in her book the vaccine race the effort to wipe out one's common diseases such as polio, chickenpox and hepatitis. she talked about the book at the 2,017th festival. this is just under an hour. >> i'm pleased to introduce meredith. she has an impressive career and received her ba in biology fromd stamford, m.d. from oxford university where she was a

rhodes scholar and a degree in journalism from columbia university. in addition, she's written for "the new york times," "washington post" and the journal among others and is c currently a staff writer at science magazine. as an epidemiologist i was excited to read the book the vaccine race, science and defeated disease. the centers for disease control and prevention considers vaccination is the number one public health achievement of thn 20th century and in need they saved millions of lives and that is because of the vaccinations for smallpox has eradicated in this courage of other diseases such as polio and even chickenpox are a thing of the past. this book is not only the story of the great achievement in public health is also about the men, women and children who helr make the vaccines possible. throughout the book, contemporary interviews with key players bring the personalities of these important scientists and individuals alive on theth

page doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable truth and that and the history of the experiments either. it's how we solved the crisis from today as grounded. its purpose to champion the cause of social justice if we are lucky he's here with us today. [applause] i can't think of a better way to spend a saturday than on people or those that love to read and write books.

it's a good and important thing that. it's in the pediatric dissertation and the major hospitals during the apartheid immature mind that it came home to be in a visceral way to be protected by many vaccines. this is a horribly overcrowded hospital and they have a large patch all over by the time the kids got their day were really sick and typically unvaccinated and malnourished and when you have a lack of the vaccinations in combination with malnutrition it's a devastating cycle and they will cripple these kids

either in saving their brains evolved in their lungs andng. pneumonia. it's not advancing. any idea why? >> this toddler had just died from the measles that invaded his lungs from the lack of a 29-cent vaccine. i went on to realize my calling was to be a writer and i couldht write for the newspaper and that was a moment of truth for me and he could go on and be a medical writer and i was lucky enough to be doing that in the 20 years most of the time it's like going from the red sox to the yankees but we are all one big happy family and there is lots of crossover.the why write a book and what is it

about encoding to touch on thres major points one is derived and used to make many vaccines the most important is to rebel the vaccines. they were often abused and used in the race to get new therapies and vaccines. it is about a fans dying of cervical cancer and they took cells from her womb and theybe

became a ubiquitous tool in medical research. they spent time examining the impact on her family who was left behind and so the book was foremost in my mind and he said they are getting all the attention that i derived from 1962 from an aborted fetus and they've been used to protect hundreds of millions of people and not only that but i got into a huge intellectual property fight in the 1970s about who owned those cells and these questions are still unanswered today.

this is his 89th day and he's still going strong. i said it sounds like there is an untold story and he said if there ever.eafter shortly thereafter i had a college reunion in california and i was able to visit tomb devito and emphasis from the beginning. it is in elegant campus that was a creepy mausoleum of the century american anatomy with these horrible specimens in the late 50s and at the time when

the man in the middle was recruited to give the institute a new life he became the director and was a larger than life character and a polish immigrant that escaped from hitler in the nick of time and fled with his young family to the states.im and he loved wine and women and song not necessarily in that order it definitely looked down as being a bit colonial.e who wa about 30-years-old is a working-class philadelphian who drove himself up by their bootstraps from a family that nothing import of microbiology at the university of pennsylvania.

he was a sort of technician hired to serve cells for experiments with the outstanding biologists from all over the world. he was a very bright guy and he wasn't going to be made a second class citizen. what did he do, he began getting fetuses from abortion that were conducted across the street at the hospital of the university of pennsylvania. in pennsylvania there wasn't even an exception to the.he of us at the university of

pennsylvania they could do a so-called medical therapeutic for doctors with mysterious reasons than they tolerated it so that's how they begin to receive the flow every few months and he would grow that fetal cells in lab dishes. if for some reason they died it was a screwup on the part of the scientists or if someone had sneezed on the cultures anddcult infected them. then the next one and the next.

