The Synthesizer Tom Pringle on mad cow disease, the Internet and activism. By Aria Seligmann For the past five years, anyone interested in mad cow disease has been able to get links to nearly every single article that's ever been written on the topic simply by logging onto Tom Pringle's official mad cow homepage, www.mad-cow.org Mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or variant Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, is linked to beef consumption and is a growing concern worldwide, particularly in Europe where each BSE death makes headlines. The deadly disease is caused not by bacteria or viruses, but by aberrant and little-understood proteins known as prions. Related to scrapie in sheep and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, the prions cause the breakdown of brain tissue into spongy matter. The victim shows signs of personality disorders at first, then declines physically until death. Volunteers in London and connections worldwide help Pringle, a scientist with a background in molecular biology, human genetic disorders and math, keep the site updated. Pringle culls through each document, figuring out what's useful and what's rubbish. To some articles Pringle adds literary criticism, explaining what is valid/what's not about the piece. To others, he offers explanations of who wrote the article and why. Surrounding a topic as sensational as BSE are myths, misinformation and mayhem. Some articles are just press releases posing as news stories, he says. They may be released by the cattle industry folks downplaying the prevalance of the disease. Or, "you might start out reading an article about the dangers of hormones in meat and after several layers, you find out it's a site that's selling veggie burgers," he says, adding, "I don't have a food agenda." Pringle, a Eugenean who works out of his home, says it's important to use critical thinking skills when researching any topic on the Internet. Ask, what's the source of this information? he says. "In print media, there's time for fact checking. On the web, someone could fabricate data and it could be awhile before it's caught." Pringle earned his PhD in math in 1985 from the UO. He did undergraduate work at Harvard and graduate work at UC San Diego. After that, he taught biochemistry and genetic disorders at UT Medical School, followed by earning his PhD and teaching at the UO. "Teaching is fun, but your life is dictated by the chiming of the clock," he says. "The further up I got in teaching -- I was tenure track -- the more removed I was from doing what I loved, which was research. I'd spend too much time in meetings deciding how to allocate parking spaces," he laughs. He wanted more time for reflection and research. Now he's got it. The 50-something bachelor ("I'd like to have a kid one day, when I'm ready to slow down"), lives simply in a modest home in south Eugene. Every day Pringle gets up at 5:30 am. "Because that's when I'm done sleeping," he says, and works for three or four hours at a time. He prefers shorter, more productive days to long and tedious ones. "At this level, you can't do much more after that amount of time anyway," he says, referring to the highly intellectual aspect of his work. He enjoys working at home and says his schedule is seasonal. "I don't ever work on the computer when the sun is out." Sometimes he's done working by 9:30 or 10 am, and then gets busy on his house, which he's in the process of redecorating. He putters in his garden, even in winter, or he takes one of his near daily hikes at Mount Pisgah. His life is simple and it shows in his living space. His living room is mostly wood and faux brick-lined windows, painted by his friend Jan Spencer. A mural by Spencer also lines one wall, a view from a window of the summit of Mt. Pisgah. Next to a gas fireplace are photos of fiery lava formations in Hawaii. He knocked out the wall between two of the small bedrooms to create one large bedroom. It is sparse -- with one futon for sleeping, another futon upright for sitting. Geological posters of Colorado and Oregon inhabit the walls on either side of his bed, inspiring him to think about vacations and hiking. He used to make maps and shows his knowledge by pointing out details. By looking at faults on the Colorado map, for example, he can pick out the low elevations. "You'd want to avoid them certain times of year because they'd be too hot," he says. Next to the bed on the end table sit one lone candle and a globe. Above the bed suspends a lamp, surrounded with another geological poster twisted around to serve as a shade. His closet is open, shirts neatly hung, shoes carefully aligned. A glass door in the middle of the room leads outside to a courtyard dominated by a hot tub, with glass eaves hanging over one side. " I use Earth First! folks for remodeling," he says. "They do great work, come in, get the job done in 10 to 12 hours and leave. Of course, I help. I can't just sit around watching people work." His kitchen is also simple, with natural colored tiles and wood. A few vegetables, some winter squash, an avocado, an onion, rest atop a drainboard next to the sink, attesting to his vegan diet. "Crone's disease has been linked to cow's milk," he says. "In Europe, everyone accepts that and they've moved to a new system of pasteurization. Here, the American Dairy Association is fighting it like crazy." Pringle goes organic all the way, though he admits he doesn't know if it's possible to grow true organics in Eugene. "There's so much fallout in the ground," he says. "But it's better than not trying." What he doesn't grow himself, he buys at Sundance when he bikes there several times a week. In addition to gardening, Pringle's love for plants is expressed through his walks outdoors. A proponent of part-time work and full-time quality of life, Pringle spends many afternoons hiking Mt. Pisgah with a 40 lb. pack on his back to keep in shape. His love of plants and nature has made Pringle a natural proponent for the land, and he has used his scientific skills in research and his competency in learning and understanding new concepts to act as an environmental advocate. "Tom's walked these areas and he knows the plants. He's willing to stand up for them," says Mary O'Brien, a botanist and local activist who co-authored Eugene's Toxics Right to Know law, and has worked with Pringle on wetlands issues. O'Brien points out that if people wonder if scientists can be scientists and also be advocates for organisms, plants and the human subjects that they study, the answer to that is: absolutely. O'Brien