Credit where it is due
In "Henrietta's Dance"
[April], you quote Roland Patillo as saying, "She [Henrietta
Lacks] made it possible to grow the
[polio] virus so the vaccine could be developed."
Excuse me, but was not the Nobel Prize [in physiology or
medicine] for this achievement awarded in 1954 to John Enders and
his colleagues F. C. Robbins and Th. H. Weller?
Secondly, in the same paragraph [author Rebecca] Skloot says,
"Gey and his colleagues went on to develop a test, using HeLa
cells, to distinguish between the many polio strains, some of
which had no effect on the human body....Through Henrietta's
cells, they found their culprit. With this information, Jonas
Salk and his colleagues in Pittsburgh created a vaccine, and the
National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis established
facilities for mass-producing the HeLa cells. They would use them
to test the polio vaccine before its use in humans."
First of all, there are only three strains of poliovirus that
infect humans, types I, II, and III. The work that distinguished
them by immunologic means was performed by Bernard Roizman (then
a Hopkins ScD candidate and subsequently a faculty member in the
School of Medicine).
Secondly, the ability to determine the neurovirulence (i.e.,
paralyzing effects) of these strains was due to the earlier work
by Albert Sabin in monkeys. David Bodian and the others later
established the criteria for testing the types of poliovirus and
both the so-called "killed" and "attenuated live" polio vaccines
in monkeys. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
provided the monkeys to the Division of Biologic Standards, then
part of the National Institutes of Health, where these tests were
conducted.
In addition, all licensed manufacturers of the polio vaccine had
to perform such neurovirulence tests in monkeys and other
extensive clinical studies in humans before the Division
of Biologic Standards could license their vaccine strains.
Gerald S. Borman, VMD
(postdoctoral fellow 1962-64)
Norfolk, VA
Skloot replies: The history of the polio vaccine is
long and
complex, involving many researchers and tools. Enders and his
colleagues did win the Nobel Prize for growing the polio virus
in tissues cultured utilizing the roller tube technique (which
Hopkins's George Gey developed).
And a group of Pittsburgh researchers produced and tested the
so-called Salk vaccine using cultured monkey kidney cells. Of
course, the HeLa cells were not the sole tool for understanding
the polio virus, nor was Gey the only researcher working to
advance the cause. But they both played a role in polio
research. Gey developed a test (though not the only test) to
distinguish between the three polio strains. And he, with
William Scherer and Jerome Syverton, showed that polio could
infect HeLa cells, which were more sensitive to polio's effects
than some primate cells (see"Studies on the Propagation In Vitro
of Poliomyelitis Viruses," J. Exp. Med., 97: 695-715, 1953). In
1953, the Tuskegee Institute established facilities for mass
production and distribution of HeLa cells, which they shipped (to
the tune of 600,000 cultures) around the country. These cells
were not used to produce the vaccine, but they did replace
primate cells in some labs, providing a simpler and cheaper tool
for continued testing. Pattillo's comment should not be
interpreted as saying the polio vaccine would not have come to
fruition without the HeLa cells. What is relevant to the story of
Henrietta Lacks and her family is that HeLa cells were, indeed,
part of the widespread efforts to end polio.
Racetrack ties
An interesting addendum to the article on John Mauchly (PhD '32)
["The Story That Doesn't
Compute," November] is the contribution to Mauchly's early
work on computer development by another Hopkins alumnus, Harry
Straus (Eng '17).
By the early 1930s, Straus had become a prominent Maryland
entrepreneur, horse and cattle breeder, and sportsman. He made a
fortune through the company he founded, the American Totalisator
Co., which built and supplied electro-mechanical systems for
calculating odds, dispensing tickets, and displaying payouts on
horse races. The system quickly replaced slow and often
inaccurate hand-calculating methods and within a few years, "Tote
Boards" were a fixture at nearly every thoroughbred race track in
the country.
Straus was a forward-thinking man who experimented with an
all-electronic calculating system for the totalisator in 1946.
He learned of the work that Mauchly and Presper Eckert were doing
with the ENIAC and became convinced that electronic computers had
enormous potential for a range of applications.
In 1948, Straus convinced the American Totalisator Co. directors
to invest $500,000 to shore up the financially troubled
Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp., which was then developing UNIVAC,
the first electronic digital computer designed for commercial
use. Straus became chairman of the E-M board and was active in
the business side of operations. Within a year, Eckert-Mauchly
was a healthy corporation with contracts for UNIVACs worth $1.2
million.
In October 1949, just as the totalisator company's help was
reviving the Eckert-Mauchly operation, Straus was killed in a
plane crash. Soon after, the company's directors withdrew their
support from Eckert-Mauchly. The two men were forced to look for
a buyer, and sold their company to Remington Rand in 1950. It is
intriguing to speculate on how the subsequent development of
computers might have been different if Harry Straus had
lived.
John C. Schmidt '50 (MLA '74)
Baltimore
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