W. E. van Heyningen - Cholera: The American Scientific Experience, 1947-1980

CHOLERA: The American Scientific Experience, 1947-1980

W. E. van Heyningen and John R, Seal

Cholerathe dehydration disease that can be fatal in just one or two dayshas been one of mankind's most tenacious and enigmatic adversaries. Its well-documented history is the story of the vagaries of a disease that originated in the Ganges delta, where it causes annual epidemics, whose European incarnation is as old as the Battle of Waterloo, and which was responsible for six pandemics in the nineteenth century alone, three reaching the United States, claiming 300,000 lives altogether.

This book records the role of U.S. medical science in the most recentand finally successfulcampaign against cholera. Drs. van Heyningen and Seal describe the first large-scale American research encounters with cholera, in Cairo in 1947 and in Bangkok in 1959. The authors then trace the growth in U.S. scientific and political interest in the eradication of cholera and describe the medical research and training facilities founded by the United States in Asia. There were failures as well as successesexhaustive field trials of cholera vaccine proved ineffectivebut eventually a simple oral treatment was found, and, in the process, advances were made toward the treatment of other dehydration diseases.

The authors devote an entire chapter to the biochemistry underlying the physiology of cholera because its implications reach far beyond the disease itself and throw light on many aspects of normal and abnormal biochemistry. They also recall the debt of modern cholera research to earlier discoveries, which were too often neglected. This extraordinary history of one of the most important developments in medicine concludes with an account of how, with the emergence of the independent republic of Bangladesh, the U.S.-dominated cholera research laboratory was, with good will, transformed into a locally controlled international center for the study of diarrhoeal disease and related problems.

W. E. van Heyningen is an internationally recognized biochemist who has specialized in bacterial toxins. Until his retirement in 1979, he was master of St. Cross College and was also actively involved in research and teaching bacterial chemistry at the University of Oxford, England. He now holds emeritus and honorary positions there. John R. Seal received his medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He has served as director of intramural research, scientific director, and deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He currently is special assistant for prevention research at the National Institutes of Health.

The American Scientific Experience, 1947-1980

W. E. van Heyningen
and John R. Seal

First published 1983 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
van Heyningen, W. E. (William Edward)
Cholera: the American scientific experience, 1947-1980.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Cholera, AsiaticPreventionInternational cooperationHistory20th century. 2.
Medical assistance, AmericanAsiaHistory20th century.
I. Seal, John R. II. Title.
RA644.C3V36 616.9'32 82-2729
AACR2

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01933-4 (hbk)

This book derives from four sources.

First Source. Unpublished papers originating from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the Public Health Service of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (formerly Department of Health, Education, and WelfareDHEW): (1) Minutes of meetings, memoranda and reports of the Ad Hoc Committee on Cholera, January to November 1959. (2) Minutes of meetings and memoranda of the Cholera Advisory Committee (CAC), May 1960 to March 1972. (3) Reports by the Director, NIH, on behalf of the CAC to the Secretary-General of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) on the SEATO Cholera Research Program, 1960 to 1972. (4) Minutes of the Cholera Toxoid Advisory Subcommittee of the CAC, later of the U.S. Cholera Panel of the U.S.-Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program (U.S.-Japan CMSP), June 1973 to September 1977. (5) Various papers relating to cholera, and in particular those embodying proposals for institutions to succeed the Pakistan-SEATO Cholera Research Laboratory (PSCRL) at Dacca prepared at the instigation of the Agency for International Development (AID) of the U.S. Department of State. (6) Annual proceedings of the directing council and of the technical committee of the PSCRL. (7) Corresponding files of the Cholera Research Program Office, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the NIH.

Second Source. Transcripts of tape-recorded interviews by W. E. van H, with the following 46 persons concerned with cholera research in the United States, the United Kingdom, the PSCRL in Dacca, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Medical Research and Training (JHCMRT) in Calcutta, the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Number 3 (NAMRU-3) in Cairo and the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Number 2 (NAMRU-2) in Taipei between 1947 and 1978, the NIH between 1959 and 1980, and other institutions, giving the institution of presumed first contact with the cholera problem: the late Jamuil Alam, PSCRL; Earl S. Beck, NIH; Abram S. Benenson, PSCRL; R. Quentin Blackwell, NAMRU-2; General Joe M. Blumberg, U.S. Army 406th Medical General Laboratory; Philip S. Brachman, Communicable Disease Center (CDC, now Centers for Disease Control); Sir Graham Bull, NAMRU-2; Charles C. J. Carpenter, JHCMRT; John J. Conroy, U.S. Embassy, Thailand; John P. Craig, PSCRL; George Curlin, PSCRL; the late Geoffrey Edsall, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR); John Feeley, Bureau of Biologies, Food and Drug Administration (BOB); Richard A. Finkelstein, University of Texas at Austin (UTA); Samuel Formal, WRAIR; Eugene J. Gangarosa, WRAIR; Robert S. Gordon, PSCRL; William B. Greenough, III, PSCRL; Carolyn Hardegree, BOB; Thomas Hendrix, Johns Hopkins Medical School (JHMS), Baltimore; Norbert Hirschhorn, PSCRL; Richard Hornick, University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSM); Colonel Robert J. T. Joy, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), Bethesda; Alexander Langmuir, CDC; Charles E. Lankford, UTA; Michael Levine, PSCRL; Maclyn McCarthy, Rockefeller Institute, New York; Carl Miller, BOB; David R. Nalin, PSCRL; Franklin Neva, NAMRU-3; Robert Oseasohn, PSCRL; Doris Parkinson, NIH; Clifford Pease, AID; Mrs. Hope Phillips, widow of Robert A. Phillips, NAMRU-3; Nathaniel F. Pierce, JHCMRT; Margaret Pittman, BOB; R. Bradley Sack, JHCMRT; James Shannon, former Director, NIH; Joseph Stockard, PSCRL; Martha Vaughan, NIH; the late Willard F. Verwey, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston; Capt. Craig Wallace, NAMRU-2; Capt. Raymond H. Watten, NAMRU-2; Theodore E. Woodward, UMSM; William E. Woodward, PSCRL; and John Yardley, JHMS. We are most grateful to all these distinguished persons for having given so much of their time and their patience.