

A Forgotten Pioneer of Vaccines - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/health/maurice-hilleman-mmr-vaccines-forgotten-hero.html?hp

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DanBC
> And while every mother could once identify measles in a heartbeat, now even
> the best hospitals have to call in their eldest staff members to ask: “Is
> this what we think it is?”

The Wakefield con has started to deliver. At least one death and over 800
cases of measles in Wales.

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-22198749>)

(Population of Wales is just over 3 million people.)

~~~
hga
I'm impressed how gently the NYT describes him and his research. Wikipedia,
which also has to worry about getting sued, frankly mentions the results of
the reviews (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield>):

" _On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three
dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts
involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children. The panel ruled
that Wakefield had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted
both against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and
irresponsibly" in his published research._ The Lancet _immediately and fully
retracted his 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that
elements of the manuscript had been falsified. Wakefield was struck off the
Medical Register in May 2010, with a statement identifying dishonest
falsification in_ The Lancet _research, and is barred from practicing medicine
in the UK._

" _In January 2011, an editorial accompanying an article by Brian Deer in BMJ
identified Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud". In a follow-up article,
Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR
vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation
driven testing". In November 2011, yet another report in BMJ revealed original
raw data indicating that, contrary to Wakefield's claims in_ The Lancet,
_children in his research did not have inflammatory bowel disease._ "

That's a _lot_ more than "retracted" and "discredited".

And then there's this bottom line for the hero: " _Dr. Hilleman, who might
reasonably have been expected to win a Nobel Prize, got hate mail and death
threats instead._ " I suspect he cared little about that, and a lot about the
resulting childhood morbidity and mortality.

Additional note: there's a very important vaccination principle known as herd
immunity. If enough of the "herd" get vaccinated, then the ones for whom it
doesn't take get protected because they never get exposed. You don't need the
vaccination rate to drop by much for this to become a big factor.

~~~
rdl
What's a fair way to describe Wakefield? "A viable choice for the second time-
machine intervention, after Hitler?"

~~~
masklinn
Many are more worthy of that than Wakefield, though his legacy has yet to
fully bloom.

But he's definitely good for 5mn and a punch in the face in passing.

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mikecane
>>>In 1978, having found a better rubella vaccine than his own, Dr. Hilleman
asked its developer if he could use it in the M.M.R. The developer, Dr.
Stanley Plotkin, then of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, was momentarily
speechless. It was an expensive choice for Merck, and might have been a
painful one for anyone other than Dr. Hilleman.

>>>“It’s not that he didn’t have an ego. He certainly did,” Dr. Plotkin
recalled in a recent interview. “But he valued excellence above that. Once he
decided that this strain was better, he did what he had to do,” even if it
meant sacrificing his own work.

That is how the hell things _used_ to work, not driven by damn accountants and
MBAs and people who want to CYA or get all the credit.

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arjn
Its a pity they didn't give him the Nobel for Medicine while he was alive. He
certainly deserved it. (They can't grant it posthumously)

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skannamalai
Complete double take when I realized the little girl in the photo ended up
being the CFO of the company I used to work for, and also several other
companies...

