Vaccine race science, politics, and the human costs of defeating disease. The centers for Disease Control and prevention considers that the number one Public Health achievement of the 20th century. Indeed, vaccines have saved millions of lives it because of vaccinations for smallpox was eradicated and other diseases such as polio, rubella and evenr chickenpox are a thing of theech past. This book is not only the story of the great achievement of Public Health. Ou it is also about the men, womena and children who help take these vaccines possible. Throughout this book, contemporary interviews with key players bring the personalities of these important scientific individuals alive on the page. Dr. Wadman does not shy away from their comfortable truth embedded within the history of vaccine are not user. The vaccine race reminds us it is important that we learn from our past so that the story written in the future about how we solve the crisis of today as much more ethically grounded. Perhaps the greatest praise that i can get this book, it is not just for the vax technology greek. It is for those interested in American History and politics and those who champion the cause of social justice. We are very lucky she is here with us today. Hope it will come to the stage dr. Meredith wadman. [applause] thanks for the welcome. Im so pleased to be here. S thanks especially to the gaithersburg book festival organizers. I cant think of a better way to spend a saturday than among people who love to read and write books. It is a tremendous honor to be here. Nt i will start by telling a little bit about myself. I was born into a medical family. H my dad was a doctor and my mom is a Public Health nurse and we grow very much of the idea that vaccination was a good and important thing. But it wasnt until as a medical student i had a chance to go to south africa on a pediatric rotation is a Major Hospital for laxer the apartheid era that i really came home to me in a really visceral way how lucky we were in our communities to be protected by many vaccines. This is a horribly overcrowded underfunded hospital sec for newborns printed an incubator and typically the hospital had a large area all over the problems of the talent by the time kids got there from the districts they were typically unvaccinated and all marriage and when you get the lack of vaccinations in combination with nonattrition method devastating bicoastal measles will cripple these kids invading their brains and often their lungs with ammonia. Not advancing. Any idea why . It did. My bad. This toddler had just died from measles that invaded his lungs for lack of a 29 cents vaccine. I went on during medical school to realize that my college was m actually to be a writer and i was able to write an article about that hospital with afo newspaper that was a moment of truth for me worry that i am going to go on to journalism than i am going to be a medical writer and ive been lucky enough to do that in washington for 20 years. Most of the time for nature, but more recently for science. A bit like going from the red sox to the yankees, but actually, were all one Big Happy Family and his journalism and theres lots of cross over. So why write a book called the vaccine race and whats it about . There is a lot in the book im going to speed along that touch on three major points. One is the self at the heart of this up were derived from an aborted feed if it used to make many, many vaccines. But most important is the rubella vaccine. That is the race at the heart oa the book before there was one in the 1960s. Finally, i will speak about some of the people who are oftenn abused in the race back the date, 60, 70 years ago to get new therapies and vaccines. How did i actually get darted on this project . It began with about come in many of you may be familiar with, and advanced in 1951 in which a 31yearold largely illiterate, very poor africanamerican woman was dying of cervical cancer. Doctors at Johns Hopkins took solved and they became a hugely important tool in medical research. She was unaware of this and the author of the book by rebeccas flute, spend a lot of time examining the impact of that on her family was left behind and i could not put the book down. I was foremost in my mind a couple years later when i came across a letter to the editor of Science Magazine from someone called when a case like. He identified himself and said basically in this letter that i derived in 1962 from an aborted readers and theyve been used to make vaccines that are protecten hundreds of millions of people. Not only that, i got into a huge intellectual property fight in the 1970s about just want those cells that raise questions that are still unanswered todayn that letter just let off the page at me and very shortly thereafter, 84 at the time, by the way, today is the day of his 89th birthday and hes still going strong. Anyway, i phoned him. I said something is a monthold story here. He said is there ever. Shortly thereafter, i have to have a College Reunion in california that is in california knows that the visited at his home in Northern California in years story from the beginning. Dairy is in 2012 with his wife, ruth in california. He took me back down memory lane to displays that was an elegant brownstone on the university of pennsylvania campus. It was sort of a monthold man made in ensuring american anatomy without this horrible, anatomical specimens in the late 50s. And really at a time when the man in the middle was recruitedf to give the institute a new life. Fe Hillary Koprowski with a larger than life character, an erudite polish and a grin to have escaped from hitler in the nick of time, fled with his young family. He was in at the cure. He could quote rambo as easily as he could. He loved wine and women and song not necessarily in that order and he definitely looked down and american scientists as being just a bit colonial. And so, when he hired leonard who is about 30 years old, who was a workingclassel philadelphian who broughtbo himself up at the bootstraps from a family who had nothing and worked his way through a phd in medical microbiology at the university of pennsylvania, they were let unanswered of a technician to serve up cells per experiment to the really outstanding biologist from all over the world that koprowski had by then. A flick with a bright guy, ambitious than he was not about to be made a second class citizen were stopped from doing science. He wasnt just going to be a household survey. So what did he do . He began getting this is from abortions that were it across the street at the hospital of the university of pennsylvania. Abortion was a criminal offense in every u. S. State in this era. In pennsylvania, there is not even an exception and the criminal law that would be okay to do an abortion to save the life of the mother. 