Prof. Dr. Harald zur Hausen
11 March 1936 - 28 May 2023
One can’t cease marvelling at how Dr. Harald’s masterful story-telling – complete with defining backdrops and key trigger events - doesn’t lose sight of the larger cause of the moot point: the meticulous chronicle of his decade-long pathbreaking discovery - that the benign-looking, wart-causing human papillomavirus (HPV) also causes cervical and other forms of cancers – which eventually led to the development of preventive vaccines and life-saving tests.
A monumental feat indeed given that more than 600,000 people develop an HPV-related cancer every year, and also given the scathing opposition and ridicule Dr. Hausen had to needlessly endure en route, even from revered and renowned mainstream experts who staunchly held that cervical cancer was caused by the herpes simplex virus.
Dr. zur Hausen’s work is unique in another key aspect, reportedly a sweet exception in the scientific world. He never thought twice about sharing clones of the viral DNA with the research fraternity at large which in turn lent great momentum to the scientific comprehension of the virus machinations and the development of vaccines.
Dr. Hausen didn’t stop at the discovery though, and he passionately advocated for the widespread use of the vaccine across the globe. Thanks only to his unyielding insistence that the vaccine be given to both genders, health officials are today recommending its administration to boys as well, unlike the protracted erstwhile practice of restricting it to girls alone.
His autobiographical thought piece reads like a cult classic feature film script – packed with poignant memories that are recounted in a matter-of-fact prose of sparkling wit and wisdom.
We learn how the Russian October Revolution in 1917 shaped his fate, as also that of his siblings; how the world war forced his father to give up his earnest study of agriculture and join the army; how the family doggedly endured the pain and pathos of the war era as also the lingering trauma of the post-war period; how the autumn of 1945 saw the resumption of school time for a young Hausen, and his early tryst with ancient Latin and Greek classics; how the biographies of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, and Sinclair Lewis’s novel ‘Arrowsmith’, an inspiring commentary on the larger truths and key questions facing medicine, influenced his decision to study medicine; how he was obsessed with questions about nature and biology of life; how his attention was drawn to the etiology of cancer, neurological and autoimmune diseases, and eventually to lysogeny (which shields a virus from environmental effects including inactivation by UV sunlight or proteolytic digestion); and how in 1960, inspired by the hunch that human cancers might have an infectious origin, he zeroed down his attention to the study of infections and cancer.
The rest is a lot of history, geography and civics – en route his internship in Westphalia and Isly; the fruitful time at the Institute of Medical Microbiology in Düsseldorf; dramatic relocation to Philadelphia to work in the laboratory of the couple Werner and Gertrude Henle working on the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), where he focused on the adenovirus; his next stint at the Virus Institute at the University of Würzburg set up by Eberhard Wecker, during which his publications on herpesviruses and oncogenesis fetched him a Robert Koch award; the profitable relocation to the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Bavaria as a clinical virologist which marked the start of his seminal research on the Papillomaviruses in cervical cancer; and the succeeding move to Freiburg as a professor at the Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology which led to the breakthrough discovery - that HPV 16 DNA was detectable in approximately 50% of cervical cancer biopsy DNA, and HPV 18 in about 20%; and not to forget two decades of exemplary achievements at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) in Heidelberg; and the highly eventful emeritus span.
We hope and pray that his colleagues, followers, and students led by his wife and fellow virologist Ethel-Michele de Villiers will soon be out with breakthrough findings on Dr. Hausen’s swan song work probing the association between breast and colon cancer which led them to the identification of a likely novel type of infectious agent and human pathogen in dairy products, the potential cause of colon and breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer disease.
It is incredible that the good doctor had to retrieve invaluable treasures ruthlessly dumped in the wastebasket– not once but twice in his career - to change the course of his work life! On the first occasion, it was Werner Henle’s letter from Philadelphia seeking a young medically trained German with interests in virology.
On the second occasion, he recovered all the slides of frozen sections of NPC biopsies (pursuant to his application of a method developed by Perdue and Gall on cells producing EBV particles) after PHD student Hans Wolf dumped the slides in the garbage bin claiming negative results (which later showed the presence of epithelial cancer cells.)
The fag-end lines of the paper are one of its resounding best, a moving tribute to his wife and work partner – reflective of organic gratitude and first-rate humour:
“Nobody else, however, influenced my personal life and my scientific career more than my wife, Ethel-Michele de Villiers. She has repeatedly stated, mockingly, that we two split our activities: She does the work, and I do the talking. Indeed, a large proportion of experimental data obtained during several decades as well as a number of excellent ideas are hers. Looking at her work and her intellectual input and proposals, frequently underestimated by several of her colleagues, I see she has a point in saying this. Thank you, Ethel-Michele, for tolerating me, clearly a passionate and addicted scientist (not very dissimilar from you).”