Radiolab - The Great Vaccinator

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Until now, the fastest vaccine ever made - for mumps - took four years. And while our current effort to develop a covid-19 vaccine involves thousands of people working around the clock, the mumps vaccine was developed almost exclusively by one person: Maurice Hilleman. Hilleman cranked out more than 40 other vaccines over the course of his career, including 8 of the 14 routinely given to children. He arguably saved more lives than any other single person. And through his work, Hilleman embodied the instincts, drive, and guts it takes to marshall the human body’s defenses against a disease. But through him we also see the struggle and the costs of these monumental scientific efforts. This episode was reported by Matt Kielty and Heather Radke, and produced by Matt Kielty. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    

Before we start, just want to let you know there's a moment or two of strong language in the story. Hey, I'm Chad Ebbomrod, this is Radio Lab, and today... Hello, Matthew Keelti. Hey, hey, hey. A story from our producer Matthew Keelti. Heather's also here. Hey, Radke, how's it going?

Good, how are you doing? And reporter Heather Radke. Where do you guys want to start? So, from the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is the day... Rewind back to the early days of the pandemic. Today. mid-April.

As President Trump. I was listening to the Daily. It was one of these episodes about the pandemic. And on the show, they had... Science reporter, Donald G. McNeil, Jr. Don McNeil, Jr. Mm. I remember in those early days of the pandemic, when Don McNeil came on to the daily,

you sort of knew you were going to get some bad news. Yeah. And that he was going to just sort of tell you how serious this thing was. Don't they call him like, doomsday dawn or something? I mean, I'd never heard that, but I wouldn't, I'm not surprised because like back in February. The portraits of the future that you have painted for us have been strikingly accurate. He was telling us that the schools were going to close, that we were all going to be stuck in our houses for weeks or months.

Those happened. That there wasn't going to be enough personal protective equipment. Just by everything you said would happen, has more or less happened. Well, look, I'm about some dark angel who's simply looking into the future. What he kind of is. I don't know. But anyway, so in this show, talking to experts, which was in April,

they're talking about like, they're kind of playing out the future of the pandemic and what our world might look like. You know, we're not going to be able to let people sit next to each other and football stadiums. About what sports might look like. Let half the kids go to school this week How schools might work next week the other half of the kids get to come to school eating out a restaurant that had 100 customers before now has about 10 customers in it Eerily pression. Yeah, and how long? But then Barbados like at some point do we just get to go back to normal?

And then McNeill says look this pandemic will end When we have a vaccine that we can all take, the vaccine's the thing that's gonna end this. But the record we've ever had for producing a vaccine is four years. The fastest vaccine we've ever made was the Mumps vaccine. Yeah, the fastest human vaccine ever made was Mumps four years from start to finish. months, four years from start to finish. Now, if you are a person who consumes information, you're probably well aware of the fact that

we are going to break that record. We're probably going to obliterate that record. We are going to have a vaccine much faster than four years. And I mean, that's because COVID is a completely world altering destructive pandemic that we have devoted millions upon millions of dollars to thousands and thousands of people have been working day and night to come up with a vaccine. But, and maybe you're wondering at this point

where I'm going with this. But, when Heather heard that episode of The Daily, she and I got to talking, and we started to look into this story about months, about what will soon be the second fastest vaccine we've ever made. And what we found is standing in the center of it is weirdly just this one guy. A scientist named Maurice Hilliman, a guy who somehow embodied all of what ridding the world of a disease requires of us. But before we get to Maurice, what are the months exactly? Can you hear me there?

I can hear you. So we talked to this guy Paul Ophett, director of the Vaccine Education Center. And a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. How are things going in your world right now? They're pretty busy. I've actually never been busy in my life. And I'm older, you know? Paul's on an FDA advisory committee for the COVID vaccines.

