I might well become a scientist, but I would not become a chemist. As a scientist, I think I would become a molecular biologist, geneticist, neuroscientist, something in that borderline area of biology and chemistry.

The other thing would be is to be a musician. I used to play the cello, just an amateur cellist, but I enjoyed it greatly. I didn't have the time to continue it, when I was in my 20s. I am very sorry that I gave that up.

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.

I would say that physical possessions are not of enormous importance to me.

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.

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.

I am also interested in primitive art. I have a good Mexican, pre-Columbian collection. I have always been interested in archaeology, that's another life I might well have led seriously.

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?

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,

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 insure that both the egg is a good one. 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 man should be willing to be sterilized, have a vasectomy, but first preserve their sperm in a sperm bank. You could use artificial insemination afterwards. That is a very reasonable approach. Men can take the responsibility.