I note the recent passing of Maurice Hilleman on 11 April 2005. Dr. Hilleman was a giant in the field of vaccines. Working at Merck & Co., he developed 8 of the 14 commonly used vaccines: measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia, and Haemophilus. Among his other achievements, he found that SV40 …
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the licensing of the first vaccine against poliomyelitis, the inactivated poliovaccine (IPV) developed by Jonas Salk. On 12 April 1955, the results of the clinical trial of IPV were announced. The trial, supported by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) and organized by Thomas Francis of the University …
Influenza is an acute respiratory disease that occurs both in yearly outbreaks, or epidemics, and in much larger, global outbreaks called pandemics. Predicting the next pandemic strain is an important goal because advance preparation of a vaccine could save many lives. The outbreaks of avian influenza in east and southeast Asia in 2003-2004 has lead …
This past week the vaccine against influenza made world news when the British government suspendend the manufacturing license of a Liverpool factory that produces the vaccine. The factory is owned by Chiron, which had hoped to sell influenza vaccine produced there in the U.S. As a consequence, the U.S. will fall about 48 million doses …
In “The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS”, Edward Hooper claims that HIV-1 was introduced into humans in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1950s. He suggests that the stocks of oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) that were being used in clinical trials were produced in cultures of kidney cells …
Poliovirus is the etiologic agent of the paralytic disease known as poliomyelitis. It’s also the virus I’ve worked on for most of my career. The World Health Organization is in the midst of a massive effort to eradicate the disease, an undertaking that has encountered a number of obstacles. In coming posts I’d like to …
