By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
William S. Jordan, 90, a physician whose name is synonymous with vaccine research around the world, died of pneumonia March 11 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.
Dr. Jordan established the scientific review known as the Jordan Report, considered the most complete reference on vaccine research and development. As director of the microbiology and infectious diseases program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1976 to 1987, he advanced national and global disease prevention strategies as well as promotion of new and improved vaccine research.
Vaccines have become an important tool in the fight against diseases. No longer simply inactive viruses, vaccines now include attenuated, live viruses, and researchers use new technologies to address drug-resistant, emerging and reemerging diseases. All of that research is meticulously documented in the 27-year-old Jordan Report, which began as an annual internal review of what was happening in the NIAID's microbiology and infectious diseases program.
The report eventually became public and is published several times a year.
As important as documentation is, pushing new research forward is even more crucial.
Dr. Jordan "was the creator and chief advocate for a new effort, which he dubbed the 'Accelerated Development of Vaccines.' He sensed that scientific progress was accelerating and that the very pace of discovery was going to yield many new ideas for vaccines of all kinds," John R. LaMontagne, then-NIAID deputy director, said in 2004 when Dr. Jordan won the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal. LaMontagne died later that year.
Carole Heilman, who now holds the same position at NIAID that Dr. Jordan did, said yesterday that he became identified with excellence in vaccine research.
"What Dr. Jordan was most concerned about was that the investment of federal dollars was put to good use. And he saw no better use than vaccine research," Heilman said. "He was an encyclopedia of knowledge when it came to infectious diseases. He had one of these photographic memories."
Dr. Jordan, who was younger than Jonas Salk and a contemporary of Maurice R. Hilleman, exhorted scientists to ensure that their research was meaningful to public health needs and never hesitated to ask in-depth questions. Salk developed the first effective polio vaccine, and Hilleman developed eight of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended for children.
Dr. Jordan "had such a knowledge base that you better know what you were talking about," Heilman said.
Under Dr. Jordan's oversight, vaccines were developed or improved for hepatitis B and influenza. The value of antiviral drugs for herpes and flu were confirmed, and he advocated forcefully for neglected diseases such as malaria, schistosomiasis and other parasitic ailments, which led to the creation of the International Collaborations in Infectious Disease Research.
He was born in Fayetteville, N.C., and graduated from the University of North Carolina and, in 1942, from Harvard Medical School.
During World War II, he served with the National Naval Medical Center and was first stationed in Reykjavik, Iceland, and then with the Tropical Disease Service, where he treated Marines who came down with filariasis and malaria in the South Pacific. He also served as a medical officer at sea.
Dr. Jordan began his career in medical research in 1947 at Western Reserve University in Cleveland in the preventive medicine department. He and his colleagues started a long-term study of illness patterns in middle-class families and discovered that acute respiratory infections and viral gastroenteritis, often called stomach flu, were the most common causes of illness in those families. Dr. Jordan's laboratory contributed findings on pandemic influenza and the transmission of adenovirus.
The Cleveland Family Study is regarded as an epidemiological classic.
In 1958, Dr. Jordan moved to the University of Virginia's medical school to chair its preventive medicine department. He also was director of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board's Commission on Acute Respiratory Diseases.
He later became dean of the University of Kentucky's medical school and spent a year at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to study the role of the community physician in the British National Health Service. From this experience, he wrote "Community Medicine in the United Kingdom" (1978).
By the time he joined NIAID in 1976, he was an established vaccine researcher.
Dr. Jordan led delegations from the United States to the Soviet Union for joint meetings on interferon and influenza research. After his retirement from NIH, he was an adviser to the National Vaccine Program Office.
He was past president of the NIH Alumni Association, the American Epidemiology Society and the Society of Medical Consultants to the Armed Forces.
His wife of 51 years, Marion Anderson Jordan, died in 1998.
Survivors include two children, Marion A. Jordan of Potomac and William S. Jordan III of Akron, Ohio; a brother; and three grandchildren.