you can see the ones on the typically edward fetus they are elderly disorganized but the cells in the last stages of life. why were they dying? he saw what decades of science have not seen that the cells in lab dishes or as mortal as you and i provided they are normal and not cancerous by definition they would grow forever but these are aborted fetal cells from healthy normal fetuses and they were buying and she published a paper that said as much and took a huge amount of flak but that figure made up the name ended years and years to be accepted if you talk to any biologists today and they willll know the limit if they are normal cells in lab dishes.

they wanted to do experiments on the normal biology of aging. the nih was interested because they wanted to fund scientists to look into the cells that there was a failed leader and what was he going to do, the nih funded him to start developing new lines. a lot of money came into this contract. $120,000 a year in the mid-60s and the contract said candidates would be important if you becomes the property of the government and they are ours to keep it you will hand them back to us as per instructions.

he also had an interest in developing new lines for a reason involved in the vaccine making it a habit to do with these animals you'll recall in 1955 the polio vaccine was introduced into was the great public health victory of the era. the salk vaccine was produced in monkey kidney cells and it became apparent throughout the 1950s that those cells harbored silent viruses. by the late 1950s, tens of millions of children in this v country have been vaccinated with this vaccine into some ofin these violent monkey viruses were in the vaccine and up to 30 million children were exposed to monkey viruses that have penetrated the vaccine. it was thought to have been killed by the same formaldehyde in the vaccine used to kill a virus. they were walking around and

seemed perfectly healthy so regulators didn't worry too much. a quick review, virus can be a piece of genetic material with a protein coat on their own they don't eat, sleep, maneuver founs that they must invade cells in order to reproduce themselves so a virus will invade itself, hijack the machinery, makeke copies of itself and then they burst out and that's how they replicate so when you want to make a vaccine you need to cells that's the use of monkey kidney cells to make this vaccine. on the left and unsung heroine of medicine in my opinion bernice came from a town of less than 200 west virginia, worked her way through her phd at theth university of cincinnati and discovered that the reason it

was being used harbored ar monk particular virus that caused the uniformly fatal cancer in her laboratory hamsters. she alerted her bosses and was silenced and denoted and finally put to work in what had been a supply room with one staffer. she had amazing staying power. the only newspaper that paid attention to the news was the national enquirer got the story right. t there was this particular virus and no one knew in the long term what it might do. it was clear it caused cancer ie the hamsters and if you scraped cellscrapecells from a cheap ito cause cancer. regulators got worried and move6

to another for producing the polio vaccine going forward. he'd looked at all of this and thought why don't we get them from one clean normal fetus and they will multiply and we can use them and know they are safep to. he needed a source where she could go back and get the medical history. the surgeons didn't care about his work it was a pain for them. through the connection he was able to connect where it was legal from 1962 in mother of several young children with a

husband without much use was often out of town it wasn't much help when he was around she couldn't face another child however it wasn't easy and by the time she found who agreed to perform it she was four months pregnant and was a character i will tell you about in theif question time but i'm trying to raise the head here.t eigh the fetus was wrapped in a sterile green cloth where the lungs were dissected and flown to philadelphia and in the summer of 1962 as the social change was coming silent spring was published and many other events were afoot.

he named them from the fetus and created 800 of these tiny cells each have two to 3 million each would have a potential to divide another 40 times. there would be 22 million pounds when it fully expanded.for prac for practical purposes they created a supply that was infinite especially when you realize that if you freeze these 800 cells whether they are sought out a year later, a decade later or 50 years later

just like 1962.ce >> he had done all kinds of lab tests and it was clear that they were clean and safe and he sent young physicians back to interview several months after to make sure the family was free of infectious diseases. she provided a medical history that made clear there were no problems of health but she ran into someone that was the wrong man for the wrong job.t the wroy this man, very smart harvard ede educated physician and expert but he had been in the south pacific with the medical corps in 1942 when there was a terrible accident with yellow fever vaccine, tens of thousands

