HEPATITIS B AND THE PREVENTION OF PRIMARY CANCER OF THE LIVER
Selected Publications of Baruch S Blumberg
edited by Baruch S Blumberg (Fox Chase Cancer Center, USA)
Baruch S Blumberg is currently a Distinguished Scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and University Professor of Medicine and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, from 1989 to 1994 and, prior to that, Associate Director for Clinical Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center from 1964. He was on the staff of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD from 1957 to 1964. He earned an MD degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York in 1951, and a PhD (D Phil) in Biochemistry from Oxford University in 1957. He was an Intern and Resident at Bellevue Hospital and The Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. His research has covered many areas including clinical research, epidemiology, virology, genetics, and anthropology. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976 for “discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases” and specifically, for the discovery of the Hepatitis B virus. In 1993, he and his co-inventor, Dr Irving Millman, were elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame for their invention of the hepatitis B vaccine and the diagnostic test for hepatitis B.
This important book comprises a narrative account of research on the hepatitis B virus (and related subjects) and selected reprints from the laboratory of Nobel laureate Baruch S Blumberg and his colleagues. The hepatitis B virus (HBV) is one of the ten most common deadly infectious diseases and is responsible for 1.1 million deaths a year worldwide.
Research in his laboratory resulted in the discovery of HBV and the invention of the vaccine which protects one against it. The research began as an apparently esoteric study of human biochemical and immunologic variation. This required field-work in Africa, the Arctic, the Pacific, the Americas, and in many other locations and populations. The overall goal was to identify inherited biological differences which were related to differing responses to disease-causing agents. The virus was discovered using the blood of an infected person who had developed the antibody, to detect the virus present in another infected person who had become a carrier of the virus. Screening of blood donors led to the near-elimination of post-transfusion hepatitis B.
There are now national HBV vaccination programs in more than 70 countries. During the past decade these programs have strikingly reduced the prevalence of HBV in many countries and there has been a significant drop in the incidence of cancer of the liver in the vaccinated cohorts. The HBV vaccination program is now, after smoking cessation, the most widely used cancer prevention program in the world.
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