We had a meeting last Thursday, which was a nine hour meeting. It was shown on C-SPAN. Oh, wow. That is a long meeting. But anyway, so we asked Paul, what is months? Well, so how is it contagious? But in the same way that SARS-CoV-2 is contagious,

which is it spreads by small respiratory droplets that emanate from the mouth and nose. So like, coughing, sneezing, talking, kissing. And mostly the virus, in fact, in children. And the main symptom of mums is that your face kind of swells up. Like a cheek swell up and around your jaw. So you have this trip monk-like appearance. So kids who got mums just look like these like,

you do a cute little chipmunks. Which meant the mumps was great for things like plot line and the Brady bunch. The doctor thinks I may have the mumps. And the mumps in good pun. I have a little bit of my day and I have two mumps. Some old German cartoon. Mumps?

I just have mumps. There's a coaster song called Poison Ivy. And it's reparence about it. I found this old Vodville song about a kid getting mumps that I... Tested out on my flute. Did not see the flute coming. Like, mums is like the cutest disease you're gonna have. Is it fatal?

Not really. No. I mean, it causes, it can infect the lining of the brain in spinal cord. Which could cause deafness. But it doesn't really kill you, no. So it's not really, you know, I gotta say, one thing I wish was in here

was the real problem with mumps, which is that men lose their virility. I feel like you're avoiding a sort of... I'm not avoiding it, Heather. I'm just saying the big problem with mumps is that men's testicles become enormous and they can't walk and then they sometimes can't have children Mm-hmm, and it scared everybody in the army and that's why mumps was a big deal

It's yeah, yeah, add that in. It's in it's in It's a wait. Are you saying seriously that the big push for like why this particular vaccine happened so fast is because It was very Male-centered and it worried a lot of army guys. No. No. Because this is actually where we get back to our one guy, Marie Silliman. Marie Silliman, I think, is the father of modern vaccines. I mean, he's one of these guys that, uh... He is the vaccine master. On all of his bios and obituaries, you'll read something like, he might be the greatest biologist of the 20th century. Right, he's estimated his work is estimated to have saved about 8 million lives a year.

Well, then you'll read something that's like, he was the greatest scientist of the 20th century. We lived longer because of him. We lived 30 years longer than we did 100 years ago, largely because of the efforts of Marie Selma. Oh my God. And then you'll come across something that says, he may be the greatest scientist... That's ever lived. I wish he was alive today. So Marie's Hillamann died in 2005 of cancer at the age of 85.

But just months before his death, Paul actually interviewed him. I just wanted to get his stories down. They knew each other pretty well. And it was nice enough to let me interview him for 60 or 70 hours or so in the last six months of his life. And also a film crew interviewed Maurice before his death and they were generous enough to give us some of that tape. Well I'm Maurice Haliman and I had a long career in science about 60 years doing basic research and the development of a large number of new vaccines. So, can you give me a little bit of your personal history?

Well, you might ask, how did you ever become a Montana? So, go back, late 1800s, Hilleman's great uncle, a scout in the army, ends up settling in Montana, in this little town. Called Miles Town. Now called Miles City. Engaged in illicit businesses. I think it was largely prostitution. Eventually more of the family came up,

settle alongside him. It's a rich farmland there. Big wide open spaces. His mom and dad worked a farm. They had seven kids, and then Marisa was born. Around the time of the great flu pandemic. 1919. So he was born right in the middle of second wave flu.

And his mother got really sick right after he was born, and he had a twin sister. And both the twin sister and both the twin sister and the mom actually died and he was the the only survivor of the birth. And Marisa's father actually gave Marisa way to his to his aunt uncle who lived right next door so he had this very kind of strange childhood where he would he would work the farm with his siblings and his biological father. They would go to the same church, all of them together. But then

at the end of the day, he would go to be with his own uncle by himself. And I think he always wanted to be seen. He would mention that, that he wanted to be seen by his father. Off it said it was this sort of driving force in his life. Hmm. So, it's the 20s in Montana. You really became a workaholic to survive. By age four, he's going to town to sell strawberries at the market. Back on the farm. We had a blacksmith shop, a machine shop.