10 years of hard labor, lots of fines. Univ however, authorities but for Major Medical centers like the university of pennsylvania, where they could do a socalled medical Therapeutic Abortion justified adopters for. Heress mysterious reasons, then they tolerated it. That is how he began to receive fetuses every event and he would grow fetal cells in lab dishes. It is an article of faith and belief in science at the time but if you grew cells in lab dishes they should grow forever. They were immortal. He sci if they died as a script on the part of the scientist. Sn someone had sneezed on the culture is in effect a bad for the nutritious broth used to endorse the cells were somehowo deficient. When they started dying after several months, first the cells from the first bbc got started to get decrepit and die, then the next one, then the next. He thought he was growing up. He did all kinds of experiments. What was he doing wrong . You can see on the left those are young, healthy fetal cells from the young typically have an aborted fetus. On the right, old, overly in tht last stages of life. Why were they dying . He finally saw with decades of scientists had not been, but now some lab dishes are his borderless uri provided they are normal and not cancerous else by definition will grow forever. Aborted fetal cells turn healthy, normal fetuses and thel were dying and he published a paper that said as much in took a huge amount of flak. That was 1961. H but that made his name. Flak. It took years and years for his finding to be accepted. Utah to any biologist today and they will know what the heyel flick limit about 50 subdivisions is also go through before they die if they arels normal cells in lab dishes. Immediately when the paper was published, there is tremendous interest among scientists. They wanted to get a hold and do experiments on the normal biology of aging. The nih is equally as interested in the cells because they wanted to find scientists to look into the cells. They had died by mistake. What was he going to do . The nih funded him to his dirt developing new cell lines. Am a lot of money came from the nih under this contract. 120,000 a year in the mid60s and tiny print in the contract said, this will be important, if you finish this contract, all the materials developed under it becomes the property of the federal government and they are ours to keep in you will have them back to us as per his action. Hey hayflick youll probably recall in 1955 the polio vaccine was introduced. It was the great Public Health victory at the area. The solid vaccine was produced in monkey kidney cells and it became apparent throughout the 1950s the those monkey kidney cells harbored silent viruses. By the late 1950s, tens of millions of children in this country have been vaccinated with the salk vaccine and some of the silent monkey viruses were in the vaccine it up to 30 million children are exposed to monkey viruses that it penetrated the vaccine. It had been killed by farmout died in the vaccine, the same fermata hyades to kill the virus. They were walking around. They seemed perfectly healthy is the regulators did not worry too much. Quick review of high school biology, viruses are basically a piece of genetic material surrounded by a protein coat. O on their own they are inert. They dont eat, sleep, drink, have sex, move around or anything else. They must invade cells in order to reproduce themselves are a virus but invade a cell, hijacked machinery can i make copies of itself and those copies first out of the cell. That is how viruses replicate. When you want to make a viral vaccine coming you need valve has essentially many vaccines that are used to make thes. Vaccine, diocese of monkey kidney cells to make the vaccine. On the left, and unsung of 20th century medicine in my opinion, bernice eddy came from a town of less than 200 in virginia, worked her way through her phd at the university of cincinnati and discovered in 1960 that the monkey kidney cells and used to make the polio vaccine harbored a particular monkey virus that caused a uniformly fatal cancer in her laboratory hamsters. She alerted her bosses. She was silenced. She was demoted. She was finally put to work in what had been a supply room with one staffer. She just put up with the punishment. She had amazing gain power. The only newspaper that paid attention to this news while tha mainstream but the national enquirer, which in effect got the story right. Yes, there was the polio vaccine coverup. Yes, there was this particular virus in the salk vaccine and no one knew when the long term would i do in terms of causing cancer. Was very clear that cause cancer and soon it was clear that if you scrape cells remain human beings cheek it would also cause cancer in those. Regulators got worried. They move to another monkey species in 19 to three for producing polio vaccine goinghea forward. Hayflick looked at all of this and thought what the heck, why dont we get cells from one clean, normal few days and they will multiply in the lab and we can use them. We will know they are safe and we can dispense with importing hundreds of thousands of monkeys and bothering them, which was an expensive nasty business anyway. Meet mrs. Acts. Hayflick needed source of an aborted fetus were he to go back and get the medical history. The surgeons at the universitye of then you didnt care about his work. Bu it