of military men infected with titus b. butthead mistakenlyll infected up to 150 of them died. marie witnessed this at closete quarters and put the fear of god in him about 13 years later when it was first rolled out and he was second in command. it was a laboratory of california that produced the vaccine that have live polio virus, 102 people were paralyzed and there had to be a recall in the vaccine.yo it was a terrible situation. the secretar secretary of healtd human services was fired and he was moved into his boss's position and became the chief vaccine regulator for the entire united states.s. he was in the nih.

they were typically slow to make decisions that were very conservative and did not want to make changes unless he was absolutely forced to. he was afraid they were going to cause cancer and are resisted of them even as the european companies and clinical trials people rushed for others that were stymied.om i'm going to turn but i will come back to the storyline. a massive epidemic extended on the u.s.. with a fever might have a few swollen lymph nodes, rash or might not know you are infected.

it will damage virtually every fetus in the first trimester between 90 to 100% so you can imagine in the midst of the epidemic with no vaccine available in 1964, women were typified and many were affected by it. yoeusebius of these babies they have combinations of these conditions and an unknown number of others to terminate pregnancies because of the epidemic they could be sure it was all very scary.se there are pictures of the particles moving between cells

and it affects virtually every fetal organ. one of the outcomes ofdu cataracts. this is stephen born during the epidemic pictured here at about age eight. he walks up the stairs and around the corner he was a self-made man grew up in theis t bronx and worked his way to medical school. they couldn't turn him down for medical school.rt set ong he had his hard on making vaccines that headed the institute of india was in the midst of this epidemic that he was going to do something aboutt

it. he knew what they did it to it s and returned to philadelphia in 1964 and became known as the looming in philadelphia that could run a very lengthy and onerous test that would tell a a pregnant woman that she had been infected. when the test was positive and the family chose to abort the ask can i receive it because i'm trying to isolate to be rid of a virus from the fetus. in the calendar year 1964 it was number 27 from which he captured the virus that was particularly well. that is a sense of the anxiety

and this is the cover for life magazine in june of 1965.tion a >> he was up against a competition as he set up to develop the vaccine many major drug companies saw what the market was going to be. every woman of childbearing age in this country and around the world would want the vaccine plus regulators would recommend it for young children so they wouldn't expose their mothers. and there wathen there was anotr sophisticated belgian company. so, since you have also stubborn and determined to. he found a powerless and went to the archbishop that owned and operated at an orphanage in southwest from adelphia called the st. vincent home for children and the first test ofoo

the vaccine took place in this orphanage pictured here to read about what the orphanage wasing like. please wave at me if you are not hearing me. >> the children was three stories tall and took up most of the city block. they were crammed from the roman catholic archdiocese that owned and operated home while many called it an orphanage not all of the parents who lived there in november 1964 were dead. some were destitute were in jail or having that way.

.. hospital for unwed moistures across the lane. and when those babies were born, if they weren't adopted in first year passed across lane to orphanage and mixed on black children. five helped by a core of hired child care workers and dress and changed diapers, bathe them each evening assembly line fashion also two cooks. two adopted stray dogs named jamie and steve and grumpley maintenance man. nuns and more friendly habit of whose wives leaves more than one stray during diaper change and livered in single rooms and worship on the ground floor. the rest of the lower two floors the children. it was a spartan place with hard floors and stallless bathrooms

with tiny toilets. the nuns tried to make up in love what building left >> they tried to make up in love with the building like some physical warmth. reading to them at story time and walk in them to nearby crowds, creeks, parks. still, the nuns worried about the children. sister damien, petit austria born in her late 20s new theirir children after all there so many of them. everyone needed an adult or two to belong to. a level of care and attention she cannot possibly divide. the day the foster family arrived to take one boy away and he unraveled in screams and wales.serve onsi the unforgettable loss look that an unnamed sister mary joseph observed on the face of the desk relieve when she discovered the beautifully wrapped presents that john joseph kroll handed to her at the annual christmasow

party at a downtown hotel was in fact, decoration. an empty box. is philadelphia's top that they studied in the st. vincent homeh in the letter he did not explain to the archbishop that he had captured the vaccine virus from one aborted fetus and grown it in another. he was antiabortion. in 1973 he will call the supreme court road versus wade decision striking down the abortion lawso quote an unspeakable tragedy for this nation that are unspeakable to contemplate. in 1964 we give a study to go ahead. i will stop there i thought this

was a 15 minute talk and i understand this is 40 cell have to move on quickly. basically he was outdone by merck and others and who political favoritism one approval for their rubella vaccine in 1969. rebel epidemics came around every six or seven years so there was a tremendous race to get a rubella vaccine before 1970 when the next academic was expected. in 1969, the u.s. vaccine regulators approve three pharmaceutical manufactured vaccines. it was left out in the cold. it emerged however because ofor one woman, dorothy horsman, the first chairwoman pediatric at yale who pay close attention to the studies on it. his the vaccine is actually better. it generated better levels ofnsd antibodies and fewer side effects.yhorse dorothy horsman, who did not take no for an answer, went to

murray's vaccine that she was making it merck and some people left lived in fear and an andouy trepidation.po and also powerful. she told them in no uncertaince terms, you have to drop the inferior vaccine and start making -- vaccine. murray was a profane guy so i can't tell you what he told her. but eventually he agree. to this day, as of 1979, the first box of mnr vaccine that merck manufactured was with rubella vaccine in it. to this day, this vaccine protects 4 million american babies who are injected with it. and it's exported to 40 countries. no doubt it has prevented tens

of millions of abortions andrm fetal abnormalities. the first vaccine made was the fetal cells that arrived in 1962 was finally approved in 1972 by u.s. regulators. how did this happen? 1972 rod murray was pushed out of his job as the u.s. vaccinene regulator and it was moved over to fda. this poliovirus waxing became the first on the u.s. market made with those cells. what happened, we left him back in 1962 having just arrived under that contract that said we had to hand them back over when the contract was up. by 1968 he was tired of being treated as a second-class citizen by the rest of the world class biologist. he found himself a better job ae stanford.

this is to remind you of him, the polsky had designed -- hang on. he had designed the cells. by 1968, he made a rubella vaccine and the cells were there in abundance, and freezers in the basement of the institute. capacity who hated deal with finance was constantly in a financial pickle he wrote a letter and welcome the big british drug company saying, a patented recipe for the rebel vaccine and i can give you everything you need. let's make a deal. hey flick said, over my dead body.t me they didn't have the courtesy to let me know about this. now, they let him know that he

was leaving for sanford and nih as well. and ih had a meeting with him in early 1968 and said you need to turn the cells back over to us before you leave in june. w after he saw this letter, he went quietly to the basement when no one was looking. he packed all the remaining 400 odd vials of the cells into a portable liquid nitrogen refrigerated that looks like a 100-pound bomb without the wings. strapped into the four-door sedan put his kids in the other seat and drove the 3000 miles to california to the grand canyon another destinations. and ih was fit to be tied to an even more so when the campaign with the cells was discovered. however, nothing was done until hey flick who had been in doing

it for free decided to come up a company in the early 70s and began selling the cells including smirk. he signed a contract with mark when she decided that would have been worth up to $1 million had it not connect security. shortly after that nih got wind that he was selling the cells and sent out an investigator ofa waste, fraud and abuse a guy toy investigate. he resigned under pressure and spent many years -- in the academic wilderness. i think his colleagues can put it so accurately when he said to science, this really is a tragedy, this is a man who at the height of his powers brought about his own downfall. that's the front page of the new york times on a sunday march of

1976 when a headline says nih investigator sold by the united states. hey flick spent many years defending his reputation. what they will know about it today is the limits of the important discovery of mortality. they will not be aware of his difficult interval in the mid- 1970s. they also won't be aware of the contribution he made to get a many cellular factories into circulation for many viral vaccines. the british imitated this method of the cell line in 1966, and between the two cell lines within 6 billion doses ofseases vaccine against these diseases,

in effect, this year over 50 have been vaccinated against it shingles hey flick fought the u.s. in court for five years from 1976 - 1981. finally and 81 the governmentma settled mainly because times are changing. scientists are being asked to do a 180-degree turn to stop being servants for the common good and start looking out for the next commercial opportunity.ca there is a law that said given institutions could own intellectual property even if it was done by investigators and funded at the institutions by u.s. governments. in other words, they were encouraged to become entrepreneurs. given the slow it was hard for nih to keep prosecuting and they settled with him under the terms he was allowed to keep six rows

of the cells. the rest returned to the government. still hundred 247 surveillance at the american culture collection.lready. liquid nitrogen has to be the stuff from time to time so from your steers he would try back and forth to buy new liquid nitrogen. finally in 2006 he decided enough. it's time, he once said the cells are like my children. it's time, my children should leave home. and he sent them off to a laboratory in new jersey. his wife never saw penny which made many lawmakers billions of dollars through the rubella vaccine.

that is much of an act go of this story and i'll be glad to take questions or anything else you have to ask about. all open never questions now. [applause] >> i have a question that is both on and off topic. you reference early the infected kidney cells, what is your thought about the theory that's floated around that one reason africa was the epicenter of hiv was because those people have been vaccinated with those infected vaccinations. >> there is a big controversy about that at the turn-of-the-century. they actually went back to the original polio vaccine and they found no trace of hiv or anything that would implicate those vaccines because in hiv. there is a study in britain called get along study on that

has been completely debunked. that's not where hiv came from. >> it's not a contributing factor. i'm also happy to talk about current vaccine politics is that's on your mind. that at least in interviews i've had a lot of questions about that. >> with abortion legal now, it seems that it would be relatively simple to get new cell lines, is that being pursued? you talk only like there's two magic cell lines it seems like any competent pharmaceutical company can create a new cell line when they wanted. >> there's a two-part answer to that.

didn't but here the question? what is the vaccine technology in many ways has gone past using whole cells to producing vaccines. these snippets of dna now so comments not an antiquated technology but one you would think of using going forward. the other thing it's a matter of if it broke, don't fix it. there's a long experience with these vaccines made using the cells. so cells like people have their own personalities and characteristics in the lab. if you're very familiar with the seller you don't really want to stop and start over with a new one because there's a huge literature and experience accumulated around that. that being said, chinese company last year derived a new aborted fetal cell line because they wanted their own source of human fetal cells for vaccine making. it is down, but not frequently. there's still lots of mrc in

particular on hand. >> nonoaud our people getting cancer from that same vaccine line? >> those people are probably in their 60s now. >> and you and vaccinated between 1955 and 61 who would be in the pool who are possibly exposed to that. the institute of medicine did a very extensive and exhaustive study which was published i believe in 2001. what they concluded was that it's highly unlikely, it can't absolutely be ruled out because the studies were done at the time that would have been able to answer that question. there is data that can definitively answer that question. the bottom line is that it seems very unlikely.

