Hanoi-'A Feeling of Purpose'

(Dr. Mark Ptashne, Lecturer on Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, traveled to Hanoi this June to lecture before a group of North Vietnamese scientists. Ptashne also visited Laos and South Vietnam on his trip. He was interviewed by CRIMSON reporters Michael J. Ryan and Thomas P. Southwick.)

Q. You spent a week in Hanoi this summer. What circumstances led you to go there?

A. Since 1964, the beginning of what the North Vietnamese call the American War of Destruction, there has been a steady stream of Americans who have gone in small groups-journalists, people associated with the peace movement and so on. About a month before I went Noam Chomsky from M. I. T. went to Hanoi and while he was there was unexpectedly asked to lecture on linguistics. When he was leaving the North Vietnamese told him they wanted to receive more Americans, especially doctors and biologists. So, on rather short notice, I went with two other guys especially for the purpose, in my case, of lecturing on molecular biology.

Q. You told me of meeting a biochemistry professor in Hanoi who seemed to be well versed in current trends in molecular biology. Is she typical of North Vietnamese scientists?

A. Well, its hard to say what's typical when you see a country for week. Perhaps I should tell you what I did while I was there. One full day I spent lecturing, starting at 7:30 a. m. and ending about 7:30 p. m. There was a group of about 100 people in the room, most of them professors and teachers of various sorts, some of them students. Most of these were interested in things related to what I do-genetics, biochemistry and so on.

Now, I think that it's only fair to get some picture of the situation there, to realize the extent to which North Vietnam is an underdeveloped country. You see almost no cars in Hanoi or outside where we visited. There are no facilities for color photography in North Vietnam, very little printing facilities, the few posters I saw were originals and were not duplicated. In other words it's a country that by outward appearances is enormously poor. Now you might think that in their situation the typical scientist would be more directed toward practical things. The kind of stuff I do is of questionable interest to underdeveloped countries. But the fact of the matter is that among these hundred people the interest was enormous. What they knew and what they were interested in, I must confess, surprised me.

Q. Do the North Vietnamese have access to papers and journals published in the west?

A. So far as I can tell they do, but the major problem is that they receive them as late as a year after publication. Since coming back I've raised some money to send them an airmail subscription to Nature, and I hope that we can raise money to send them airmail subscriptions to other journals. The one thing that I think is clear is that they will be read and used there.

Q. One of the problems of underdeveloped countries in the West is that people are brought to the United States and taught things that aren't really valuable when they go back to their countries. Where are North Vietnamese scientists trained and do they learn things which are relevant to the development of their country or do they learn skills which can't be used there?

A. Well, its a complicated question. First of all there are Vietnamese who are studying outside the country, though I don't know how many, most of them in Eastern Europe, some in Russia and, I think, a few in China. One important point is that one is struck by the almost total absence of foreign influence in Hanoi. This extends to their education too. The textbooks are written in Vietnamese. They explicitly reject having foreigners teach them. This seems characteristic of their society in general.

The other thing you mentioned was "do they study things which are relevant to their country?" This was really one of the most interesting things to me about my contact with them. With the little amount of research they are able to do, they really can't afford to conduct it in areas which don't have a practical application. Certainly they don't intend to compete with the American or other developed countries in doing basic research.

On the other hand, when I asked them why they were so keenly interested in molecular biology, the answer came from a professor of biochemistry. After some discussion with the other Vietnamese he stood up and said, "We are in the process of building our future society and it is very important for us to know all of these things for building that society." This seems to me to summarize a lot of what I was feeling while I was there. There is a feeling of purpose, a feeling that they are going to build a society in which science and other forms of cultural activity will be used intelligently and used for their ends. The reason this was so moving I think is that all of us are becoming aware of the anxiety that young people, especially Americans, feel about doing science. My feeling is that young Americans feel that to devote one's self to doing straight science is somehow copping out, and there are great pressures, with which I am sympathetic, to spend one's time doing other things.

Q. Could you talk a little about the education system in general and the system of night schools and universities?

A. I visited one night school for factory workers which is part of a supplementary education program which reportedly enrolls more than a million people in North Vietnam. The classes met for 21/2 hours twice a week for people who entered the work force before completing secondary education. Upon completion of this course about half of those enrolled in the final year pass a national exam and enter a higher technical correspondence school.

