Dan Snow's History Hit - Maurice Hilleman: Vaccine Creator

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Dr Maurice Hilleman was a leading American microbiologist who specialised in vaccinology and immunology. He discovered nine vaccines that are routinely recommended for children today, rendering formerly devastating diseases practically forgotten. Considered by many to be the father of modern vaccines, Hilleman was directly involved in the development of most of the vaccines available today, including those for measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, Japanese encephalitis, pneumococcus, meningococcus and Haemophilus influenza B. His vaccines are estimated to save nearly 8 million lives a year. Despite Hilleman's many fundamental breakthroughs leading to arguably more lives saved than any other scientist in history, he has never been a household name.Dan is joined by vaccine researcher, Paul A. Offit, who befriended Hilleman and, during the great man’s last months, interviewed him extensively about his life and career. Paul and Dan discuss Hilleman’s motivations and work ethic, his beginnings in working for the U.S. Military, the impact of ‘pro-disease’ activists and the genius behind the foundations for immunology.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I ran about a year ago on this podcast.

I was lucky enough to talk to Paul Offit. He is a vaccine researcher. He advises the US government on vaccines. And he was talking to me about the COVID vaccine on the day that it was announced there was a workable Covid vaccine, a safe Covid vaccine by Moderna. It feels like we had a lot of water under the bridge since then. We've now had hundreds of millions of people vaccinated around the world. It has been an absolute miracle. But during that conversation

Paul Offit mentioned Maurice Hilleman to me. Maurice Hilleman is responsible for nine of the big 14 vaccines in history. Nine of them. Absolutely astonishing. It's said he saved more lives than any other human who has ever lived. Those vaccines include mumps, rubella, Japanese encephalitis, and hepatitis A. He has consigned so many of these diseases into our past. And we are so lucky to be living in a post-Maurice Hilleman era. Paul Offit knew him, met him, was one of his biographers. And so I thought it'd be fascinating to learn more about this extraordinary man who discovered so many new virus strains, helped develop new vaccines, and grew up in a very rugged setting in montana grew up in straightened

circumstances in montana his twin sister died just before he was born his mother died two days later and he always felt in some ways he'd be abandoned by his father after that as you're about to hear unbelievable story about a man who we should all know far more about if you want to discover more unbelievable history the place to do that is at history hits tv we've got our own tv channel here history it's like netflix but just for history history hit dot tv please go and check it out if you sign up today you can use it anywhere in the world i'm not sure about north korea but anywhere else it works history hit dot tv you get 30 days free if you sign up today. But in the meantime, it's a great pleasure for me to welcome Paul Offit back on the podcast. Enjoy.

Paul, thank you very much for coming back on this podcast. My pleasure. Now, I have to have you back because last time you mentioned the legend Maurice Hillman, who you suggested may have saved more lives than anybody else in the history of the human race. Tell me about him. Where was he born? So he was born in Custer County, Montana, to a family that was interested in farming. That's what they did. And he had a twin sister who died within hours of his birth. His mother died within days of his birth.

his birth. His mother died within days of his birth. His father ultimately gave him away to his aunt and uncle because he was, you know, like the eighth or ninth child and that was enough. So he grew up apart from his brothers and sisters and mother and father. He had a hardscrabble life. He almost died of diphtheria. He almost died when a train ran him over when it was on a trestle and he had nowhere to go. He's an amazing guy. I mean, who thinks that someone from that background would then grow up to be the principal either researcher or developer of nine of the 14 vaccines that we currently give to children that are estimated to save about 8 million lives a year? How did he do that? What did it tell us about the U.S. at that time? Was it public education? Who created Maurice Hillman? Certainly his work ethic, I think, was a product of his rough Montana upbringing. He went to Montana State University in Bozeman, where he graduated at the top of his class.

He then went to the University of Chicago, where at the time was arguably the premier science center in the world for educating about what he was interested in. As his PhD thesis, he figured out that chlamydia wasn't a virus. It was a bacteria and therefore could be treated with antibiotics. I mean, he was 25 years old. That was his thesis. He was amazing. And then in Chicago, they wanted him to go into academia because that's what you did when you were as smart as he was. But he said no. He wanted to make things because that's what he was doing. He was used to selling eggs and chickens and making brooms. And that's what he did. And he wanted to make things. And that's why he was drawn to industry. So I really do think his upbringing, more than anything,

is what made him who he is. The education he had, obviously, was extraordinary as well, I guess. And he was successful in making that transition to being someone who did make things. Yeah. I mean, I was fortunate enough to be part of a team at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia that created the bovine human reassortant vaccine, Rotatec. That was a 26-year effort to make one vaccine. I mean, here's a guy who was a principal researcher or developer on nine vaccines. I mean, it's like trying to imagine another dimension, you know, like a fourth or fifth dimension when you sort of talk about Dr. Hilleman.

