Waldemar Haffkine

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Waldemar Haffkine : biography

15 March 1860 – 26 October 1930

Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine, CIE () (15 March 1860, Odessa,Waldemar Haffkine: Pioneer of Cholera Vaccine. EDYTHE LUTZKERAND and CAROL JOCHNOWITZ. Russian Empire – 26 October 1930, Lausanne, Switzerland) was a Russian Empire Jewish bacteriologist, whose career was blighted in Russia because "he refused to convert to Russian Orthodoxy." He emigrated and worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he developed an anti-cholera vaccine that he tried out successfully in India. He is recognized as the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. He tested the vaccines on himself. Lord Joseph Lister named him "a saviour of humanity".

He was knighted in Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year Honours in 1897. The Jewish Chronicle of that time noted "a Russian Jew, trained in the schools of European science, saves the lives of helpless Hindoos and Mohammedans and is decorated by the descendant of William the Conqueror and Alfred the Great" (Page 8 of the London Jewish Chronicle 1 June 2012).

Sources

  • Edinger, Henry. The Lonely Odyssey of W.M.W. Haffkine, In Jewish Life Volume 41, No. 2 (Spring 1974).
  • Waksman, Selman A.. The Brilliant and Tragic Life of W.M.W. Haffkine: Bacteriologist, Rutgers University Press (1964).

Connection with Zionism

In 1898, Haffkine approached Aga Khan III with an offer for Sultan Abdul Hamid II to resettle Jews in Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman Empire: the effort "could be progressively undertaken in the Holy Land", "the land would be obtained by purchase from the Sultan’s subjects", "the capital was to be provided by wealthier members of the Jewish community", but the plan was rejected.

Little Dreyfus affair

In 1902, nineteen Indian villagers (inoculated from a single bottle of vaccine) died of tetanus. An inquiry commission indicted Haffkine, and he was relieved of his position and returned to England. The report was unofficially known as "Little Dreyfus affair", as a reminder of Haffkine’s Jewish background and religion.

The Lister Institute reinvestigated the claim and overruled the verdict: it was discovered that an assistant used a dirty bottle cap without sterilizing it.

In July 1907, a letter published in The Times called the case against Haffkine "distinctly disproven". It was signed by Ronald Ross (Nobel laureate, malaria researcher), R.F.C. Leith (the founder of Birmingham University Institute of Pathology), William R. Smith (President of the Council of the Royal Institute of Public Health), and Simon Flexner (Director of Laboratories at New York Rockefeller Institute), among other medical dignitaries. This led to Haffkine’s acquittal.

Anti-cholera vaccine

At the time, one of the five great cholera pandemics of the 19th century ravaged Asia and Europe. Even though Robert Koch discovered Vibrio cholerae in 1883, the medical science at that time did not consider it a sole cause of the disease. This view was supported by experiments by several biologists, notably Jaume Ferran i Clua in Spain.

Haffkine focused his research on developing cholera vaccine and produced an attenuated form of the bacterium. Risking his own life, on July 18, 1892, Haffkine performed the first human test on himself and reported his findings on July 30 to the Biological Society. Even though his discovery caused an enthusiastic stir in the press, it was not widely accepted by his senior colleagues, including both Mechnikov and Pasteur, nor by European official medical establishment in France, Germany and Russia.

The scientist decided to move to India where hundreds of thousands died from ongoing epidemics. At first, he was met with deep suspicion and survived an assassination attempt by Islamic extremists during the first year there (1893), but he managed to vaccinate about 25,000 volunteers, most of whom survived.Fazal lauds Indo-Russian friendship. The Press Trust of India. December 18, 2002. After contracting malaria, Haffkine had to return to France.