BLUMBERG, BARUCH S. 1925-

Virologist

Virologist

The 1976 Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology was awarded jointly to American virologists Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg and Dr. D. Carleton Gajdusek for their discoveries concerning mechanisms involved in the origin and spread of infectious diseases. Dr. Blumberg's identification of a chemical marker in the blood showing the presence of hepatitis B paved the way for an experimental anti-hepatitis B vaccine for this most severe and often fatal form of the liver inflammation known as viral hepatitis.

Medical Anthropologist

Dr. Blumberg's interest in how and why people of different racial, ethnic, and family backgrounds react differently to disease in terms of resistance and susceptibility took him around the world. "In a lot of these places," he said, "I would be the only outsider except for some anthropologist. So, naturally, I got interested in anthropology and such questions as how social behaviors influence susceptibility to disease. I've always been interested in human variation, and I suppose if I hadn't made the discoveries regarding hepatitis I'd be working on that."

A Chance Discovery

Sometimes major medical discoveries are the results of happenstance. Dr. Blumberg did not start off looking for the hepatitis virus, but during his early studies he found that a New York patient's blood serums formed antibodies when mixed with an antigen from an Australian aborigine. Blumberg then tested the unusual New York blood sample against thousands of other samples, trying to find out why this reaction occurred. Finally he discovered a high correlation between the antigen and hepatitis.

Protecting the Blood Supply

The first major practical result of his discovery was the development of a blood test for screening out hepatitis B virus carriers from among prospective blood donors. In 1971 the American Association of Blood Banks ordered all of its members to use the hepatitis test. Consequently, the incidence of hepatitis after transfusions decreased by about 25 percent. Hepatitis is one of the major infectious diseases found throughout the world, and hepatitis B is the more dangerous form. Carriers can be without symptoms but capable of infecting others, and it can lead to liver disease and death.

People and Intuition

Dr. Blumberg won numerous awards for his work, but his chief interest remained in people. He held the posts of professor of medicine and medical anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, adjunct professor of anthropology at Temple University, and associate director of the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia. "You can't get too far away from people and diseases," he said, "if you're going to understand people and the diseases they get." In his view, intuition is as important as reason. "Science is not as scientific as most people think it is," he explained. "Direct, cold logic is not the only method scientists use. Individual intuition and style are very important."

Source:

J. L. Melnick, "1976 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine," Science (26 November 1976): 927.

Baruch Samuel Blumberg 1925-, American biochemist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., B.S. Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 1946, M.D. Columbia, 1951, Ph.D. Oxford, 1957. From 1957 to 1964 he worked at the National Institutes of Health. In 1964 he became a professor at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, and in 1976 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with D. Carleton Gajdusek . Blumberg won his share for his discovery of an antigen in the blood of an Australian aborigine that contributed to the development of a vaccine against hepatitis B. In 1999 he was named director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute.