None of my children had measles, mumps or rubella -

[SidDithers]

19. Thank you Dr. Hilleman indeed!...

I put up a good article about Paul Offit a couple of months ago, that talked about Hilleman. Hilleman was a mentor to Offit. It's a long article, but well worth the read.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/will-this-doctor-hurt-your-baby/

Hilleman had many admirable qualities. He was a loving father and husband, and he was a brilliant scientist, and he was pathologically modest. But he was not what you would call a “nice guy.” He had the dark, stormy eyebrows of a mafiosi. He kept shrunken heads representing the people he had fired on his desk as morbid trophies. He was caustically funny. He once said that while it seemed he was a bastard on the outside, “If you looked deeper inside, you still saw a bastard.” The first time Offit met Hilleman, in the late ’80s, Offit tried to make small talk by chatting about a prominent Philadelphia lawyer who had been in the news. “He’s a good lawyer,” Offit said. “Good?” Hilleman shot back. “He’s the prince of fucking darkness.”

Offit loved him instantly: “He was such a character.” He was also the greatest vaccine-maker of the 20th century. Hilleman made Jonas Salk look like a lightweight. He invented vaccines to prevent measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A and B, HiB, chicken pox, pneumococcus, and meningococcus. He also invented the MMR combination shot. He accomplished all of this despite working at the suburban Philadelphia labs of Merck, and not inside academia, like most of his vaccine-making colleagues. Hilleman used to refer to himself, half bitterly, half mischievously, as a bastion of “dirty industry.”

That bit is interesting. Hilleman made these discoveries while working for Merck. Evil big pharma strikes again!

Thanks for posting this.

Sid