John Franklin O'Neill

Background

Enders was born in West Hartford, Connecticut. His father, John Ostrom Enders, was CEO of the Hartford National Bank and left him a fortune of $19 million upon his death.

Education

AB, Yale, 1920; Doctor of Science (honorary), Yale, 1953. Master of Arts, Harvard, 1922. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard, 1930.

Doctor of Science, Trinity, 1955. Doctor of Science, Northwestern, 1956. Doctor of Science, Western Reserve University, 1958.

Doctor of Science, Tufts University, 1960. Doctor of Laws, Tulane University, 1958. Doctor of Humane Letters, Hartford University, 1960.

Doctor of Science, Jefferson Medical College, 1962. Doctor of Science, University Pennsylvania, 1964. Doctor of Science, University Ibadan, 1968.

Doctor of Science, Oxford University, 1975. Doctor of Science, Duke University, 1976.

Career

Enders has been called "The Father of Modern Vaccines." After attending Yale University a short time, he joined the United States Army Air Corps in 1918 as a flight instructor and a lieutenant. He later joined the faculty at Children's Hospital Boston. Enders died in 1985 in Waterford, Connecticut, aged 88, holding honorary doctoral degrees from 13 universities.

In 1949, Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller, and Frederick Chapman Robbins reported successful in vitro culture of an animal virus—poliovirus. The three received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of the ability of polioviruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue". Meanwhile, Jonas Salk applied the Enders-Weller-Robbins technique to produce large quantities of poliovirus, and then developed a polio vaccine in 1952.

Upon the 1954 polio vaccine field trial, whose success Salk announced on the radio, Salk became a public hero but failed to cr the many other researchers that his effort rode upon, and was somewhat shunned by America's scientific establishment. In 1954, Enders and Peebles isolated measlesvirus from an 11-year-old boy, David Edmonston. Disappointed by polio vaccine's development and involvement in some cases of polio and death—what Enders attributed to Salk's technique—Enders began development of measles vaccine.

In October 1960, an Enders team began trials on 1,500 mentally retarded children in New York City and on 4,000 children in Nigeria. On 17 September 1961, New York Times announced the measles vaccine effective. Refusing cr for only himself, Enders stressed the collaborative nature of the effort.

In 1963, Pfizer introduced a deactivated measles vaccine, and Merck & Co introduced an attenuated measles vaccine.

Achievements

• He was a leader in modern virology, cultivated poliovirus in tissue cultures of human cells and developed an attenuated live vaccine for measles. Enders has been called "The Father of Modern Vaccines. " Enders wrote close to 200 published papers between 1929 and 1970. In 1939 he co-authored Immunity, Principles and Application in Medicine and Public Health. But, while achieving wide recognition and public acclaim, Enders remained a "virologists' virologist. " Towards the end of his life, he sought to apply his knowledge of immunology to the fight against AIDS, especially in trying to halt the progress of the disease during its incubation period in the human body.
  
  His significant contributions to many areas of virology brought him honors from all over the world, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1954), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1954).

Views

Defending Liverpool's docklands from air attack.

Membership

Fellow: American Academy Arts and Sciences. Member: American Association for the Advancement of Science, Royal Society (foreign), American Public Health Association, Society Experimental Biology and Medicine, American Association Immunologists, Academie des Sciences de l'Institut de France (honorary), Massachusetts Medical Society (associate), Society General Microbiology (honorary), Society of America Bacteriologists, American Philosophical Society, Harvey Society, National Academy of Sciences, Brookline (Massachusetts) Country, Harvard, Tavern (Boston), Sigma Xi, Alpha Omega Alpha (honorary).

Connections

Married Sarah Frances Bennett, September 17, 1927 (deceased). Children: John Ostrom II, Sarah. Married Carolyn Keane, May 12, 1951.

1 stepchild William Edmund Keane.

References

• Vaccine Epidemic: How Corporate Greed, Biased Science, and Coercive Government Threaten Our Human Rights, Our Health, and Our Children