Saul Krugman

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Saul Krugman (born April 7, 1911 in the Bronx , † October 26, 1995 ) was an American doctor ( pediatrics , epidemiology ). He was the first hepatitis researcher to differentiate hepatitis A from B and to test the first vaccines against hepatitis B , measles and rubella .

Life

Krugman was the son of Jewish Russian immigrants and grew up in Paterson, New Jersey . He studied at Ohio State University and the University of Richmond (graduated in 1934), interrupted a year in which he had to earn the money for his studies. He then studied medicine at the Medical College of Virginia (MD 1939) and then began his specialist training (internship) at Cumberland Hospital in Brooklyn. During the Second World War he was a surgeon with the US Army Air Corps in the South Pacific from 1941 to 1946, made it up to captain and received several awards. After the war he was at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where he became director of pediatrics in 1960. He was also Professor of Pediatrics at New York University and from 1960 to 1974 head of the department. In 1991 he had a stroke but returned to university until he retired in 1995. He then moved to Florida.

He had been married to Sylvia Stern since 1940, with whom he had the son Robert (Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado) and a daughter Carol.

plant

Krugman is known, among other things, for the Willowbrook hepatitis study from the 1950s, in which it was shown that injection of antibodies against the hepatitis B virus leads to passive immunity. The antibodies were obtained from blood samples that were heated to kill the pathogens. In the course of the studies it became clear that there were two hepatitis pathogens, later called hepatitis A and B.

Since the tests for the newly developed hepatitis B vaccine were carried out on children at Willowbrook State School, a state school for mentally disabled children in Staten Island, injecting active pathogens into them, the studies were later criticized as unethical, as was Krugman himself admitted. However, Krugman and his close friend and colleague at Bellevue Hospital Robert Ward had been called in by the school itself as infectious disease experts. The children lived under poor conditions, there were regular cases of hepatitis there, even among almost all employees, which often went unnoticed and only came out after the investigations by Krugman and colleagues.

The studies were funded by the US Army and approved by the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene. Further medical studies were also carried out on the children of the school, which were later criticized for ethical reasons.

In addition to the hepatitis B vaccine (1971), Krugman also tested the first measles vaccine (approved in the USA in 1963) and the first rubella vaccine (1965 with Louis Cooper, with the strain HPV-77).

He was an advisor to the WHO and the US Army on infectious diseases and has been involved in vaccination studies worldwide.

His human experiments became known to a wider audience in Germany in the 1980s

“Krugman led a study team at Willowbrook School for the Mentally Disabled from 1956 to 1972. Together with colleagues, he injected children with hepatitis pathogens. The researchers justified themselves by saying that the children would "sooner or later become infected". Krugman discussed his approach with colleagues and obtained approval from an army authority. There was no testing authority for human experiments in 1956, but after a committee was later founded, it indicated its consent. Krugman justified himself by stating that the children's parents had consented. However, the relevant form was misleading because it said the children were receiving a vaccine against hepatitis. It later emerged that the parents had been put under pressure: they were given the prospect that their children would start school earlier and receive special support if they took part in the hepatitis study. "

- Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 3, 2011

Krugman's human experiments on minors were controversial; In Germany, the hygienist Friedrich Deinhardt could not bring himself to a refusal; he simply described these human experiments as "perhaps the most difficult question".

Honors

  • 1967: Haven Emerson Award
  • 1972: Modern Medicine Award, James D. Bruce Memorial Award, John M. Russle Award, Charles H. Hood Foundation Child Health Award
  • 1975: Grulee Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics
  • 1976: Bristol Award from the American Infectious Diseases Society
  • 1978: Robert Koch Medal
  • 1978: New York Academy of Medicine Medal
  • 1981: John Howland Medal from the American Pediatrics Society
  • 1982: Gold Medal of the Greek Red Cross
  • 1983: Mary Woodard Lasker Public Service Award .
  • 1985: Albert B. Sabin Medal, Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award , Alexander Wiener Memorial Lecture of the New York Blood Center
  • 1986: first Pediatric Infectious Disease Award
  • 1987: Sarah L. Poiley Memorial Award from the New York Academy of Sciences.
  • 1988: William Beaumont Prize in Gastroenterology
  • 1990: American Liver Foundation Distinguished Service Award
  • 1994: Immunization Award from the New York State Department of Health

From 1972 to 1973 he was President of the American Pediatric Society and from 1974 to 1975 Vice President of the American Epidemiological Society. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1977), the National Academy of Sciences (1976), the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences in Athens. In 1979 he received an honorary doctorate from Ohio State University .

Fonts

  • Krugman's Infectious Diseases of Children, 11th edition, Mosby 2003, edited by Anne Gershon, Peter Hotez, Samuel L. Katz (1st edition by Krugman and Ward 1958)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ward, Krugman, Giles, Jacobs, Bodansky, New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 248, 1958, p. 407; Krugman, R. Ward, Clinical and Experimental Studies in Infectious Hepatitis , Pediatrics, Volume 22, 1958, p. 1016 -1022
  2. ↑ Krugman, Joan P. Giles, Jack Hammond Infectious Hepatitis: Evidence for Two Distinctive Clinical, Epidemiological, and Immunological Types of Infection , Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 200, 1967, pp. 365-73
  3. ^ Krugman The Willowbrook Hepatitis Studies Revisited: Ethical aspects , Reviews of Infectious Diseases, Volume 8, 1986, p. 157
  4. ↑ This led to a scandal in the 1970s (and even before that, when Robert F. Kennedy , for example, was attending school) when the media raised awareness and civil rights groups took up the case. Designed for 4,000, 6,000 children lived there in 1965. In 1987 the school closed after a long lawsuit and is now a college.
  5. ↑ As well as (often fatal) measles cases against which a vaccination was possible
  6. ↑ online
  7. ^ Benno Müller-Hill , Deadly Science 1933 - 1945. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984 a. ö. ISBN 3-499-15349-1 , pp. 116f, note 187
personal data
SURNAME Krugman, Saul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American medic
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Bronx
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1995