The more typical primary and secondary education begins at age seven and lasts, in principle, 10 years. As of now, the first degree is mandatory, and the second degree will be required by 1972. There are in addition 28 special schools, one in each province, which teach advanced classes, particularly in mathematics. In 1967-68 there were reportedly over three and one half million pupils enrolled in the primary and secondary schools. This becomes particularly meaningful when one recalls that in 1945 nearly 95 per cent of the country was illiterate.

There are 32 institutions of higher learning in North Vietnam which enroll 62,000 students (in 1936 there were only 600 students in higher education in all of Indochina). Admission to one of the universities requires in part passing the baccalaureate, given throughout the country on the same day each year, a schedule which was reportedly maintained throughout the bombing of North Vietnam. There is only a single baccalaureate for science and non-science students alike.

Q. How adequate is the medical care in North Vietnam?

A. I can't really say how effective it is. Certainly it is striking to compare Hanoi to Saigon or Vientiane, or any other Asian capital. I've seen in the general cleanliness, in how people look and dress, that the general state of health seems remarkable. You don't see the open sores, undernourishment, tuberculosis, and all those things that are so prevalent in so many other Asian cities. The North Vietnamese claim that the infant mortality rate has been reduced to about seven per thousand, which is about what it is in America. I can't say whether this is true or false, but from what I've seen it might very well be true.

The basic medical effort in North Vietnam is preventive medicine. They were fortunate in having an extraordinary man, Thach, to head their efforts in this area. He was recently killed in an American bombing raid just north of the DMZ. I think medical people would be interested in reading what he had to say.

One of the interesting things that goes on in North Vietnam is that they take very seriously the tradition of Oriental medicine. One day we visited the Oriental medicine institute in Hanoi where we learned that they regard the practices of Oriental medicine as a challenge to research. They are now subjecting some of the traditional remedies to scientific analysis to find out which ones work and which ones don't. If they find one which works they attempt to find out how it works.

In the meantime you see throughout the country dispensaries of Western medicine side by side with dispensaries of Oriental medicine. Characteristically their interest in Oriental medicine is not tied to dogma. They simply realize that there is good reason to think that some of these practices are effective and they are going to find out about them. They are not intimidated by people who laugh at practices which aren't in the Western mold. In fact some of the most important drugs in Western medicine are derived from Oriental cures.

Q. Do they smoke dope there?

A. Not as far as I could see. Drink a lot of tea though.

Q. What preparations are they making to deal with the problems the country will face at the end of the war?

A. One major problem will be plastic surgery to overcome war wounds induced by anti-personnel bombs and napalm. Apparently a vast quantity of anti-personnel weapons have been used, mainly pellet bombs, and the disfiguration will be difficult to take care of. For this they may ask for some outside help.

The other thing I heard talked about is that they realize that while fighting, a terrific amount of the anguish and suffering that people feel can be repressed. If the war stops and if they survive (two propositions which remain hypothetical) they expect that these neuro-psychiatric difficulties will surface. Attempts are being made to plan now to deal with these problems.

Q. What did you learn about Vietnamese society?

A. When I got there I was interested in learning how socialism was developed in North Vietnam, but I was told quite frankly that there simply wasn't enough time; there were too many scientific questions and there wasn't time to go into detail about how the society works. I suspect that they thought that without great explanation I wouldn't understand, and I suspect they were right. I gather that the party is very broadly based with something like a million members. What the relationship is between being in the party and being at the University is something I don't know.

The distribution system seems to be very efficient. You don't see long lines. Food is being sold everywhere and there seems no problem in getting enough to eat. I was told later that a lot of this distribution is done through the factories, collectives, and villages.

I spent a lot of time walking around Hanoi taking pictures. One night we went into a museum which was showing posters. The place was full of kids. I went up to one of the posters and started to put my finger on it to see if it was an original or a print. I looked around to see if there was a guard, but there was none. I asked my guide about this and he seemed confused. I had to explain to him that I would have thought that with a museum full of kids one would need guards to keep them from touching the paintings. He said that there are no guards and that Vietnamese children are taught from an early age that public property belongs to everyone and so you don't harm it.

