Trenton, March 11 (U.P.) – A young biologist asked for half-interest in all the profits from the wonder drug streptomycin today on the grounds that he is co-discoverer.
Dr. Albert Schatz, of 210 Riverdale Ave., Brooklyn, assistant professor of biology at Brooklyn College, charged in a suit filed in New Jersey Supreme Court that he was done out of his rightful share of the "rewards and fame" for the discovery by Dr. Selman A. Waksman.
The suit said Waksman, the recognized discoverer of the drug, threatened to "see to it" that Schatz would never again find scientific employment unless he signed a patent application to the Rutgers University Research and Endowment Foundation. All profits from the drug were assigned to the foundation by Waksman.
Schartz' suit said he helped Waksman isolate the drug when he was a graduate student at Rutgers in 1943. The suit alleged Waksman and the foundation licensed firms to produce and sell streptomycin "with the result that they have received and will continue to receive large sums of money."
The suit asked that all assignments made by Schatz to the foundation be set aside, that the money received in exploiting the drug be accounted for, and that the foundation be prohibited from selling any interest in the drug.
