Hilary Koprowski

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Hilary Koprowski (b. December 5, 1916 in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish virologist and immunologist.

Koprowski is a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine at Warsaw University. He also received degrees from the Warsaw Conservatory and the Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music in Rome. He obtained his M.D. degree in Warsaw and adopted scientific research as his life's work.

Koprowski discovered the first vaccine against poliomyelitis (see polio vaccine) which was based on oral administration of attenuated polio virus. In researching a polio vaccine, he decided to focus on the use of live viruses that were attenuated (rendered non-virulent) instead of the killed viruses that became the basis for the injections created by Jonas Salk. Koprowski viewed the live vaccine as more powerful since it entered the intestinal tract directly and could provide lifelong immunity, whereas the Salk vaccine required boosters. Also, taking a vaccine by mouth is easy, whereas an injection is more expensive and needs medical facilities. It was taken by the first child on February 27, 1950 and within 10 years was used for immunization on four continents.

[edit] Awards and Honors

Koprowski has received honorary degrees from numerous universities and he is the recipient of many honors, including: The Order of the Lion from the King of Belgium, the French Order of Merit for Research and Invention, a Fulbright Scholarship, an appointment as Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Max Planck Institute in Munich. In 1989 he received both the San Marino Award for Medicine and the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of The Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

In 2006, Koprowski was awarded a record 50th grant from the NIH.

Koprowski has received many honors in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Cancer Research Award, the John Scott Award and in May of 1990 he was presented with the most prestigious honor of his home city, the Philadelphia Award.

Dr. Koprowski is a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the New York Academy of Sciences. He is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which in 1959 presented him with its Alvarenga Prize. He serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization. He holds foreign membership in the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. On March 22, 1995, Dr. Koprowski was awarded the title of "Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland" by the President of the Republic of Finland. On March 13, 1997, Dr. Koprowski was awarded the Legion D'Honneur Award from the French Government. On September 29, 1998, Koprowski was presented with the "Great Order of Merit" by the President of Poland, for his polio research. Just recently, on February 25, 2000, Dr. Koprowski was honored with a reception at Thomas Jefferson University celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first feeding of the oral polio vaccine (by Dr. Koprowski). At this reception Dr. Koprowski received commendations from the United States Senate, the Pennsylvania Senate and Governor Ridge.

Dr. Koprowski is the author or co-author of over 875 articles in scientific publications and is co-editor of several journals. Currently, he is the President of the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories, Inc. and Head of the Center for Neurovirology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

[edit] AIDS Accusations

UK journalist Edward Hooper, who read a (subsequently retracted) 1992 article in Rolling Stone magazine on the "oral polio vaccine AIDS hypothesis" by freelance journalist Tom Curtis, put forward the theory that AIDS was inadvertently caused in the late 1950's in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski's research into a polio vaccine. Hooper travelled to Africa for 7 years of research into the subject, before publishing a book, The River, in which he alleged that an experimental oral polio vaccine prepared in chimpanzee kidneys or blood was the route through which the SIV mutated into HIV, some time between 1957 to 1959. The supplemental evidence collected since the publication of The River culminated in the production of the film The Origin Of Aids [1].

Koprowski responded to the accusations that he may be the creator of an epidemic disease in a letter to Science ^[1].

Some members of the scientific community do not believe these allegations against the polio vaccine are true^[2]. Analysis of frozen samples of some of the lots used for vaccine production has found no traces of SIV or HIV. The same analysis proves that those lots were produced on macaque and not on chimpanzee tissue ^[3]. It remains unclear whether chimpanzees may have been used at later stages of the vaccine production. On one hand there is no evidence for that in the reports documenting the vaccination trials, on the other hand caretakers, interviewed by Hooper and who had worked at a local facillity of the vaccination project, witnessed the removal of kidneys from living chimpazees, something which is usually only done for preparing tissue cultures as used in vaccine production.^[4].

More recent articles have shown that SIV exists in populations of chimpanzees in the Cameroon. Further analysis of these findings have lead some scientists to believe that hunters were infected with HIV as early as the 1930's not the late 1950's as Hooper claims ^[5][6]. Hooper rejects the 1930's date on the basis that phylogenetic dating of "the most recombinogenic organisms known to medical science", immunodeficiency viruses, is "inherently incapable of making any allowance for recombination". ^[7]

[edit] References

1. ^ Hilary Koprowski (1992). "AIDS and the polio vaccine". Science 257 (5073): 1024, 1026-7. PubMed.
2. ^ Worobey M, Santiago ML, Keele BF, Ndjango JB, Joy JB, Labama BL, Dhed'A BD, Rambaut A, Sharp PM, Shaw GM, Hahn BH (2004). "Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted.". Nature 428 (6985): 820. PubMed DOI:10.1038/428820a.
3. ^ Blancou P, Vartanian JP, Christopherson C, Chenciner N, Basilico C, Kwok S, Wain-Hobson S. (2001). "Polio vaccine samples not linked to AIDS". Nature 410 (6832): 1045-6. PubMed DOI:10.1038/35074171.
4. ^ . (2004). The Origins of AIDS [television documentary]. MFP/Galafilm.
5. ^ Gao, F., Bailes, E., Robertson, D. L., Chen, Y., Rodenburg, C. M., Michael, S. F., Cummins, L. B., Arthur, L. O., Peeters, M., Shaw, G. M., Sharp, P. M. and Hahn, B. H. (1999). "Origin of HIV-1 in the Chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes". Nature 397 (6718): 436-441. PubMed DOI:10.1038/17130.
6. ^ Keele, B. F., van Heuverswyn, F., Li, Y. Y., Bailes, E., Takehisa, J., Santiago, M. L., Bibollet-Ruche, F., Chen, Y., Wain, L. V., Liegois, F., Loul, S., Mpoudi Ngole, E., Bienvenue, Y., Delaporte, E., Brookfield, J. F. Y., Sharp, P. M., Shaw, G. M., Peeters, M., Hahn, B. H. (2006). "Chimpanzee Reservoirs of Pandemic and Nonpandemic HIV-1". Science Online 2006-05-25. PubMed DOI:10.1126/science.1126531.
7. ^ Ed Hooper Beatrice Hahn. A Portrait of Scientific Certainty. Retrieved December 6, 2006.