Hilary Koprowski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hilary Koprowski (born December 5, 1916, in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish virologist and immunologist, and inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine.
Contents |
Life
Hilary Koprowski received his medical degree from the Faculty of Medicine at Warsaw University. He also received music degrees from the Warsaw Conservatory and the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. He adopted scientific research as his life's work.
Koprowski created the world's first polio vaccine, based on oral administration of attenuated polio virus. In researching a potential polio vaccine, he had focused on live viruses that were attenuated (rendered non-virulent) rather than on killed viruses (the latter became the basis for the injected vaccine that was subsequently 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 booster shots. Also, administering a vaccine by mouth is easy, whereas an injection requires medical facilities and is more expensive. Koprowski's vaccine was taken by the first child on February 27, 1950, and within 10 years was being used on four continents. Albert Sabin's attenuated-live-virus polio vaccine was developed from attenuated polio virus that Sabin had received from Koprowski.
Koprowski is President of Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories, Inc., and Head of the Center for Neurovirology at Thomas Jefferson University. In 2006 he was awarded a record 50th grant from the National Institutes of Health.
He is author or co-author of over 875 scientific papers and is co-editor of several journals. He serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization.
Honors
Koprowski has received many honorary degrees and honors, including the Order of the Lion from the King of Belgium, the French Order of Merit for Research and Invention, a Fulbright Scholarship, and appointment as Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich. In 1989 he received the San Marino Award for Medicine and the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Koprowski has received many honors in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Cancer Research Award, the John Scott Award and, in May of 1990, the most prestigious honor of his home city, the Philadelphia Award. He is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which in 1959 presented him with its Alvarenga Prize.
Koprowski is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America.[1]
He holds foreign membership in the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.
On March 22, 1995, 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, he received the Legion d'Honneur from the French government. On September 29, 1998, he was presented the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by Poland's President.
On February 25, 2000, Koprowski was honored with a reception at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first administration of his oral polio vaccine. At the reception, he received commendations from the United States Senate, the Pennsylvania Senate and Governor Tom Ridge.
AIDS hypothesis
British journalist Edward Hooper publicized a hypothesis that AIDS was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Koprowski's research into a polio vaccine. The OPV AIDS hypothesis has been widely rejected by the scientific community.[2] The journal Science wrote of Hooper's claims, "...it can be stated with almost complete certainty that the large polio vaccine trial... was not the origin of AIDS."[3]
Koprowski also rejected the claim, and won a clarification[4] and $1 in monetary damages[5] in a defamation action against Rolling Stone, which had published an article making similar allegations.[6] A concurrent defamation lawsuit that Koprowski brought against the Associated Press was settled several years later, but the terms were not publicly disclosed.[5]
Koprowski's original reports from 1960-61 detailing part of his vaccination campaign in the Belgian Congo are available on-line from the World Health Organization.[7][8][9]
See also
Notes
- ^ Directory [of] PIASA Members, p. 25.
- ^ 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. doi:. PMID 15103367 doi:10.1038/428820a.
- ^ "Panel nixes Congo trials as AIDS source" (1992). Science 258 (5083): 738-9. PMID 1439779.
- ^ [1]"Origin of AIDS" update. Rolling Stone, 9 December 1993, p. 39
- ^ a b Brian Martin (2001) "The Politics of a Scientific Meeting: the Origin-of-AIDS Debate at the Royal Socity" in Politics & the Life Sciences, pp. 119-130 online
- ^ Hilary Koprowski (1992). "AIDS and the polio vaccine". Science 257 (5073): 1024, 1026-7. PMID 1509249.
- ^ LeBrun A, Cerf J, Gelfand HM, Courtois G, Plotkin SA, Koprowski H (1960) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelities virus in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo 1. Description of the city, its history of poliomyelitis, and the plan of the vaccination campaign" Bull World Health Organ. 22:203-13 online
- ^ Plotkin SA, LeBrun A, Koprowski H (1960) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelitis virus in Leopoldville. Belgian Congo 2. Studies of the safety and efficacy of vaccination", Bull World Health Organ 22:215-34 online
- ^ Plotkin SA, LeBrun A, Courtois G, Koprowski H (1961) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelitis virus in Leopoldville, Congo 3. Safety and efficacy during the first 21 months of study" Bull World Health Organ 24:785-92online
References
- Directory [of] PIASA Members, 1999, New York City, Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, 1999.
External links
- Hilary Koprowski - Official site