was a pain in the for them. Hayflick needed someone who wonders to vaccine making. Direct connection was able to contact the institute in stockholm where abortion was legal and to obtain an aborted fetus or mrs. Acts who was in 1962 a mother of several children with the heads and heo wasnt too much use. He was often out of town for manual labor. He wasnt much help when it is around. An alcoholic with a criminal record. Could not face another child. However, although its legal to get an abortion, it was not easy. Many doctors would perform them and by the time mrs. Acts found a swedish gynecologist who agree to perform the abortion, she was four months pregnant. Ill tell you about her if anyones interested but im trying to race ahead here. After the abortion, defeatist, a female was wrapped in a sterile green cloth and transported to the tune in stockholm are the lots were dead and flown to philadelphia where hayflick was waiting for them. In the summer of 1962 as social changes coming in the u. S. , the spring was published. Many other events where if a awl period hayflick hayflick spent at hot summer deriving the cells. He named them from the fetus. Ct he created 800 of these tiny and shows that the cells. Each had two to 3 million cells and it. H. Had the potential to divide another 40 times. If you do the math, you realize its simply one bottle of about 10 million will produceon 22 Million Pounds of cells. For practical purposes, hayflick had created a supply of cells is infinite, especially when you realize when you freeze themp south, that can fuel cells, whether sought out a year later, decade later for 50 years later, the cells will begin dividing again. T they will remember how many times they divided before they were frozen and will continue to roughly 50 division. Merck will still use the sauce today from files like this one by hayflick laid down in the summer of 1952. Hayflick was excited about the cells. All kinds of lab tests. It is clear that the cells wereh clean and safe. In fact, they interviewed mrs. Acts several months after the abortion to make sure theyus were free of disease anded tha cancers. This is how she rudely learned that in fact her fetus had been taken. Is she provided a medical history that made clear there were no problems of health and her history. Hayflick then ran into someone who is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time. This guy, rod murray, very smart harvard educated physician and expert in virology. But he had been in the South Pacific with u. S. Medical court in 1942 when there is a terrible accident with yellow feverit vaccine. Tens of thousands of military men were in fact it with hepatitis e. They had mistakenlv infected this yellow fever vaccine, up to 150 died. Marie witnessed this at close quarters and probably put the fear of god in him. About 13 years later when the salk vaccine was first rolled out, the Safety Division he saw what was called the cutter incident unfold for a Company Laboratories of california produce elks vaccine that had five polio virus in it. Ed a 192 people are paralyzed in 10 died. O there had to be a recall of thes vaccine. A terrible situation. I went to the secretary of health and Human Services was fired. He was moved into his Office Position and he became the chief vaccine regulator for the entire United States. He was in the nih because at the time that is where vaccine regulation resided. It was only later moved to fda. Marie was terribly slow to make decisions, was very conservative and did not want to make changes unless he was absolutely forced to do. When he looked at hayflick steel cells, he was afraid they were going to cause cancer. Even as European Companies in european critical trial people make measles, polio and other vaccines were completely stymied. I will take a right turn, but i promise ill come back to the storyline. 1960 for a massive rubella epidemic in the United States was historic. Rubella, also known as german measles is a mild disease you can expect a theater, might have a few swollen lymph node, might have a rash or you might notot know you are in fact did. However, if a pregnant woman gets rubella, it is devastating on the fetus. Unlike zito which affects pregnancies in about 15 , redoubtable damage virtually every fetus in the first trimester between 90 and 100 . You can imagine in the midto this rubella epidemic with no n vaccine available in 1960 or, women were terrified and many, many were affect the diet. More than 20,000 babies were born either blind, and have come intellectually disabled the shrunken head like you see with this sub 10 babies. U that heart defects, combinations of conditions in an unknown number of other women to 5000 chose to terminate their pregnancies because of the epidemic. They couldnt be sure they have rubella. Aal it is all very scary. Those are pictures that tiny rubella virus particles moving between cells. When rubella infects the fetusus that affects virtually every fetal organ. One of the outcomes of cataracts this is Stephen Windsor who was born during the 196465 epidemic line, death was hurt defects. He is pictured here at e. G. Interest in the plot can too worked up the stairs and around the corner at the institute. Like hayflick he was a selfmade man and the growth in the bronx but not two pennies to rub together, worked his way through medical school, almost shut out because he was jewish, ernie new york state fellowship which meant it could not turn him down for medical school. He had his heart set on making vaccines. He had stimulated hillary couldd pass these who had been a polio vaccine pioneer and decided in the midst of this epidemic that he was going to do something about it. It argued that work in britain where the epidemic hit a year earlier so he knew what he did to babies. He returned to philadelphia in 1964 as the epidemic descended and soon became known is the only doctor in philadelphia who could run a very lengthy and ponderous but has philatelic pregnant woman if she had been affected. Besieged with a woman in couples and can i please have the bloode test. When the test was positive i