And that's why sort of toward the end of his life, I mean, I'd known him for 20 years, but toward the end of his life, when he was diagnosed with disseminated cancer and was given roughly six months to live, which is actually exactly how long he did live, he was kind enough to let me sort of just interview him so I could get his stories down. I feared that, you know, this remarkable human being was, and all of the stories that he had would die with him. And so he was nice enough to meet with me at least once a week. We had about 70 hours worth of meetings. So he let me record him, which was fun for me, just as an educational experience for nothing else. It was like vaccinology, you know, 501. Was he a genius? Was he like Copernicus? Or were the stars in

alignment at that time for somebody in that position? The rest of science, the conditions were there for someone to make these breakthroughs. He was a genius, not just in that he knew everything that was to be known about the subject he was interested in, but he had this remarkable sense of judgment. He was just right a lot. You know, when you do things like you make a measles vaccine or mumps vaccine or German measles vaccine, and you take a live human virus and you try and weaken it. It's not like there was a formula for this or there was some recipe on how to do this. He just trial and error again and again and again. And he was just remarkably successful. It's just an amazing sense of judgment. And what was he like to work for, with? Was he an

ogre or was he a great guy as well? I mean, he was rough. He expected people to work as hard as he did, which was pretty much all the time. And he expected nothing less. On the other hand, he was amazingly loyal to people. And they were amazingly loyal to him. People loved working for him. The rules were clear. He, in many ways, was a modest man.

He never really took credit. Nobody knows his name. Nobody knows Maurice Hilleman's name, even though, again, I would argue he has saved more lives than any other human in history. STDs have a terrible impact on, well, everybody, but particularly soldiers, for example, and sex workers during and between the wars. Apart from the chlamydia, I mean, chlamydia is obviously a huge one, but what was his first breakthrough? Right. So chlamydia, realizing that that was a bacteria and therefore treatable, was a major breakthrough as a student. But his first product was working for ER Squibb and Company. He was contracted really by the military to make a vaccine against Japanese encephalitis virus, right? We were sending people into the Far East.

Japanese encephalitis virus was the most common cause of encephalitis, meaning inflammation of the brain, which could cause paralysis and coma and death. And so he was able to, really in a 30-day period, mass-produce Japanese encephalitis virus vaccine by growing the virus in mouse brains. He had all these sort of people who worked for him that would dissect the mice, they would take out the mouse brain, and they would put it in a blender, a wearing blender,

you know, where they would blend all the mouse brains together. And then he would use that as a sort of material to grow his Japanese encephalitis virus. I'm not sure Fred Waring, when he made the wearing blender, ever imagined that it was going to be blending mouse brains, but that's what happened.

And, you know, he saved a lot of lives for the soldiers that went in the Far East and fought there. Once you've done that once, you're like, I can make vaccines now. Just like put everything else in the blender and with a few drops of whatever it is. How different were all of his techniques for these different diseases? Very different. You have, for example, Japanese encephalitis virus is a killed viral vaccine.

His measles and mumps and rubella vaccines were live, weakened form of the virus. The work he did on haemophilus influenzae B, which is a bacterial vaccine, was a conjugated vaccine where the polysaccharide or complex sugar on the outside of the bacteria was conjugated to a harmless protein. The hepatitis B vaccine was a product of recombinant DNA technology. It was a single-protein vaccine. So very different. I mean, he mastered many different vaccine technologies in order to do what he did. Did he face skepticism? Did he have to bust through some kind of glass ceilings? How was the reception of the scientific community and the wider community?

