[EAS] Maurice Hilleman

[Peter J. Kindlmann]

>  "... it was said that he had saved more lives than any other
>  scientist in the 20th century. His peers said that he had done more
>  for preventive medicine than anyone since Louis Pasteur. .... Some
>  said he should have had the Nobel. The same was said about Jonas
>  Salk, who developed the first successful vaccine for polio. But the
>  Nobel prizegivers tend to favour basic science rather than applied
>  research."

The URL is
<http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3886660>
If it doesn't work for you, the text follws.  --PJK

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Obituary
Maurice Hilleman
Apr 21st 2005
 From The Economist print edition

Maurice Hilleman, pioneer of preventive medicine, died on April 11th, aged 85

A STORY that Maurice Hilleman liked to tell to illustrate his work as 
a developer of vaccines concerned his daughter Jeryl Lynn. In 1963 at 
the age of five she caught mumps, a highly infectious disease of 
childhood that is usually benign but can be a killer. Mr Hilleman 
used swabs to collect the mumps virus growing in her throat, and 
preserved it in a jar of beef broth. He produced a form of the virus 
that was too weak to cause disease but strong enough to trigger the 
body's natural defences and make the person immune. The weakened 
strain, named after Jeryl Lynn, has become the standard vaccine to 
prevent mumps. The disease is now rare, at least in rich countries.

Identifying the problem, collecting data, finding a solution: Mr 
Hilleman developed some 40 vaccines, among them for measles, 
hepatitis A and B, chickenpox, meningitis and pneumonia. He developed 
the one-shot vaccine that can prevent several diseases, such as MMR 
(measles, mumps and rubella). When in 1988 President Reagan presented 
him with the National Medal of Science, America's highest scientific 
honour, it was said that he had saved more lives than any other 
scientist in the 20th century. His peers said that he had done more 
for preventive medicine than anyone since Louis Pasteur.

Even allowing for the hyperbole generated on such occasions the 
commendations were merited. Some said he should have had the Nobel. 
The same was said about Jonas Salk, who developed the first 
successful vaccine for polio. But the Nobel prizegivers tend to 
favour basic science rather than applied research. It was Pasteur 
(1822-95) who discovered that a weakened microbe could be used as an 
immunisation against its more virulent form, and all succeeding 
microbiologists have had to live under his long shadow.

Waiting for bird flu
Mr Hilleman's greatest contribution to a healthy world may have been 
his work on the safe mass production of vaccines that can be stored 
ready for use against the pandemics that since antiquity have 
regularly swept across continents, such as the 1918 flu outbreak that 
killed more than 20m people. In 1957, when flu swept through Hong 
Kong, Mr Hilleman identified the virus as a new form to which people 
had no natural immunity and passed on his findings to vaccine-makers. 
When the virus reached the United States a few months later 40m doses 
of vaccine were ready to limit its damage. Mr Hilleman established 
that the flu virus is constantly mutating, making it difficult to 
provide a reliable vaccine. Developing a vaccine can be complex. His 
fellow-workers saw him as an artist as much as a scientist, bringing 
to his discipline an instinctive feeling of what would work. 
Following his guidelines, many nations are making large quantities of 
what they believe will be useful vaccines in the hope of defeating a 
possible pandemic of bird flu, should the virus spread from Asia.

Getting a vaccine through its numerous trials to be licenced for 
public use was the big thrill in Mr Hilleman's life, he said. It was 
like being young again, like being back in Miles City, his home town 
in Montana, when they had something to celebrate, such as building a 
barn. "Everyone would get together, sit on a log, get a fresh bucket 
of water and pass around a cup." Did you say water?

Life was simple then, he said. He picked up things there that he 
could have learnt nowhere else, such as hypnotising a chicken, an 
animal that has, if involuntarily, contributed much to medical 
research. Miles City sounds primitive rather than simple. It had been 
a frontier town and the older inhabitants still told stories of 
Indian battles. Young Hilleman was poor. His mother and twin sister 
had died during his birth and he and his seven surviving siblings had 
been brought up on a farm by relations. At the age of 18 he was 
working in a shop.

For a young man who felt that life must have more to offer than 
selling goods to cowboys and their girlfriends, there were two 
glimpses of a more interesting world. One was his homemade radio, 
which could just pick up talk and music programmes broadcast from 
distant Chicago. The other was the local public library, where he 
found a copy of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", which had 
avoided the censorship of the town's fundamentalist church.

He did eventually escape, first to the local state university and 
then to the University of Chicago, where he studied microbiology. 
America was by then at war. Mr Hilleman's contribution to winning it 
was to develop vaccines to protect soldiers fighting in the Pacific. 
After the war he worked for the Walter Reed army medical centre and 
then joined Merck, a pharmaceutical company, which, over some 27 
years, provided him with the facilities to explore the mysteries of 
immunology.

Mr Hilleman believed that science would eventually rid the world of 
disease, as it had disposed of smallpox in 1979 and is close to 
banishing polio. But the big killers, tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS, 
were holding out, especially AIDS. He was baffled that 18 years of 
research had not produced a vaccine to prevent HIV, which can lead to 
AIDS. Mr Hilleman, usually a gentle, patient man, got angry about 
this.