There were all sorts of animals. And as he got older, one of my jobs was to take care of the chickens. He fed them and he corralled them and collected their eggs. I got to know chickens. And then there were these stories about how, like before he's 10, he's almost hit by a freight train. Literally a train was coming in the other direction. He almost suffocates from Jeptheria.

He like somehow like follows a hobo into a waterfall, but he can't swim, and he almost drowns. This kid is cursed. Life in Montana was tough. And so he saw himself as a remarkable survivor. And he becomes a pretty tough person because of it. But he also becomes very interested in science. So Helmann's biological dad, he was like super Lutheran,

really, really debout. He was an avid prayer, he believed in faith healing that God could cure disease, and positive that maybe it's sort of a reaction to it. Or were rejection of it? Went on board HMS Beagle as naturalist. Helmyn fell in love with Darwin. I was much struck with certain facts. He literally, like Darwin is what drew him to

the dark side. Yeah. He told me the story with Glee about how he would sit in church and seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species. Read Darwin's on the origin of the species. That mystery of mysteries. Unlike his dad's religion, it was all about mystery and faith. This was logical and ordered and reason and based on things you could see. And he kind of becomes enraptured with this other kind of Bible. And he goes from reading Darwin to... He's great microbiologist.

Her lake and fun bearing and pastures. He's great microbiologist. Who had done groundbreaking research in this still new emerging field. Virology. The science of viruses. The whole business of viruses as the branch between the living and the dead, I had really gotten interested in this. Now, when he finished high school, he actually didn't plan on going to college. It would take his brother coming back from seminary school to push him to keep going with his education. So I did go to Montana State.

He studies microbiology. We're pretty hard. There are stories about how he would spend his weekends in the lab. About how he had four experiments going at once. And in 1941, he graduates, goes to the University of Chicago. The intellectual center, Ritz Times. Starts his PhD work. Now, in Columbia.

For years, people have been looking for a vaccine to Columbia, which everybody felt was a virus. And in a year, Hillman discovers it's actually not a virus at all. It was a bacteria. It could be treated with antibiotics. That's what he did as his PhD thesis when he was 25 years old. Wow.

A huge accomplishment then. 1944. He graduates from a pretty good school and was wooed by academia. To become a professor, which was what he was expected to become. That's what you did. You went off and followed the path of those who came before you in the pursuit of knowledge in these vented public institutions

where you would burrow in, do your research for the good of the public. And Hillamom was like, no. I wanted to go out and see how the big world operated, the big world of the practical. He wanted to make things much as he had made them on the farm. He wanted to produce things. So he goes to work for this small pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, then he gets dropped. Well, but first, I mean, don't sleep on the Japanese encephalitis. So he creates this vaccine for Japanese encephalitis, which is this horrible disease that causes brain swelling and had been

killing people in Asia for a really long time. And then the army asks him to develop a vaccine so that soldiers don't die of it when they're there or they're not affected by it. And he does. And that's the first vaccine that he made. Does he do the Hong Kong thing when he's in the army? I think he does. Did you do in the late 40s, Institutions, Modern Strings, if you influence a... He does. Did you do in late the 40s, institution's moderates strains of influenza? Yes. In 1948, he goes to Walter Reed. Yes.

When I went to Walter Reed, it was my assignment. It was very simply. Learn everything you can about influenza. You know, 1919 isn't that far away from the mid-40s. The pandemic is really in everyone's memory. So my job is to prevent the next pandemic. To figure out how to prevent another one. So what I did.

Basically, he goes through looking through all these samples of flu that they have at Walter Reed. And he discovers that the flu virus changes every year. And he figures out how it does that and why, and then helps to create a system for making a new vaccine every year. So he is the reason that we have to get a flu shot every year?

