Everything about Hilary Koprowski totally explained
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.
Koprowski created the world's first
polio vaccine, based on oral administration of attenuated
polio virus. In researching a potential polio vaccine, he'd 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 of 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.
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.
Hypothesis refuted
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. The journal
Science wrote of Hooper's claims, "...it can be stated with almost complete certainty that the large polio vaccine trial... wasn't the origin of AIDS."
Koprowski also rejected the claim, and won a clarification and $1 in monetary damages in a defamation action against
Rolling Stone, which had published an article making similar allegations. A concurrent defamation lawsuit that Koprowski brought against the Associated Press was settled several years later, but the terms were not publicly disclosed.
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