Late at night, a feverish young girl shuffled into her father’s room complaining of a sore throat. Maurice Hilleman examined the swollen bumps on his daughter’s neck. It was 1963. She had the mumps, a common childhood disease at the time, caused by a virus that inflames the salivary glands. Most cases are mild, but severe infections can induce swelling of the brain or spinal cord and permanent deafness.
Quickly, Hilleman took several swabs of 5-year-old Jeryl Lynn’s throat, immersed the cotton tips in beef broth, and raced to his laboratory at Merck & Co. to put the container in the freezer. Within 4 years, Hilleman would turn his daughter’s strain of the mumps into the first-ever live vaccine for the infection, still used today in Merck’s Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine. National immunization against mumps began in 1967, and by 1985, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a 98 ...