Yeah. Wow. He's also the first to discover how viruses shift when they jump back and forth between humans and like birds or bats. Wow. Which allows him, in 1957 to become the first human being ever to avert a pandemic because he's able to see it coming It was coming from Hong Kong. He's able to tweak the flu vaccine

People are not related. He's able to save at least like a million lives in America. Wow. He's given the presidential medal for science This guy's just like he's on quite a run. Yeah. After his miserable child years. I know. I mean, you really? Do you have, go ahead. Okay, I'm sorry. I know, I'm not asking a question,

but I think it's coming. So maybe I'll, maybe don't answer it if you're about to. How does, I'm searching for some way to understand why he was so gifted at this particular corner of science, but maybe there's something in the story you're about to tell me that'll kind of get it that. Yeah, Jen.

It's the mum story. It's the whole reason we're here. All right, so, uh. Wait, can I, can you guys hold on one second? I might have to run and get the door. Okay. I'll be right back. Sure.

We're gonna have some water. It's a good spot for a break. Hi, this is Matt from San Jose, California. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.Sloan.org Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

I can never find the app. Type it in, type it in, type it in. You guys have a real, a lot of people who work with you. It's sort of a fun little family here at the end. All hands on deck. All hands on deck. It's Like we're putting on a play. Chad Bradyolab, back to Heather Radke and Matt Kilti and their story about Maurice Helleman, aka the father of modern vaccines, aka the vaccine master. One of the things he also was a profane man. Oh really? Yes. There's so many fucking things that could happen really near God damn name this guy. I thought this piece of shit. I screwed me. Ice cream trucks out there.

By the way, these are recordings off it made with Hilliman in order to write a book on them. But it was hard in writing the book because often I would have to like the F word in the same sentence as polymerase chain reaction, which is probably the only time that's ever happened. sentence, this polymerase chain reaction, which is probably the only time that's ever happened. So anyway, in 1957, Hilleman joined the pharmaceutical company, Merck, to run their vaccine division. And when he got there, pretty quickly, the company put him through management training, charge school, or what he called charm school. He couldn't cut so much for like, such bullshit. At a certain point he was lectured about creating a more fulfilling work environment for his employees.

I mean, enjoyment was your job. I said, I shit you know. He was a tough guy. It's a company should be doing this kicking ass. And he suffered fools poorly. I tell the fucking advice that I got from Boston. And in large part, this is because when Hilleman showed up to Merck, he had this grand vision.

And my vision was that I wanted to conquer the pediatric diseases of children. His goal was to eliminate any viral or bacterial infection that infected children. He's a smoked cerebellum, chicken pox, which was a ridiculous goal, but he came pretty darn close to meeting it. Okay, so let's finally actually go to... Let's go to mom.

Are you ready to go to mom? Yeah. Mumps. Alright. Yes, so let's go back to the very beginning. Yeah, absolutely. This, by the way, is Marie's Hilliman's daughter, Gerald Lynn Hilliman. How old were you when you came down with moms? I believe I was five. Philadelphia, is that right? Outside of Philadelphia, in a

summer, outside of Philadelphia. Okay, so it was March 23rd, 1963. It was probably in the middle of the night, very late at night. I'd gone to bed, I woke up, I wasn't feeling well. So she gets out of bed, it goes across the hall. So she comes into you at one in the morning? Yeah. Wakes up her dad. And she says, my throat hurts. So the first thing he did is he got out this book. Very thick book, maybe three or four inches thick, hard back.

The kind of diagnostic book he thumbs through it looks at his daughter. I said, oh my shit, you got mumps. But see, I can't have him cursing in front of a five- looks at his daughter. I said, oh, shit. You got mumps. But see, I can't have him person in front of a five-year-old daughter. So I didn't do that. I think I said, oh goodness, or something like that. And then what he did was something no father does. He later back down in bed.

Now, there was a, his wife had recently died. And so he had a housekeeper who also stayed in the home at the evening. So at one in the morning, he got dressed, got in his car, and he drove down to the lab. Got a swab came back, gently woke up his daughter. Swobbed the inside of her mouth, and he pulled out a little bit of her mumps virus.