explains that a good scientist will simply say "Look at the data," even if that data doesn't always support the view being offered. "Tom is the type of person who realizes that," she says, adding, "he's an encyclopedia; he knows a lot of kinds of systems." But being a scientist who is also advocating change can be tricky, as O'Brien would know. "Those in power who don't want to hear scientific data about how toxics harm developing infants or wetlands will sometimes attack the messenger rather than the message. They'll say because this scientist is being an advocate you can't depend on her or his statements on science." But she adds, people like Pringle are offering a major service to other scientists and decisionmakers with valuable tools like his mad cow website. Without that, information wouldn't be available to the public and to newspeople, she says. "Websites on particular issues are a critical part of democracy. Knowledge is power. Yet the people behind them are invisible. People know the website, not Tom Pringle. He's not going to win any awards for this," she says. When activists such as Mary O'Brien and others come to Pringle with an issue that must be dealt with quickly and accurately, Pringle says they'll "divvy up the chores." He'll get online and do the research on whatever the topic is: clean air, water or wetlands. "I'm a good synthesizer of information; a quick learner," he says. "Once you've done math, everything else is easy." Pringle learns complex subjects quickly; he is able to see through the smokescreens and sensationalism, and he can then explain it to others. "There's a lot of misconception about things out there in the world of activism," he says. "I like to clear that up." But he can only work on so many issues and there are many that need attention. "We need more people with more holes in dikes. An important part of activism is personal management. Don't forget to eat lunch; don't ignore exercise or you'll just burnout. We don't need people working 60 hours per week. We need more people working 20 hours per week," he says. He believes people should live more consciously and look at their own consumptive habits. "How and where do people put their oar into the water? How do we start rowing toward healing?" he asks. "I do my thing. I keep an eye on genetically modified foods and mad cow, I inform myself and leave a record in a website. Whole governments are annoyed at me." In addition to mad cow and environmental issues, Pringle works on human gene projects. With other scientists throughout the world, he creates web tools, such as making a genome browser. A text will be published next month, but three million letters of text is boring, and the web can be used with graphics, he points out. For his type of research, Pringle asserts that working at home on the Internet is better than the physical setting of a university. He can work with someone in Japan, Paris or Santa Cruz easily. "Once you find the synergy, complementary skills and interest with another scientist, you can accomplish so much," he says. Teams of researchers breaking up and reforming, like drops of water, get short term projects completed quickly. "I can work for one to two weeks, finish a project, move on to a different gene." Pringle finds that most of the researchers he works with on the Internet are younger. "Older people don't know how to use the web and are more secretive. Younger ones take risks and they share. They're not waiting to go to print. The trend is doing away with journals. Let's share information," he says. And that is the crux of the scientific side of his work: creating a paradigm for open dissemination of information pre-print. "It's not about waiting a couple of years to screw your competitor. It doesn't make sense to do that when you're dealing with human disease. Leak me the information; I can put it on my website. Among scientists I work and share information with, it's like one big potlatch party: Who can give away the most? There's status in that." Pringle says that within the field of molecular biology, the culture of sharing and helping each other is alive and strong. In fact, he says, more and more scientists are posing a challenge to a greed-driven world. "I like being around people like that even though I don't know them physically," he says. One example of a secret shared is from his research on mad cow disease. Cow prion (the protein that causes the disease), was sequenced and accidentally put into the Internet gene bank. "I found it by accident and put it on my website and screwed people in Norway who were holding back the information," he says. "If we list all we know openly, we'll eventually pressure everyone else to work that way." But without peer review, instantly published information could contain serious errors. Pringle admits that there is a lot of rubbish. And that, he says, is the biggest problem with the Internet regarding topics like mad cow disease. "We definitely need more Internet watchdogs out there," he says. Yet despite the greed inherit in some websites and some fraudulent research he's caught, Pringle believes the information available through the Internet has revolutionized the world of science. "It's of tremendous advantage to developing countries," he says. "We don't need million dollar libraries to house all this information. Any scientist in any country just needs access to a computer and the Internet." Pringle's website is a labor of love; he's never earned a dime from it and never intends to. He makes money from consulting with pharmaceutical companies on occasion. But he says, "I don't do research for money. The things I'm good at tend to be what society overpays. Math, environmental research, biomedical consulting ... I'm not suitable for daycare or service jobs. I couldn't put in a shift at Sundance without slugging somebody." While a steady line of customers may be more people than Pringle could handle at a time, he does find that sometimes working at home is isolating. He has a small number of good friends who have similar lifestyles. "I like a lot of time by myself, but I have close friends whom I see frequently." And his work suits him. He's not as busy as he was when he was a faculty member, but he's much more productive now. And, he says, keeping shorter days is crucial to one's health and well-being, especially if you're on the frontlines. "You'd better take care of yourself if you're going to get up the next day and do it again. It's a marathon, not a sprint." Table of Contents | News & Views | Arts & Entertainment Classifieds | Personals | EW Archive