>> if you're interested in getting more information about the question and the whole virus and vexing, there's a book called the virus in the vaccine, published about ten years ago that really has chapter and verse. it also has a very definite point of view. [inaudible question] where do we stand currently in the race for an ebola vaccine? >> i think it's about to be deployed on the democratic republic of congo. one vaccine candidate has not been approved but there's not break as we speak. i think the move is to put that candidate vaccine into use the saw to be effective. i'm not up to speed on where the

other new bullet candidates are. there has not been one licensed. but, i know there are several candidates. >> thank you for the research that you have put into this. and wondering mind the myth about vaccines and autism have persisted despite the scientifid evidence, and why the so-called the anti- baxter's still have a strong sway over a certain portion of the population when the scientific consensus is that these vaccines don't cause autism? >> that's a good question. a lot of people ask themselves. parts is part of a mentality now that's coming across issues

including global warming where distrust of authority ands issus expertise, questioning of facts exists. i also think there's a deep human need if your child has wao autism you want to know there is a reason, cause, you want to tell a story about what caused it to happen. we don' we don't know, is not tremendously satisfying. unfortunately, because the age of childhood vaccination is coincident and simultaneous it's very easy as a distressed parent to say elites to be. then when you have some like -- of promoting that, not to mention that he is been thrown out of the medical profession it doesn't matter because if you're looking for a story on someone

who was once in authority who i telling you that story it just something psychically. i can explain it. but, i do think one think it's really important is not to be dismissive or patronizing as people who are coming from that point of view.er tha i think that makes people dig in harder. there needs to be empathy and listening, and then maybe education and evidence. starting with the listening and the empathy. >> does anyone wonder about mrs? she is or was still living ins. sweden. the conversation with my translator she made it clear that she did not want to be interviewed. she wanted this to be a close chapter in her life. she did say, they did this without my knowledge and that would never be allowed today.

>> given that that's a discussion in the importance of it today especially with the henrietta lacks now becoming ort forefront with the movie, have you seen the hbo movie? do you think it did justice to the issue at hand? >> the movie was made-for-tv. i thought opera did a tremendous acting job. but, you cannot get in the movie the back story about the cells and their use. it was meant to be a drama.nt i'd recommend anyone who sought in his entry, the biggest richer and offers more. that's often the case for of books versus movies.

>> this is a, more than a question. a couple months ago i started working up at john hopkins. i work with quite a number of african-american people who aree incredibly well educated still have fears about visiting certain parts of the hospital. the effect of that is not just the community that lives around the hospital, it's huge. how much damage it did. >> there was a story you it tells about the other woman scientist who had gottene punished and relegated to the lab. >> you said you tell us what happened to her. >> well, she persisted in herher research. she worked at nih and was hired when she was 70 given oral history revealing what happened about ten years later, shortly before she passed away.

she would not let herself be turned aside. i've been told this time. thank you all for attending. [applause] >> winston in a book tv, books covering military history at a bistro and retired admiral james on the history of naval warfare in his book, seapower. historian jennifer king on her book, world war i. the american soldier experience. james wright discusses his book, entering vietnam. andrew carol writes about world war i from the perspective of general john pershing in the book, my fellow soldiers. as part of book tv in prime time. >> c-span's "washington journal"

live every day with new some policy issues that impact too. coming up on wednesday morning, we start with the center for urban renewal and education fund, sarah parker president trumps reaction to what happened in charlottesville and actions by alt-right groups. then we talked about the historical parallels between the current nuclear standoff with north korea in the 1962 cuban missile crisis. i told him the clear discusses countering hate groups and shares his experience as a former organizer for the white resistance. watch "washington journal", live at 7:00 a.m. wednesday morning. join the discussion. >> we been on the road meeting winners of this year student can video documentary competition. at royal oak high school in royal oak michigan, first place winner won a prize of $3000 for his documentary on the rising cost of pharmaceutical drugs.

the second place prize of $1500 went to classmate, mary sire for her documentary on mandatory minimum sentencing and mass incarceration. there place winner won a prize of $750 for her documentary and gender inequality. there is a honorable mention price for the documentary and the relationship between the police and the media. thank you to all the students who participated in the 2017 student can video competition. go to student can.word. the theme for next year's the constitution you. asking students to choose any provision of the u.s. constitution. create a video illustrating why the provision is important. >> physician, rachel pearson writes about how the u.s.