And he said in this interview that he did with office, this is the time to get in mumps virus strain. Like at this point, he didn't have a good strain of the mumps virus at Merck. And so you sort of just like, if an opportunity presents itself, get yourself a virus. Okay, so now he has a sample of the virus and he's going to try to use Jeraldyn's virus to make the vaccine. Okay, let's see. So this is like, this is crazy. It turns out making

a vaccine. In saying, I is the part where I'm like, okay, demystify us. So what does he do? So the first thing he does is he puts Charyllins' mumps virus into this lab flask with a bunch of chicken embryo cells. Why? Fair question.

So basically, he's gonna use these chick cells to transform the virus. So what he does is he has the virus in with these chick cells in a lab flask, and he basically starts watching the virus grow in these cells. And as it's growing, what it's doing is it's killing cells, that's what a virus does when it grows, and he's looking for clumps of dead cells. And if he sees a flask that has a lot of dead cells, he's like, oh, that one, he takes the virus out of there, plugs it out, puts it into another flask with chick cells,

and he's watching to see if it kills even more cells this time. And if it does, he takes it out, puts it in and do a flask again. And he's just, he's basically trying to get this thing to be better and better at killing chicken cells. And the idea here is- Why is- Why is- Oh, yeah, sorry, you're about to answer my question, I think, keep going. Well, the idea is that by passing it through animal cells, these chicken cells, at getting

again, what you're doing is you're essentially you're weakening the effect of the virus on a human. It's still a virus and it's still a virus that you can actually then take and put inside of a human. The thing is it's just not going to cause the same sort of disease that it would if it were like really very, very strong. It's essentially weakened. This is called attenuation. You're kind of like interning down the knob or something, the volume on this virus. It's like you turn down the knob or something, the volume on this virus. It's like you turn down the chicken. It's knob on the human virus and up the knob

on the chicken virus. And so what is he looking for exactly? Is he looking for a virus that's super good at getting into chicken cells and therefore terrible at human cells, or is he looking for someone else? I mean, I think that's sort of the art. This is a judgment call. Hilleman described it as a judgment call.

It's guts and judgment. It's just absolutely trial and error. I mean, there's no formula for this. And so not written down anywhere, you just try. And off it told us, he really just had a six cents for how one did that. Different people would make different choices about that. And he's good at making the right set of choices.

So you don't want it so ch any that humans don't recognize it at all, but you don't want it human-y to the point where anybody's going to get sick. And that's the real fear in making a vaccine is that people will get the disease. I see. Oh, so you just put your finger on it. So he's looking for a, he's trying to mute or attenuate it so that it's right at that perfect fault line between being chickeny enough that it doesn't hurt the human, but still being humany enough that the human immune system will recognize it and see it as a threat. Right.

Right. And Paul explained to us that doing this process, because you end up with an actual live virus that is the vaccine that you put into people, this process leads to like the most robust immune response that a vaccine can create. That's the gold standard of vaccines. And that same strategy is being used

to make a COVID-19 vaccine as well. Oh really, we still do that. We still do that, yeah? Sometimes they ask you if you're allergic to eggs when you get a vaccine. That's why. Oh. And before we leave this part of the process quick, like how long did it take me to do this

pass it through the chicken cell thing? It probably took about two years to do that. Two years? That's right. Which sounds slow,. That's right. Which sounds slow, but it's fast. Because with COVID, we have hundreds of scientists all over the world, all of the resources they could possibly imagine.

And it's taken us at least a year. This is one guy with a couple of lab assistants and a bunch of chicken eggs. So two years is actually pretty fast. Right. So yeah. All right pretty fast. Right, so yeah. All right, so then, so then, so that's, that's just the beginning. So once he has a decent vaccine, he has to do tests on people.

And this part of the process, it's a different thing than growing things in a lab. There's like a whole other landscape of questions and judgment calls and risks. Like the vaccine, if it's not right, can actually just give you mumps. And also, when we test vaccines, we're not only testing to make sure that they work

and that they won't give you the disease, we're also testing to make sure that there aren't other unknown side effects. Yes. Could you just walk us to what exactly Hamann's doing in this trial process? Sure. So he starts with adults, then you work your way down to children. And what he's doing is he's just he's injecting his vaccine and just being like, do you die?

