Albert Lasker
Public Service Award
Alfred Richards
For his outstanding achievement in the organization and administration of the Committee on Medical Research of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, of which he was Chairman. The timely mass production of penicillin, the search for a better antimalarial drug, and the preparation of blood plasma were all research projects carried out during the war, under his supervision.
To Alfred Newton Richards, a scientist distinguished for his contributions in many fields, notably that of kidney physiology, and administrative leader of medical affairs at the University of Pennsylvania, this award is made for outstanding contributions to the progress of medical science during World War II, primarily for his administration of the Committee on Medical Research.
From its inception in June 1941, Dr. Richards has been chairman of the Committee on Medical Research of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. In this capacity he wisely achieved administrative liaison between the Committee on Medical Research and the Division of Medical Sciences of the National Research Council, which led to the mobilization of American medical scientists for research on problems of importance to our armed forces. He early recognized the potential possibilities of penicillin at a time when large-scale commercial production seemed to be a vain hope. His faith in a successful outcome of commercial efforts in the face of many difficulties and repeated disappointments contributed in no small measure to the eventual prodigious production of penicillin achieved by the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Richards gave the penicillin program his personal attention. Its success required proper timing during the period of limited supply of clinical evaluation of the drug, research on better methods of production, research on its chemistry, and priorities on its use in ways which would provide the greatest benefit to our armed forces without forgetting civilian needs. Through his long acquaintance with foreign scientists, he was able to bring about the closest collaboration between the medical scientists of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and the United States.
As chairman of the Committee on Medical Research, Dr. Richards actively supported and encouraged comprehensive programs in the search for a better antimalarial drug, for protective measures against infectious diseases, for better insecticides and insect repellents, for improved methods of preparing blood and other solutions for transfusion, for increased knowledge of how to preserve man's effectiveness in high and rapid flight, and many other problems of medical science which contributed so importantly to the prevention of disease, the preservation of physical fitness and the care of the sick and wounded.
His steadfastness of purpose, his adherence to high principles, and withal his understanding of and considerateness for others and their problems make Alfred Newton Richards affectionately admired by all medical scientists associated with him in the war effort. All men are in his debt.
Fred Soper
For administrative achievement in controlling yellow fever and malaria through a new principle of species eradication of insect carriers.
Dr. Fred Soper, associate director of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, was from 1930 to 1940 director of the Yellow Fever Service of Brazil, and was charged with organizing and administering mass eradication campaigns against Aedes aegypti, the carrier of yellow fever. The introduction of adult mosquito capture as an indication of hidden breeding places and the routine oiling or destruction of all breeding foci found, plus the intensification of careful administrative controls, so lowered the Aedes aegypti densities that by 1933 a number of the principal ports of Brazil, many of them notorious in the history of yellow fever, were completely free of the insect vector. The methods employed in Brazil were also applied in other South American countries.
In 1939, a campaign was also begun adjacent a vicious vector of malaria, the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, brought to Brazil from Africa. Adapting the bold technique of species eradication and using methods developed in the fight against yellow fever, Dr. Soper organized a control campaign that in less than two years eliminated the mosquito from Brazil. In Egypt, the gambiae mosquito, which had been causing the most serious epidemic of malaria recorded in Egyptian history, was eradicated only nine months after the organization of the Gambiae Eradication Service in June 1944. Dr. Soper, by organizing and directing the application of eradication techniques against the vectors of tropical disease in these areas, has made an outstanding contribution to public health.