Polio Pioneers Joseph Melnick, Dorothy M. Horstmann Die
Joseph L. Melnick and Dorothy M. Horstmann, two scientists who had important roles in the historic victory over the scourge of polio, died this month. Dr. Melnick, 86, died Jan. 7 in Houston, and Dr. Horstmann, 89, died Jan. 11 in New Haven, Conn. Both had Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Melnick joined Baylor University's medical school in 1958 as a professor and founding chairman of the school's virology and epidemiology department. He was a professor of molecular virology and microbiology and dean of the Biomedical Sciences Graduate School from 1968 until 1991.
Dr. Horstmann spent most of her adult life at Yale University, where she conducted research in the 1940s and '50s and became a medical professor in 1961. She was named a professor of epidemiology and pediatrics in 1969 and did research in rubella treatment before retiring in 1982.
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The two researchers, who had both done groundbreaking research at Yale beginning in the 1940s, wrote a number of technical papers together. In the 1940s, it was work by the Yale Poliomyelitis Study Unit, led by John R. Paul, that showed that the polio virus was a common one that caused paralysis in relatively rare instances -- such as when the virus reached the spinal cord through the bloodstream.
Dr. Horstmann, along with others in the Yale group and scientists at Johns Hopkins University, illustrated how the virus caused paralysis, laying the groundwork for a vaccine. She is credited as the first to demonstrate that the polio virus traveled through the bloodstream.
By the 1950s, polio had become a national nightmare. It seemingly struck without warning in the midst of summer, felling children with fevers and ailments such as an inability to breath, killing some and leaving many more seriously crippled. The media were filled with stories of the disease and of panicked families that sent their children out of America's cities and suburbs to rural surroundings, where it was thought they might be safe.
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Hope was on the way.
Jonas Salk, of the University of Pittsburgh, developed the first successful polio vaccine from inactivated poliomyelitis. In 1955, Thomas Francis Jr. of the University of Michigan announced that the Salk vaccine passed its field trials with flying colors and that victory over the disease was in sight.
By summer 1954, 440,000 children in 44 states had received the vaccine, which was proved 80 percent to 90 percent effective in immunizing against the virus.
Francis's announcement brought more than 500 scientists attending the conference to their feet in a storm of applause. More than 150 reporters at the conference spread the word across the world's front pages and in television and radio bulletins.
Within hours of the news, the federal government announced to a clamoring public that six large pharmaceutical companies had been mobilized to produce and market the new vaccine. The companies were actually already producing the vaccine, in anticipation of a government green light. They announced they would have enough vaccine for 30 million people that year and be able to vaccinate the entire nation before the start of the 1956 polio season.
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The Salk vaccine was followed by Albert Sabin's polio vaccine, made with weakened, rather than dead, viruses. The great advantage of the Sabin vaccine was that it was given orally; the Salk vaccine had to be administered by injection. Dr. Horstmann directed a World Health Organization review of field trials, which took place in the Soviet Union, and they demonstrated the new vaccine's safety and effectiveness.
Dr. Horstmann, an opera fan, was born in Spokane, Wash. She was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at San Francisco Medical School. After her work in polio research, she became a pediatrician before returning to Yale.
She had served as president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Dr. Melnick, who was born in Boston, was a graduate of Wesleyan University. He received a doctorate in physiological chemistry from Yale, where he taught from 1942 until '57. He then served as virus laboratories chief of the National Institutes of Health's biologics standards division before joining Baylor.
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Dr. Melnick, who classified and named several virus groups, did early work in environmental virology. He developed methods for the detection and monitoring of viruses in the environment at large and was a leader in WHO programs fighting polio, hepatitis and herpes.
He demonstrated that the polio virus was a member of the enterovirus family and conducted research that helped show the rarity of enteroviruses entering the central nervous system. He was one of the first to demonstrate that the polio virus usually invaded the body through the intestines.
He, too, did work with the Sabin vaccine, showing that it caused less damage to the central nervous system than did other vaccines. With famed Baylor heart surgeon Michael E. DeBakey, he researched the role of viruses in heart disease.
Over the years, Dr. Melnick also had edited a number of scientific journals, wrote "Medical Microbiology," a text that has gone through 22 editions, and written more than 1,000 technical papers.
He had served as secretary-general of two international virology congresses and had chaired the virology section of the International Association of Microbiological Societies. He also had served as president of the U.S. Commission on Polio Eradication and was chairman of the viral hepatitis advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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