JOHN ENDERS
Author:
Date: Wednesday, September 11, 1985
Page: 14
Section: EDITORIAL PAGE
Anyone who has been spared the crippling of polio because of a vaccine to
prevent it owes a moment of tribute to Dr. John Enders of Harvard Medical
School, who died Sunday at 88. For it was Enders who made a vaccine against
polio possible.
He and two young colleages, Dr. Thomas Weller and Dr. Frederick Robbins,
were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1954 for the landmark polio work
they had completed five years earlier. The research opened the way to other
vaccines against highly contagious childhood diseases - measles, German
measles (rubella) and mumps.
The understanding of viruses at the time was meager. Development of an
anti-polio vaccine depended on gaining the ability to grow sufficient
quantities of the polio virus under laboratory control. The main obstacle was
that polio-virus cultures could be kept alive for a useful length of time only
in nerve tissue, which was hard to get and maintain.
Enders and his co-researchers turned the trick in their laboratory at
Children's Hospital with tissue retrieved from two sources: embryos resulting
from miscarriages and foreskins obtained from circumcisions being performed on
newborns across the street at the old Boston Lying-In Hospital. In this
immunologically immature tissue, the polio virus could be coaxed to grow
profusely.
Enders, a virologist and a basic researcher, was well described as "one
of the most modest, magnificent men in the history of science." His
contributions are among the most important of the 20th century; they include
major advances in the field of genetics, links between viruses and cancer, and
insights into the pattern and process of tumor growth.
Although not a physician, Enders trained many of the nation's leading
experts in infectious disease. His techniques for virus-cell cultures were an
outgrowth of the discovery of antibiotics in World War II. With antibiotics,
he could kill off other microbes that contaminated cell cultures and competed
for nutrients, leaving the viruses to grow freely.
Enders was quick to share knowledge and credit with others. Scientists
always build on the work of others, he observed, even though "the one who
places the last stone and steps across the terra firma of accomplished
discovery gets all the credit."
In his case, he deserved a great deal of it.
LMCLAU;09/10,11:18 LDRISC;09/11,15:32 EJENDERS
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