Or are you okay? Yeah. Well, yeah, not quite that good. But yeah, it's just our is it safe and is it inducing an immune response which is likely to be protected? Okay. So you give them the vaccine, you check back in, you draw their blood and then you look franty bodies.

Right. And the thing is back then, you could do this with a lot of speed. Because these are kind of the Wild West days of vaccine making and research. For example, to do a trial. Object explained to us, to do a vaccine trial now, you have to sign a 15-page single-space consent form. Then it was a three-by-five card that said,

I allow my child to participate in a blank vaccine trial and you're just filled in, you know, moms, measles, German measles, and then you signed it. Wow. That was the consent form. So what Hillameman and his team did is they went to the suburbs. Set up studies in Havardtown, which is West Philadelphia. They basically have these community meetings. Through the churches, some of the schools. It'd be clergy people, teachers, parents, who were mostly white middle class. And Hilleman and his team would meet with these people

and in particular with the parents they would Explain them what the vaccine is what they hope the vaccine can do and then hand them a three by five no card and Ask them to volunteer their kids and a lot of them did volunteer thousands So about five thousand or so children Why thank you for the bad hands this, and I'm glad that I'm just playing. I actually found this old documentary from when these tests were being done, and it's just roomful of these kids

getting a vaccine shot, crying, and then these mothers. I'm here because I feel that that it's this will help children, this will be a wonderful thing. Explaining why they decided to participate. I hate to see any child suffering. I'm a mother of six and I'm for anything that can help any child in the world. I'm a mother true and true.

We owe such a huge debt to the people of that West Philadelphia area. The parents had to keep the records at home for what their children take their temperatures, come in and go through all of this annoying business, glad the enemy had been calculated to participate in what was regarded as a humanitarian quest. Boy, I will never forget that. I was he was conducting these tests on children who had been volunteered by their parents. He was actually also testing the mom's vaccine on another group of children. Children who were living in state homes and had intellectual disabilities.

They were essentially volunteered by the state. So until the law changed in the early 70s, this is how a lot of drugs and particularly vaccines were tested. This is actually something that comes up in off its interviews with Halemann. There's a big ethical issue. I'm worried about that. Like, to deal with all the hell, you know. I think we have a hell of a responsibility and what are the ethical standards that we're using and following?

And Hillman says at the time that you sort of guiding ideas were do not harm and do good and do good. In those days in the 1960s, the thinking of the time when you were in these chronic care long-term facilities, the level of hygiene and sanitation in those areas was terrible. It was crowded, disease was rampant. Well, they owned the epidemic disease. These institutionalized kids. So the justification at the time was that because these kids were the most likely to get these diseases, they were also the most likely to benefit from the vaccines. But I'm telling you, these were

judgment calls scientifically and ethically. There is no question about it. What Hilleman was doing testing his vaccine on children with intellectual disabilities in state homes, was part of a bigger thing that was happening all over the place across the country. And a lot of kids got sick and some even died. There was a situation in Staten Island where a group of kids were given live hepatitis, another situation in Massachusetts,

where a group of children at a state home were given radiation, was just exposed to tons of radiation. And although what Hillman was doing wasn't that, he was part of a system where children who were under the care of the state were used for scientific experimentation. Right. Well, before we leave this point, did anyone protest to or about Helmann in the moment

or was it just so commonplace that people didn't think anything of it? No, they didn't, and it was very commonplace and nobody got sick because the vaccine worked. So in 1967, four years after he'd swab Gerald Lins throat, Hilleman had made his mom's vaccine. It was the fastest anyone had ever made a vaccine from start to finish. I will say quick that Hilleman seemed pretty tickled that. Oh my god, gee, that's your virus. He got the name after his daughter.

