Hilary Koprowski

Infobox Scientist
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caption =Koprowski, Warsaw, 2007
birth_date = December 5, 1916
birth_place = Warsaw
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nationality = Poland
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field = virology
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known_for = polio vaccine
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Hilary Koprowski (born December 5, 1916, in Warsaw, Poland) is a Polish virologist and immunologist, and inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine.

Life

Hilary Koprowski received his medical degree from the Faculty of Medicine at Warsaw University. He also received music degrees from the Warsaw Conservatory and the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. He adopted scientific research as his life's work.

In 1939, after the Nazi invasion of Poland Koprowski and his wife Irena, a biologist, fled to Brazil, where he worked for the Rockefeller Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. His field of research for several years was finding a live-virus vaccine against yellow fever.

After the end of World War II, the Koprowskis setteld in Pearl River, where Koprowski was hired as a researcher for the Lederle Laboratories, the pharmaceutical division of American Cyanamid. Here Koprowski started his polio experiments which ultimately led to the discovery of the first oral polio vaccine. On account of his job in the pharmaceutical industry he was nicknamed "commercial scientist" by his academic colleagues.

Hilary Koprowski was married in July 1938 to Dr. Irena Koprowska. They have two sons, Claude and Christopher. Claude Koprowski is a retired physician. Christopher Koprowski is a certified physician in two medical specialties: Neurology and Radio-Oncology. Currently he is in the process of changing his affiliation from Cooper Hospital in Camden, NJ to Christiana Hospital in Delaware. [ [http://www.koprowski.net/documents/images.html see official site] ]

Discovery of the first oral polio vaccine

Koprowski created the world's first polio vaccine, based on oral administration of attenuated polio virus. In researching a potential polio vaccine, he had focused on live viruses that were attenuated (rendered non-virulent) rather than on killed viruses (the latter became the basis for the injected vaccine that was subsequently created by Jonas Salk).

Koprowski viewed the live vaccine as more powerful, since it entered the intestinal tract directly and could provide lifelong immunity, whereas the Salk vaccine required booster shots. Also, administering a vaccine by mouth is easy, whereas an injection requires medical facilities and is more expensive. Koprowski's vaccine was taken by the first child on February 27, 1950, and within 10 years was being used on four continents. Albert Sabin's attenuated-live-virus polio vaccine was developed from attenuated polio virus that Sabin had received from Koprowski.

Koprowski is President of Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories, Inc., and Head of the Center for Neurovirology at Thomas Jefferson University. In 2006 he was awarded a record 50th grant from the National Institutes of Health.

He is author or co-author of over 875 scientific papers and is co-editor of several journals. He serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization.

Honors

Koprowski has received many honorary degrees and honors, including the Order of the Lion from the King of Belgium, the French Order of Merit for Research and Invention, a Fulbright Scholarship, and appointment as Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich. In 1989 he received the San Marino Award for Medicine and the Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Koprowski has received many honors in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Cancer Research Award, the John Scott Award and, in May 1990, the most prestigious honor of his home city, the Philadelphia Award. He is a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which in 1959 presented him with its Alvarenga Prize.

Koprowski is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. ["Directory [of] PIASA Members, p. 25.]

He holds foreign membership in the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

On March 22, 1995, Koprowski was awarded the title of "Commander of the Order of the Lion of Finland" by the President of the Republic of Finland. On March 13, 1997, he received the Legion d'Honneur from the French government. On September 29, 1998, he was presented the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by Poland's President.

On February 25, 2000, Koprowski was honored with a reception at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first administration of his oral polio vaccine. At the reception, he received commendations from the United States Senate, the Pennsylvania Senate and Governor Tom Ridge.

