The man who saved your life

Dr Paul Lambden writes about one of the great unsung heroes of medicine who developed many of the vaccines responsible for saving thousands of lives

Such was the title of a tribute to an American microbiologist. A modest man, he was little known, despite his amazing work. He said he had, “little use for self-credit”. However, there was no-one more influential in vaccinology. His work unlocked the mysteries of immunology and he created and developed more than forty vaccines during his professional lifetime. His name was Maurice Hilleman.

Hilleman was born in 1919 in Miles City, Montana. He was brought up on a farm on the edge of civilisation in a town described as being full of gamblers, cowboys and bartenders.

His early life on the farm, tending animals and dealing with the problems of such a primative farming environment, stimulated his interest in zoology and disease. At the age of fourteen he obtained a copy of Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’, which fired his interest in health and development. The book was nearly confiscated by the local Lutheran (creationist) minister but Hilleman managed to keep it.

For Hilleman, university education seemed out of the question in such a backwoods environment with little quality education – but his older brother, who was studying to be a priest, convinced the family of the need to support him in further education. He was subsequently awarded a scholarship to Montana State University and qualified with a Bachelor’s degree in 1941. He undertook postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and obtained a doctorate in microbiology and virology in 1944.

Hilleman went to work with the pharmaceutical company ER Squibb in New Jersey. His mantra was that ‘science has to produce something useful’ and, the year after joining the company, he developed a vaccine for Japanese encephalitis which had killed large numbers of American soldiers stationed in the Pacific islands during the second world war.

In 1948 he moved to Washington, joining the Army Institute of Research. He worked on the nature of influenza viruses and identified the development of mutations. With this knowledge he established an approach to identifing viral changes for which a vaccine could be formulated to help protect against the extreme ravages of a serious ‘flu outbreak. When the United States was hit a year later by a new variant of influenza, which had first occurred in Hong Kong, Hilleman had developed the vaccine and it was quickly prepared and released. Over 70,000 people died of the virus that winter, but it is estimated that his discovery had saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

In 1957 Hilleman left the Army Institute of Research and joined Merck. In 1963, when his daughter acquired mumps, he took swabs from her throat and set out to create a mumps vaccine, which became commercially available in 1967.

Hilleman went on to develop vaccines for measles, chickenpox, German measles (rubella), bacterial meningitis and hepatitis B. It is remarkable that, of the fourteen vaccinations recommended for children, Hilleman developed eight of them.  In 1971, another huge step forward was taken when Hilleman’s latest vaccine, the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) was released, combining all three vaccines in one injection.

Hilleman retired in 1984, but continued to work long hours at his desk at home until his death in 2005, aged 86. The thrust of his work was to try to develop vaccines for other diseases such as TB, malaria and HIV/AIDS.

Hilleman was regarded by many as a difficult personality. He himself said that to secure his achievements took “someone who is a b*stard”. He certainly felt that it was part of his role to challenge anyone with whom he worked to ensure the robustness of their opinions – discussions which, reportedly, involved the use of colourful language peppered with obscenities. An article published in The Lancet quoted a Merck scientist who said, “Over his career he contributed more vaccines than anyone, and probably more than anyone will ever contribute”.

As a result of his work average life expectancy has increased considerably. The Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia estimated that his vaccines had saved countless lives. In his publication, Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases, he wrote, “Worldwide, the number of people killed by measles every year has decreased from eight million to five hundred thousand. Measles vaccines alone save more than seven million lives a year”.

When you add in the other 40 vaccines he discovered, heaven alone knows how many lives he has saved. It is very possible that he is the man who saved your life.