Can you add your mouth? It's called the Gerald Lynn strain. It still is. And he thought that was a nice thing, but it wasn't something. It was just one of those facts of life. Gerald Lynn told us after he was done with mums, he was just off to the next thing. And you know, he carried around a list at times. This list he kept in his pocket. List of diseases that still had yet to be conquered and I think it was a reminder that

you know for him his work would never be done. Would he would say this? He would say it was like putting up a fence and you know then you take a break and you know everybody gathers around and they drink from you know from this bucket of water and they pass the ladle around. And then you're done and then you go back to doing it again. It was never, ever satisfied. Well, so after months was measles. And with measles, there was actually already a vaccine in existence. You know, I mean, that vaccine worked,

but it wasn't quite attenuated enough. Like, it wasn't weak enough. So you would have to get another shot at the same time in your other arm, so you didn't get sick. Marie Sten just took that virus and very quickly attenuated it so that it was perfect. That virus bounces off you. It's a remarkable vaccine and so we eliminated measles. The most contagious of the vaccine preventable diseases because it was so incredibly effective. Wow, damn.

Yeah, so here's... So this is a... You got a list? Yeah, this is vaccines that Hilliman developed. Okay. Okay, so chicken pox. Chicken pox. Yeah, chicken pox was a late, late comer.

Wow. So chicken pox, adenovirus, measles, mumps, rubella, which you combined into the MMR vaccine that we all get Japanese and cephalitis, meningococcus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, pneumococcus, homophilus hepatitis B, pneumococcus, homophilus influenza type B, and then others. Damn.

By the end of his career, he developed over 40 vaccines. 40? Including eight of the 14 that we all get as children. Wow. Well, looking back in one's lifetime, you say, gee, what have I done? Have I done enough for the world to justify having been here? That's big worry to people from Montana, at least.

And I would say, I'm kind of pleased about all this. I'm not smug about it, but I'm pleased because there's a great joy in being useful. And that's the satisfaction that you get out of it. And just a quick give you like context of Helimann's work. Paul actually helped to create one of the 14 vaccines we get as kids. Oh really? Yeah. And it took him 26 years. And so he says, when he first learned about Hillamann and what all he'd accomplished. It was like trying to imagine another universe. But he was humble.

As rough as he was and as crude as he could be and how as profane he could be, he was a humble man. He never promoted himself. So he just always flew below the radar, remarkably enough, given his accomplishments. I mean, I honestly think he was the single most accomplished scientist in history. And when he died, I was at a, I didn't even talk at the University of Pittsburgh, his son-in-law called me to say that he had passed away. And then, after I heard that news, I walked in among a group of 35 to 50 pediatricians and say, you know, here's this man, Marisa Lennon, who just passed away,

no one heard of him, no one, zero. And these are pediatricians, who give his vaccines. Did that surprise you in that moment? Yeah, yes, it did. Did it sadden you? Yes. Do you think his humility, which is, you're saying as part of the reason we don't remember him, is also part of what made him good at his job? In some ways. I think he was never stopping to take a bow, but to be honest, I think it's all wrong. I mean, I think no one should be taking bows. I mean, I really, every time a CEO opens his mouth, I really shudder to hear what they said

day because they're always beating their chest about how quickly they're doing this and how well it's going. Paul was talking about some of the CEOs who are the companies who aren't the forefront of manufacturing the COVID vaccine. And when he says he's shutters, it's not just because of all the ways the development of the vaccine could go wrong, but also because it seems like they're not really recognizing the cost even when it goes right. Because there has never been a medical breakthrough in history that has not been associated with the price. When Thomas Francis did the polio field trial in the mid 1950s, Jonas Salk had made his vaccine, but he didn't know whether it worked or not. So they chose to do a big field trial.