There are very few motor vehicles. There are thousands of bicycles. A sort of ecologist's dream. The bicycles are left around unlocked and there seems to be very little crime. Again, I'm not offering any simple explanations, but the difference between Hanoi and Saigon is just enormous.

Q. Could you contrast Hanoi and Saigon?

A. Well, it's hard to do that because the contrast is so staggering that one doesn't know where to begin. First of all, Hanoi was largely evacuated during the bombing. I don't know how many people are there now, but I would guess it's less than half a million. Hanoi is quiet and clean. People look healthy and are simply but adequately dressed. It appears to be an extremely egalitarian society. One day we were out walking through Hanoi and the head of the Friendship Committee, who is also a professor of Fine Arts, came by on a bicycle just like everybody else. When we talked with Pham Van Dong there were no guards. We met him alone and in a very relaxed and informal atmosphere. These are admittedly superficial impressions, but I can only go by what I saw.

On the other hand I was really not prepared for what I saw in Saigon. There are three and a half million people in Saigon, a city which was built for one tenth that number. The noise, the filth, the smog are overwhelming. The city is full of Hondas bought with American money. There are little kids everywhere begging. There are lepers in the streets. At night, when it quiets down, you can hear the artillery firing into the countryside.

Saigon is no longer the pleasure spot for American soldiers it once was. In fact there are very few soldiers. One G. I. told me that the level of violence and hatred has gotten to the point where it is dangerous to walk around in uniform. I talked with some soldiers in Saigon who favored the war but said that they would never walk around Saigon because of what would happen to them. Another explanation for the scarcity of soldiers in Saigon is the fear that many of them might join the student peace demonstrations.

I talked to a whole range of people: workers, schoolteachers, a couple of members of the opposition in the Senate. Many told me that they were not themselves in favor of the NLF and had originally favored American intervention. But without exception they said that it is now imperative for the Americans to leave immediately, that they are ready to take their chances with the NLF and that they prefer working out an arrangement with the NLF to continuing to be the humiliated lackeys of the Americans they clearly now are.

The best way to sum up what Saigon looks like is that it is a caricature of the worst aspects of any American city I have ever seen. The slums, thenoise, the filth. In addition is the apparent massive destruction of a culture. You have all these people who were driven off the farms and whose main problem is how to stay alive through American money. It is getting hard to do because of the inflation. People I spoke to have two or three jobs just to pay for food.

Q. How long were you in Saigon?

A. For a week, right after I came out of Hanoi.

Q. In general did you have any trouble with passports and the U. S. government?

A. In fact you have to go through an enormous amount of bureaucratic stuff, but the American embassy was very polite and very friendly. There are two reasons for their attitude, I think. They are interested in having contact with the prisoners inside and we carried letters in and out. The other thing, I think, is maintaining that facade of reasonableness that you find with Americans all through Southeast Asia. Laos is a good example. Nothing could be quieter and more pleasant than Vientiane, full as it is with C. I. A. men and U. S. agents and so on. Of course, probably the most massive bombardment of civilians is going on now as it has been for several years in northern and southern Laos.

One of the most moving experiences of the entire trip for me was going to the refugee camp in Vientiane and talking to some of these people, demoralized and pitiful refugees, who had been driven out of their villages by the American bombing. When I spoke with them they said, "You're the Sirs who feed us, and thank you for feeding us. Sirs," and so on. But they also told us quite simply what it's like to be living under continual bombardment, what it is like to be afraid to leave your cave for even fifteen minutes because you might be destroyed. Basically they don't know why they are where they are; they only know that their entire way of life has been totally destroyed.

They are suffering and have suffered enormously. The fact that the massive bombing in Laos goes on unprotected, with C. I. A.-trained mercenaries to fight on the land, seems to me an ominous portent of the use of American bombs and Asian mercenaries to fight for what we cannot afford to win with our lives.

Q. What kinds of political conversations did you have with the North Vietnamese?

A. They were particularly interested in the progress of the Shea Bill and the Cooper-Church amendment. They were well informed on these bills and the American political scene in general. They generally spoke of the war as simply a "wrong" policy, disastrous for the United States as well as for Indochina. There seems to be total confidence that in the long run they will prevail. They repeatedly expressed sympathy with what they perceive to be the difficult struggle of the peace movement in the United States. They expressed a strong desire for friendship with Americans and continual contact after the war's end.