On May 1, 2007 Hilary Koprowski was awarded the Albert Sabin Gold medal by the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Baltimore. [ [http://sabin.org/files/PDF/GoldMedalSpeech2007.pdf Award Ceremony and speeches] ]

AIDS hypothesis

British journalist Edward Hooper publicized a hypothesis that AIDS was inadvertently caused in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Koprowski's research into a polio vaccine. The OPV AIDS hypothesis has been widely rejected by the scientific community.

cite journal
author=Worobey M, Santiago ML, Keele BF, Ndjango JB, Joy JB, Labama BL, Dhed'A BD, Rambaut A, Sharp PM, Shaw GM, Hahn BH
title=Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted
journal=Nature
year=2004
pages=820
volume=428
issue=6985
url= http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/Worobey04.pdf
pmid=15103367 DOI|10.1038/428820a
doi=10.1038/428820a] The journal "Science" wrote of Hooper's claims, "...it can be stated with almost complete certainty that the large polio vaccine trial... was not the origin of AIDS." [

cite journal
author=
title=Panel nixes Congo trials as AIDS source
journal=Science
volume=258
issue=5083
pages=738–9
year=1992
pmid=1439779
doi=

]

Koprowski also rejected the claim, and won a clarification [ [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/rs93.html] "Origin of AIDS" update. Rolling Stone, 9 December 1993, p. 39] and $1 in monetary damagesBrian Martin (2001) "The Politics of a Scientific Meeting: the Origin-of-AIDS Debate at the Royal Socity" in "Politics & the Life Sciences," pp. 119-130 [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/05pls.html online] ] in a defamation action against "Rolling Stone", which had published an article making similar allegations.

cite journal
author=Hilary Koprowski
title=AIDS and the polio vaccine
journal=Science | year=1992 | pages=1024, 1026–7 | volume=257 | issue=5073
url= http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/Koprowski92.html
pmid=1509249
doi=10.1126/science.257.5073.1024

] A concurrent defamation lawsuit that Koprowski brought against the Associated Press was settled several years later, but the terms were not publicly disclosed.

Koprowski's original reports from 1960-61 detailing part of his vaccination campaign in the Belgian Congo are available on-line from the World Health Organization.LeBrun A, Cerf J, Gelfand HM, Courtois G, Plotkin SA, Koprowski H (1960) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelities virus in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo 1. Description of the city, its history of poliomyelitis, and the plan of the vaccination campaign" "Bull World Health Organ." 22:203-13 [http://whqlibdoc.who.int/bulletin/1960/Vol22/Vol22-No3-4/bulletin_1960_22(3-4)_203-213.pdf online] ] Plotkin SA, LeBrun A, Koprowski H (1960) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelitis virus in Leopoldville. Belgian Congo 2. Studies of the safety and efficacy of vaccination", "Bull World Health Organ" 22:215-34 [http://whqlibdoc.who.int/bulletin/1960/Vol22/Vol22-No3-4/bulletin_1960_22(3-4)_215-234.pdf online] ] Plotkin SA, LeBrun A, Courtois G, Koprowski H (1961) "Vaccination with the CHAT strain of type 1 attenuated poliomyelitis virus in Leopoldville, Congo 3. Safety and efficacy during the first 21 months of study" "Bull World Health Organ" 24:785-92 [http://whqlibdoc.who.int/bulletin/1961/Vol24/Vol24-No6/bulletin_1961_24(6)_785-792.pdf online] ]

ee also

*List of Poles
*Polio vaccine
*Jonas Salk
*Albert Sabin
*AIDS conspiracy theories

References

Further reading

* Roger Vaughan: "Listen to the Music: The Life of Hilary Koprowski", Springer Berlin, 2000 ISBN 0387988491
*David Oshinsky: "Polio: An American Story". Oxford University Press, 2005 ISBN 0195152948.
* Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute: "2007 Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal awarded to Hilary Koprowski" Booklet and PDF-File, Washington, D.C. 2007 [http://sabin.org/files/PDF/GoldMedalSpeech2007.pdf Award Ceremony and speeches]
* "Directory [of] PIASA Members, 1999", New York City, Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, 1999.

External links

* [http://www.koprowski.net/ Hilary Koprowski] - Official site