Oh, I think the scientific community was thrilled. But he was always behind the scenes. I think people didn't really ever put his name to the vaccines. If you look, the mumps vaccine was made from a virus that was isolated from a person. The person that the virus was initially isolated from was his daughter, Gerald Lynn Hilleman. And so he isolated the virus. He ultimately weakened it in culture. And that four years after she was sick with mumps, that became a vaccine. And so if you look in the package insert, it says the Gerald Lynn strain. So Gerald Lynn was his daughter. Also, there's a rhinovirus, which is a common cold virus, serotype. That serotype eight is called the MRH strain. That's him. He was Maurice R. Hilleman. I think those are the only places you can see even any sort of remote connection

to his name per se. Was he happy with that? You know, when you talked to him at the end of his life, he's like, yeah, I kind of wish I'd taken more credit for that. No, never. His disappointment at the end of his life was he felt he could have done more. He just had this goal, this ridiculous goal of trying to prevent any viral or bacterial infection that could cause children to suffer or be hospitalized or die. That was his goal. I mean, it's just a little ridiculous as a goal.

And so he didn't reach that goal because there were still viruses and bacteria that could cause children to suffer. And so he always felt he could have been doing more. Are you telling me that Maurice Hilleman died feeling like a failure because of what the hope of the rest of us got? I think failure is a strong word. I think he died feeling he could have always done more. That's just who he was. It was never enough. At one point in my interviews with him, he had said, I wanted my father to see me because he was raised by his aunt and uncle, but not far away from where his father was. It was only a few hundred yards down the road. So he's watching his father raise his brothers and sisters.

He's being raised by his aunt and uncle. And at one point he said he wanted his father to see him. And I just feel like his early childhood maybe had created a hole so deep that no matter how many spades of dirt you threw in, no matter how many vaccines you invented, you were never going to fill up that hole. Maybe that was it. But what do I know? I think that's a good working theory. We're all talking about vaccines at the moment. Are the current breakthroughs on the shoulders of the work that he did, or is this new technology now that we're able to harness? The mRNA technologies and the vectored viral

vaccine technologies of Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are novel technologies. He had no experience with that. I mean, I certainly think that his work in defining sort of what are the immunological properties that you look for to know whether something is successful, the standards that he set regarding vaccine safety and how to do studies to see whether vaccines are safe and effective, that certainly, those researchers, they do stand on the shoulders of giants. He is one of those giants, but he didn't have a direct connection to those particular technologies. You listen to Dan Snow's history, we talk about Maurice Hilleman, invented dozens of vaccines, saved more lives than anyone else in history. More coming up. but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Did you ever question science's ability to defeat these enemies? I mean, now today, there's a feeling that actually, you know, we tried to overcome this

and we thought penicillin was a wonder drug, but it turns out our enemies are pretty smart and they can adapt. And are we going to be locked in this battle forever? It seemed like he had that kind of almost 19th century view, this black and white view that good can achieve over these evil entities. That's right. And I think that towards the end of his life, when he saw the impact of the anti-vaccine movement, he had seen the virus as the enemy, the bacteria as the enemy to be defeated. And then suddenly viruses and bacteria had friends he would have never predicted, Suddenly, viruses and bacteria had friends he would have never predicted, anti-vaccine activists, or said another way, pro-disease activists.

And it really upset him. I remember one specific winter day in Philadelphia. We were in his office. I said to him, you know, do you think, because he had created the measles vaccine. I mean, the measles vaccine, at least in the United States, eliminated measles by the year 2000. States eliminated measles by the year 2000. But, you know, with Andrew Wakefield's paper and then the sort of parents who were choosing not to get measles-containing vaccines, you started to see measles come back in the United States, certainly by the time he had passed away, which was in 2005. And children were again suffering. Children were again being hospitalized. And I said to him, do you think we can educate enough so that we don't have to suffer these diseases? Or do you

think, again, children are going to have to suffer, be hospitalized or worse, in order to gain the attention for how important these vaccines are? And he looked out the window for a long period of time before he turned around and answered the question. He said, no, I think, again, children are going to have to suffer. And that, to him, was the biggest defeat. I think the notion that people could reject the work that he'd done based on misinformation or misconception. When he was training as a scientist and when you were trained, did you think part of your job as a scientist was going to be getting out there, swashbuckling, taking on people in the marketplace of ideas? Or do you just think, look, my job is to take the virus out and leave the

politics and the PR to other people? Is that difficult for you guys? to other people? Like, is that difficult for you guys? Yes. God, yes. I mean, I think your training as a scientist is to formulate hypotheses, establish burdens of proof. And then when you write up a scientific paper, you are considered to be a good scientist if you never go beyond the data that are in front of you, if your discussion section is full of caveats. You know, I'm allowed to say this, but not this based on my data. I mean, you're trying to do everything you can to reduce uncertainty by having relatively lengthy and complete explanations. That doesn't exactly fly on national television programs where you have at most a few sentences, three sentences to answer a question, a complex science