- Person
- Albert Sabin
- Lived
- 1906–1993
- Field
- Virology
- From
- Polish-American
The story
After wartime service with the Army, Albert Sabin returned to Cincinnati in 1946 as head of paediatric research at the University of Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Alongside his own work on polio, he supervised a series of young research fellows. He was a demanding and famously abrasive mentor, but those who could keep up received a superb scientific training.
One of them was Robert M. Chanock, born in Chicago in 1924. Chanock had trained in medicine at the University of Chicago after the Army offered to pay for his studies during the Second World War, and he came to Cincinnati for a research fellowship under Sabin. Sabin called him his favourite "scientific son". After being drafted again in 1952 and doing research on infectious disease in Tokyo, Chanock returned to the Children's Hospital and later worked at the University of Cincinnati and Johns Hopkins University.
Chanock then joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where he spent more than 50 years. There he discovered that human respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, causes severe respiratory disease in infants and young children. RSV returns every winter and is one of the most common causes of illness in small children. Asked how best to avoid it, Chanock joked that parents should have their babies in the spring.
Like his mentor, Chanock went on to make wide-ranging contributions. Working with Leonard Hayflick, he showed that the organism behind "walking pneumonia" was a mycoplasma, which Hayflick named Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Using Hayflick's WI-38 human cell strain, Chanock's group developed an adenovirus vaccine in 1964 that has been used by militaries around the world, and researchers working with him went on to produce vaccines against hepatitis A and rotavirus, the most common cause of severe diarrhoea in infants, as well as a nasal-spray influenza vaccine.
Chanock headed the institute's Laboratory of Infectious Diseases from 1968, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, and received honours including the Robert Koch Prize and, fittingly, the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal. NIAID director Anthony Fauci said his many contributions had helped make the world healthier for millions of people. Sabin's influence thus spread through the scientists he trained as well as through his own discoveries.
Why it matters
Through his students, Sabin's rigorous approach to virology helped identify RSV as a major threat to babies and seeded vaccines that protect children from other common infections.
About Albert Sabin
Białystok-born virologist whose cheap, oral polio vaccine, given on a sugar cube and never patented, became the backbone of the global drive to eradicate polio.
More about Albert Sabin
- Albert Sabin gave his oral polio vaccine free of chargeAlbert Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine, cheap and easy to give on a sugar cube, and gave it free of charge without profiting from its sale.
- Albert Sabin showed polio begins in the gutBy studying the bodies of polio victims, Albert Sabin showed that the virus multiplies first in the intestine, an insight that shaped the oral vaccine he later created.
- A polio vaccine you could take on a sugar cubeAlbert Sabin's live oral polio vaccine was cheap, could be given as drops on a sugar cube, and protected the gut as well as the blood, so it stopped the virus spreading.
- Albert Sabin tested his polio vaccine on himself firstBefore asking anyone else to take his live oral polio vaccine, Albert Sabin swallowed it himself, and his family and colleagues were among the very first recipients.
- Albert Sabin fought tropical viruses for the US ArmyIn the Second World War Albert Sabin served on the Army's Neurotropic Virus Commission, studying dengue and sandfly fever and developing early vaccines and preventive measures.
- Sabin crossed the Iron Curtain to test his polio vaccineAt the height of the Cold War, Albert Sabin shared his vaccine strains with Soviet scientists, and about 77 million Soviet children were vaccinated in 1959–1961.
- Sabin Sundays brought free polio drops to a whole cityOn Sunday, April 24, 1960, Cincinnati began handing out Albert Sabin's oral polio vaccine for free, and about 180,000 local children were soon vaccinated.
- Sabin's vaccine became the backbone of polio eradicationWhen the global drive to eradicate polio began in 1988, about 350,000 children a year were still paralysed. Albert Sabin's oral vaccine became the campaign's main tool.
Sources
- Albert Sabin Wikipedia
- Robert M. Chanock Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.