Pioneering Measles Vaccine Researcher Has Anecdotes, Insight, Perspective, and Generosity to Spare

April 24th, 2014

Pioneering Measles Vaccine Researcher Has Anecdotes, Insight, Perspective, and Generosity to Spare

In the new IDSA/Oxford University Press journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases (OFID), we plan to interview a series of great figures in ID about their experiences, posting them as podcasts with accompanying scripts.

Our first interview is with Dr. Samuel Katz, a key figure in development of the measles vaccine, and it can be heard here.

It’s timely for several reasons. First, World Immunization Week starts today; second, MMWR just released a summary of the staggering health benefits of the “Vaccines for Children” program, created 20 years ago in response to the last big measles outbreak in this country; and third, the Annals of Internal Medicine has just published a thoughtful commentary on the difficulty of identifying measles in an era when so few clinicians have ever seen a case.

I encourage you to listen to the full interview, but here are some highlights:

What it was like working in the lab of Nobel laureate John Enders
How they tested the attenuated measles virus first in monkeys, and then on themselves (!)
Planning and conducting the first clinical trial
Expansion of the vaccine to international use
How Dr. Katz views the anti-vaccine movement

There are some great stories in there, all suffused with an extraordinary generosity of spirit and humility. You’ve heard the phrase “humble to a fault”? We’ve got a prime candidate in Dr. Samuel Katz!

After all, what other medical advances have had quite the health benefits of a safe, highly effective vaccine — especially for a disease as contagious and potentially serious as measles? Or, to extract some key data from the MMWR cited above:

Because of vaccination, approximately 322 million illnesses, 21 million hospitalizations, and 732,000 premature deaths will be prevented among children born during [the past 20 years], at a cost savings to society of $1.38 trillion.

That pretty much says it all.

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April 24th, 2014