a trek to the Himalayas and I had to have a physical exam for the higher altitude exposure. The diagnosis said that I had cancer, so I ended up in a hospital bed in an operating room, rather than up in the Himalayas. That's when I really came to terms with my mortality. We all know we will die sometime, but death is clearly not a preoccupation in your mind and it wasn't in mine. But then suddenly I did not know if I would survive. If I had known this, would I have led a different life? The answer is yes. In fact, that's when I started writing fiction. So out of the cancer came something positive.
Q Chien: Do you think art serves any specific purpose in building society? A Djerassi: Absolutely. I think that art, in general, is the difference between us and animals who eat, reproduce, and exist. And also it reflects the progress and the record of human activity, which is very different from just the simple written word. It can express things that we cannot express in just words.
Q Chien: So if a simple organic organism could create art or express itself . . . if it could not communicate verbally or in any way acceptable to us, but it did create art, then it would be a higher life form? A Djerassi: I don't mean the argument that if you put a chimp in front of a typewriter, and it pounds long enough on a typewriter, it creates Shakespeare. You know that stupid argument! I'm talking about conscious activity. If it is in just completely plain language that describes a very simple story from A to B to C to D to E that gives no leeway with respect to interpretation or anything else, that's not, to me, a very artistic endeavor.
Q Wolfson: Let's talk about science here. Pure science, birth control, sperm, pregnancy. What are we going to see in the future in the area of reproductive biology? A Djerassi: On the one hand, over the short term, I am very pessimistic about any fundamentally new method of birth control being developed for the next 20 years, or maybe even 30 years. I'm talking about new methods of birth control. I'm not talking necessarily about people using existing methods more effectively. But in the longer term, in the middle of the next century, I think that one of the really new methods of birth control will be immunization and vaccination. And that could fundamentally change what fertility is all about. In our present state of affairs, during our reproductive years, unless we do something consciously to be infertile, which is to take some birth-control device, we are fertile. With a vaccine, we could vaccinate everyone after puberty, so they become infertile and stay infertile. That is their natural state, unless they do something conscious to become fertile. Now that, I think, would be much more sensible in many respects. What it does mean, however, is that we separate the processes of procreation basically from spontaneous sexual intercourse. You could even separate it completely from sexual intercourse, incidentally. It could be a test-tube operation, which is already used now for many infertile people. You don't have any mind-blowing orgasm in which you think you just fertilized a child, which is what people romanticize about. It is total romanticization, because of course, you never know when an egg is fertilized. Things could be separated, so that then, in theory, every child that is born is a wanted child. That to me is a desirable thing. We could learn so much more about genetics without talking about any form of objectionable eugenics. It would be possible to determine any serious genetic abnormalities that could be prevented. There will be many more sophisticated methods to ensure that the egg and sperm are good ones. Thirty to 40 percent of all fertilized eggs get ejected in menstrual flow because something is wrong with them, so you might as well pick a good egg of yours and a good sperm of mine, or the best ones we've got, so to speak. Some people think this idea is terrible, and call it test-tube babies. This is all related to the abortion question. Abortion should be unnecessary. Everyone should be willing to agree with that. Now the only way to make it unnecessary is to only have sex when you want to have children, which would be the papal answer. Or, you practice contraception. But the moment you practice contraception, then you are already separating sexual intercourse as a pleasurable activity, and reproduction as another event. I think this is exactly what we should do. The two things should not necessarily be combined. And the moment you accept that, then I think doing some things, that are not in my opinion, high-tech things, there is nothing mysterious about them, they are not test-tube babies in the Frankenstein sense at all. I made a proposal in a scientific journal. It suggested that young men should be willing to be sterilized, have a vasectomy, but first preserve his sperm in a sperm bank. You could use artificial insemination afterward. That is a very reasonable approach. Men can take the responsibility.
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