Scientists often turn metaphorical when groping for ways to describe their esoteric profession. Certainly that’s the tack Eric Johnson takes when trying to explain the work of his fellow biochemist and mentor Ed Schantz. Ed’s work is like fine wine making, says the 36-year-old Johnson. He can make this stuff in three weeks, but it’s taken him years of development to perfect his technique.
The stuff Schantz makes isn’t vino; it’s toxin. Specifically, it’s botulin, the toxin produced by the single-celled botulinum bacterium and the most poisonous substance in the world.
When ingested, botulin causes botulism, a form of food poisoning that can result in muscle paralysis and even death. But botulin has a good side also: in very small doses, it is an effective treatment for a whole class of human illnesses known as dystonias--uncontrollable muscle spasms that researchers suspect are caused by involuntary and excessive electrical impulses from the brain. These spasms cause eyelids to blink or clamp shut, voices to stop in throats, necks to twist into painful contortions. Many of these conditions, however, are today being controlled by injections of botulin. And every dose ever administered by a doctor was made by Schantz, an 84-year-old emeritus professor and biochemist at the Food Research Institute of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Because the various dystonias are relatively rare--Johnson cites one study that estimated the incidence at 391 per million population--the larger drug companies haven’t had much profit incentive to produce the toxin. Also, as Johnson notes, botulin is six million times more toxic than rattlesnake venom. A lot of drug companies don’t want to get near it for reasons of employee safety. Add to that the delicate craftsmanship and complexity required to produce the stuff and it becomes clear why Schantz’s ability to make a pure and effective toxin is so unusual, and why he is passing that craft on, in the tradition of a vintner, to Johnson.
It would be very difficult for anyone to learn the procedure from a book, Johnson says. Ed’s taught me how to do it; he’s the master. It really is like wine making. While all the steps are written down, there’s still a certain art to getting it right, a technique that Ed has refined over the years. Ed’s also a rather modest person, but he alone has supplied toxin to everyone around the world for their scientific work, and done so for little or no compensation. If you read the scientific literature from 1950 to 1980, they all say they obtained their toxins from Ed Schantz.
