25 Facts About Bernice Eddy

Bernice Eddy was an American virologist and epidemiologist.

Bernice Eddy went on to study at University of Cincinnati, earning a Master's degree in 1925 and a bacteriology Ph.

Bernice Eddy was 52 years old when her husband passed, it was noted that her mother helped her raise them.

In 1930 Bernice Eddy joined the United States Public Health Service.

In 1935 Bernice Eddy transferred to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where she joined the Biologics Control Division, the department responsible for checking the quality of vaccines distributed by the Federal government of the United States.

Bernice Eddy tested Army flu vaccines for 16 years until she was promoted to chief of flu virus vaccine testing in 1944.

In parallel to her job as chief of flu virus vaccine testing, Bernice Eddy began research on polio vaccines at the National Institutes of Health in 1952.

In 1954, the National Institutes of Health delegated Bernice Eddy to perform safety tests for a batch of inactivated polio vaccines developed by Jonas Salk for Cutter Laboratories.

Bernice Eddy's job was to test the inactivated vaccines from five different companies.

Bernice Eddy found that three of the six batches paralyzed monkeys and therefore contained live polio virus.

Bernice Eddy reported her findings regarding the flawed vaccines to the head of the Laboratory of Biologics Control, William Workman, who did not heed Bernice Eddy's warnings; the identified problems with the vaccine was not passed down to the licensing advisory committee.

Bernice Eddy was put back on duty to test on flu vaccines in response.

The meeting was attended by Bernice Eddy and produced no conclusion on what Cutter should do differently in its manufacturing process.

Bernice Eddy was later on approached by Sarah Elizabeth Stewart, her colleague at the National Institutes of Health, in 1956 while both were working on testing common cold vaccines.

Bernice Eddy readily agreed and the two women rapidly worked out the characteristics of the agent that was not referred to as a virus in their publications until 1959.

Stewart and Bernice Eddy continued to test the theory that viral components are able to induce tumors.

In 1959, Bernice Eddy began to conduct safety studies on polio vaccines, which used viruses grown in monkey kidney cells.

In 1961, Bernice Eddy showed that an extract of rhesus monkey kidney cells used in the creation of the polio vaccine caused tumors in newborn hamsters.

In 1962, Bernice Eddy presented evidence that the oncological agent present in the rhesus monkey kidney cell serum was capable of inducing histologically similar tumors under the same conditions as SV40, and that these tumors showed different properties than the SE polyoma virus, which was the only other biological material known to be capable of inducing tumors in almost all hamsters injected as newborns.

Bernice Eddy provided evidence that the extracts were inhibited under conditions that inhibited SV40 tumor development.

One study conducted by Bernice Eddy included finding new mediums on which to culture Mycobacterium leprae in labs.

Bernice Eddy retired from the National Institutes of Health in 1973 aged 70.

Bernice Eddy died on the 24th of May, 1989 due to cardiopulmonary arrest.

Bernice Eddy received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Marietta College in 1955, and the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare awarded her a Superior Service Medal in 1967.

Bernice Eddy was then honored with the NIH Director's Award in 1977.