Hilary Koprowski

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Koprowski, in Warsaw (2007)

Hilary Koprowski (born December 5, 1916 in Warsaw , Poland , † April 11, 2013 in Philadelphia ) was a Polish-American virologist and immunologist . He was the discoverer of the first polio vaccination with live viruses.

biography

Hilary Koprowski grew up in Warsaw, where he attended the Mikołaj-Rej-Gymnasium, and from the age of 12 took piano lessons at the Warsaw Conservatory. He received his doctorate in 1939 from the Medical Faculty of the University of Warsaw as Dr. med. He also completed exams in music at the Warsaw Conservatory and, after fleeing Poland in 1939/40, at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome . However, his life's work became medical research, although he never gave up music and composed numerous musical works.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Koprowski and his wife Irena, a doctor, fled first to Rome, and in 1940 via France, Spain and Portugal to Brazil, where he worked for the Rockefeller Foundation in Rio de Janeiro . His research area for several years was the search for a vaccination with live viruses against yellow fever .

After World War II, the Koprowskis settled in Pearl River , where Koprowski was employed as a researcher in the Lederle Laboratorien, the pharmaceutical division of American Cyanamid. Here he began his experiments with polioviruses, which eventually led to the discovery of the first oral polio vaccine. His work in a pharmaceutical company earned him the nickname "commercial scientist" in circles of academic scientists.

His marriage to Irena Koprowska in 1938 resulted in two sons: Claude Koprowski (born 1940 in Paris), now a retired doctor, and Christopher Koprowski (born 1951), a neurologist and oncologist.

Discovery of the first oral polio vaccine

Koprowski created the first polio vaccine based on orally administered attenuated polioviruses . In his search for an effective vaccine, he had concentrated on weakened (that is, no longer virulent) live viruses instead of the dead viruses that were later used in Jonas Salk's injected vaccines .

Koprowski found the live vaccine to be more effective because it reached the intestinal tract directly and could provide lifelong immunity, while the Salk vaccine required booster vaccinations. Oral vaccination is also easy, whereas injection required medical equipment and was more expensive. The first child was vaccinated with the Koprowski vaccine on February 27, 1950, and within ten years it was used on four continents. Albert Sabin's polio vaccination with attenuated live polioviruses was developed from viral material that Sabin had received from Koprowski.

Koprowski was President of the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories, Inc., and Director of the Center for Neurovirology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He is the author of over 875 scientific publications and co-editor of several journals. He served as an advisor to the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization .

Controversy about the origin of AIDS

The British journalist Edward Hooper published a book in 1999 with the hypothesis that AIDS was caused by Hilary Koprowski's polio vaccinations in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s . The thesis developed from this about the connection between oral vaccination and AIDS was widely rejected by science. Science magazine wrote of Hooper's claims, "... it can be established with almost one hundred percent certainty that the large field trial of the polio vaccine [...] did not cause AIDS."

Koprowski himself also denied the allegations and won clarification and symbolic financial compensation of US $ 1 in a libel suit against Rolling Stone magazine , which made similar allegations in an article in March 1992. Parallel defamation proceedings brought by Koprowski against the Associated Press were settled a few years later, although the terms of the agreement were never published. Koprowski's original reports from 1960–61, in which his vaccination campaign in the Congo is presented in detail, are published on the Internet by the World Health Organization.

Honors

Koprowski has received many honorary doctorates and other honors, including the Order of the Lion of the Belgian King, the French Order of Merit for Research and Inventions, a Fulbright Scholarship, and the appointment as Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich . In 1989 he received the San Marino Medical Prize and the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Koprowski received numerous honors in Philadelphia, e. B. the Philadelphia Prize for Cancer Research, the HJohn Scott Prize and, in May 1990, his city's highest award, the Philadelphia Prize. He is a member of the Philadelphia Medical College, which awarded him the Alvarenga Prize in 1959.

Koprowski was 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.

He was a foreign member of the Yugoslav and Polish Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and the Finnish Society of Natural Sciences and Humanities.

On March 22, 1995 Koprowski was awarded the title of "Commander of the Order of Lions of Finland " by the Finnish President. In 1997 he became a member of the French Legion of Honor and on September 29, 1998 he received the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland from the hand of the Polish President.

On February 25, 2000, Koprowiski was honored with a reception at Thomas Jefferson University on the fiftieth anniversary of the first oral vaccination with his vaccine. At the reception, his performance was recognized by the US Senate, the Senate of Pennsylvania, and Governor Tom Ridge.

On May 1, 2007, the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Baltimore honored him with the Albert Sabin Gold Medal.

A complete list of all of Koprowski's offices and honors can be found in his curriculum vitae on the website.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hilary Koprowski  - album with pictures, videos and audio files



Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see website ( Memento from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  2. ^ Edward Hooper: The River. Little Brown and Company, 1999, ISBN 0-316-37261-7 .
  3. ^ Michael Worobey et al .: Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted . In: Nature . tape 428 , no. 6985 , April 22, 2004, p. 820 , doi : 10.1038 / 428820a , PMID 15103367 .
  4. ↑ Panel nixes Congo trials as AIDS source . In: Science (New York, NY) . tape 258 , no. 5083 , October 30, 1992, p. 738-739 , PMID 1439779 .
  5. ^ Origin of AIDS update. In: Rolling Stone. December 9, 1993, p. 39 text of the clarification
  6. ^ A b Brian Martin: The Politics of a Scientific Meeting: the Origin-of-AIDS Debate at the Royal Society. In: Politics & the Life Sciences. 2001, pp. 119–130 (online)
  7. ^ Hilary Koprowski: AIDS and the Polio Vaccine . In: Science . tape 257 , no. 5073 , August 21, 1992, p. 1024-1027 , doi : 10.1126 / science.257.5073.1024 , PMID 1509249 .
  8. ^ A. Lebrun et al .: 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 . In: Bulletin of the World Health Organization . tape 22 , 1960, pp. 203-213 , PMID 14415050 , PMC 2555313 (free full text).
  9. ^ SA Plotkin et al .: Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelitis virus in Leopoldville. Belgian Congo. 2. Studies of the safety and efficacy of vaccination . In: Bulletin of the World Health Organization . tape 22 , 1960, pp. 215-234 , PMID 14433516 , PMC 2555322 (free full text).
  10. ^ SA Plotkin et al .: 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 . In: Bulletin of the World Health Organization . tape 24 , 1961, ISSN  0042-9686 , pp. 785-792 , PMID 13736381 , PMC 2555526 (free full text).
  11. ↑ Directory [of] PIASA Members. P. 25.
  12. ↑ Award ceremony and speeches ( Memento of October 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ curriculum vitae ( Memento from December 28, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Koprowski, Hilary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American virologist of Polish descent
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw , Poland
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 2013
Place of death Philadelphia