INVENTOR’S RIGHT TO MILLION

Evening Star, Issue 19789, 13 February 1928, Page 4

INVENTOR’S RIGHT TO MILLION

LABORER WORTHY OF HIS HIRE I

Should a scientist try to make a fortune out of that which he has discovered? Ought the Curies to have patented radium? .Ought Lindbergh to have taken up some of those alleged million-dollar offers? Most scientific men think that it would be unethical so to do, and public opinion applauds them. But an editorial writer in _ ‘ American Medicine ’ (New York) opines that this is all a mistake. The laborer is worthy of his hire, he thinks, in pure science as well as industry or commerce. A scientific investigator is not vowed to poverty just because he is dedicated to the pursuit of truth. He goes on:— “The fact that the being of the scientist is more largely and completely satisfied by non-material pleasures does dull his active acquisitiveness, but he is not usually altogether immune to the attractiveness of money. The real test comes when he discovers something of untold value —as Banting and Best did in insulin, and as Steenbock is said to have done in elaborating the discovery of Alfred Hess that ultra-violet rays will activate hitherto inert oils with vitamin D properties, thus making them antirachitic. “In such ■ cases tuc enlightened State can step forward, as did Canada, and offer a modest monetary reward. But suppose some commercial concern really did offer two million dollars for the new idea, as the Associated Press implied was the case with Steenbock. A cereal manufacturer was supposed to have offered some such sum for rights to the process. What should the ethical scientist do? In this instance it is quite probable that no such rights could have been transferred because others had also made Steenbock’s finding—Hess published prior to Steenbock, in fact. But assume that Steenbock would have got two million for an outside.

“Consider what he is quoted as having said to the Press, Whether he said this or not does not so much matter; the statement was considered highly ethical and quite in character with nobility. The statement was; ‘lf I took that money itwould mean that the purpose of my life had been perverted. 1 am happy only in the endeavor to advance the well-being of humanity.’ If this actually was said, it is an ascetic pronunciamento worthy of .some other worldly saint. “In the first place, such sale wouldat once widely disseminate the discovery among the people who will have to pay much more for an ultra-violet breakfast food exploited by dozens of little, competing firms, than for such a cereal prepared and exploited efficiently by one largo company. In the second place, two million dollars would enable a scientist to found a laboratory of his own, with all appliances and associates, in which he could work more wonders than ever, unmolested by economic and administrational irks. “The crux of the matter is this: It is something the pure, experimental scientist seems unable to comprehend. We live in an acquisitive, individualistic society. The avowed rule is self first. Every individual has to be for self first in a society which is not selfconscious and where mutual aid is largely suppressed.” The scientist is regarded by this writer as a socially-minded unit in an acquisitive, individualistic society. His whole training, intellect, and outlook tend to make him aspire altruistically. His whole tendency, when he has found some beneficial truth, is to tell alii men. His whole intellectual content revolts against commercialising the truth and profiting individually. He revolts so powerfully, in fact, that he loses his judgment. We read further:— “He should not be superficial. He should thing analytically on the problem. He should say: ‘How can I, socially minded altruist that I unfortunately am, really be most helpful to humanity in this greedy, every-man-fnr-himself society?’ He must then craftily take whatever ho can get from that society in order to use it wisely to benefit the very people who are too ignorant or too subnormal intellectually to help themselves. To let his innate repugnance to the academic figment ‘ commercialisation ’ dominate his good sense and result in a mad under-com-pensation is not only silly, it is selfish. “It is not to the credit of the scientist to stand forth publicly in his cheap clothes, smiting his breast, and crying: ‘See how noble and pure I amt Let this cup of millions pass! Tempt mo not with lucre!’

“ It would be more wise and less selfish for him to say: ‘ This is an acquisitive society. Most people are too ignorant or too unintelligent to do other than make money and squander it. Here I have, by pure _ inadvertence, come across an opportunity to make a large sum in a manner esteemed honest and legitimate by this society. I shall make it. I shall wear decent clothes, become well fed, and be without fear for the future. I shall found and equip a laboratory, and no one shall hold an economic lash over me, and there I shall most effectually help humanity.’ “ This is exactly what the Mayo brothers did at Rochester. They turned the profits from their practice back into the perfection of their clinic, which was pure wisdom in this day. They never refused large fees if they could get them, but they served humanity with them. They were, not only_ wonderful scientists; they were sufficiently balanced mentally to serye_ humanity to the maximum under existing conditions. “Lest anything herein be construed as an attack either upon experimental science or the individual scientist, final emphasis had better be placed upon the fact that the end in view is that of making science more useful. Since men are predominantly irrational, this may often mean that subterfuge, or even force, may have to be invoked in order to permit rationality to prevail. “The Press story quoted may have been apocryphal, but it was obviously regarded as quite properly in character. If true, this story demonstrates that in our modern age of speed even a pure scientist may make a quick and thoughtless gesture of lofty renunciation which is actually, in the long rnn,_ as selfish as comercialisation and acquisitiveness. While_ altruism, nobility of character, and high social consciousness are necessary in the laboratory of pure research, and should_ be extended to life in general as rapidly as awakening intelligence permits, concessions must be made to the avaricious character of the economic and social system in which the scientist lives, in order merely to enable him to do the most good for the largest number.”