420,000 children were given his vaccine over a year period, funded by the March of Times. 200,000 were given placebo, first and second graders throughout the country. And then, after it was over, Thomas Francis stood up on the podium at Rackham Hall at the University of Michigan and said, safe, potent, and effective. That's what he said. Those three words were the headline of every major newspaper in this country. I mean, church bells rang, synagogues and churches held special prayer meetings. It department stores stopped, trials stopped, you know, so the judges could hear that announcement. It was announced over the voice of America. Well, the question is, how do we know that it worked? We knew that it worked because 16 children

in that study died from polio all in the placebo group. 36 children were permanently paralyzed, 34 in the placebo group. But for the flip of a coin, those children could have been alive and well today. Those were first and second graders in the 1950s. I was the first and second grader in the 1950s. I mean, those people suffered or died because they just happened to be in the control group. That's what knowledge takes. And that was that statistic never really rang. I mean, we were so busy celebrating that that I think we didn't really stop and take a

look at just how one comes to acquire knowledge. You know, I just came across this quote from Jonas Salk who sent a letter to a man named O'Connor, who I don't know who O'Connor is or was. He had it, he had it at March of Dimes program. Oh, okay. And Salk wrote, I would feel that every child who is injected with placebo and becomes paralyzed will do so at my hands.

That's right. That's what I was alluding to. And that those who argued, those demanding the placebo control trial, he argued, took the position in order to reach a statistical endpoint because, quote, values in which the worship of science involves the sacrifice of humanitarian principles on the altar of rigid methodology. That's kind of end quote. Yeah, no, I think it's always heartbroken when that trouble's done because he knew that there would be children who would intentionally not be given the vaccine. I mean, the one thing is to say as you roll out of vaccine, like the Ebola vaccine, when it rolled out into West Africa,

not everybody got it at once. And so some people got it, some people didn't, and some people didn't get it, obviously weren't saved. But it's different than when you actually purposefully don't give a vaccine for a period of year. You're making the choice. You're asking a child to participate in something and you know that half of them, half of those children aren't going to be getting a vaccine. It just feels different. You're actually doing a trial where you know there are children who may die and be paralyzed in that other half because they haven't gotten

a vaccine and the truth be told that's the only way you're going to know that. And Paul told us that this is actually what's happening with COVID now. A while back, I don't know if you remember this, but there was a guy in Brazil who was part of a COVID trial who died. You know, we all held our breath to see whether the person was in the placebo group or the vaccine group and everybody breathed a sigh relief when the person was in the placebo group because now you know that the vaccine didn't kill them. But now what you know is that COVID killed him. And had he been in the other group, he probably wouldn't have died.

I'm just saying you're constructing an experiment whereby definition you're not going to learn unless people suffer or hospitalized or die. That's the experiment you're conducting. There's seemingly always is some sort of cost and someone gets sacrificed to progress. And there's a question of who bears the burden of that sacrifice. I think oftentimes it's marginalized communities, but yet inevitably their blood is sort of shed is what it feels like. Always. Reporters Heather Radke and Matt Kielte Hi, into school now for most a week. I got a big lump on my left hand cheek. Teachers said not to come back again till the doctor made it better.

Ma said, oh, it ails my child. His face is full of lumps. And Paul looked at me and said, oh, be jigs, arrange all those little mumps. I've got the mumps. I've got the mumps. My name is Paul. What is this, don't tell pa? Okay, special thanks to, oh, well a huge special thanks to Donald Mitchell,

the filmmaker who passed us a lot of this audio of Maurice Hilleman. His movie is called Hilleman, a perilous quest to save the world's children. You can watch that film online or parts of it at the Vaccine Makers Project, also to Alain Econus and to Anna Vichuk and Andrew Bakker who performed this lovely rendition of the Mumps, sheet music, Heather found. Alright, instead for me. Chad, okay, I'm Chad Abynrod and is edited by Sorn Wheeler,

Lou Miller, and Lactif Nasr Arcohoes. Bill and Keith is our director of sound design, and Susie Lektemberg is our executive producer. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusak, David Gabel, Matt Kielte, Tobin Low, Annie McEwen, Sarah Carrey, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster, with help from Shima O'Leahe, Sarah Sandbach, and Johnny Moans, are fact checkers, Michelle Harris. you