William Pollack, His Vaccine Saved Infants

William Pollack, a medical researcher who helped develop a vaccine that virtually eradicated a disease once responsible for 10,000 infant deaths a year in the United States, died on Nov. 3 in Yorba Linda, Calif. He was 87.

He had diabetes and heart disease, his son Malcolm said in confirming the death.

“A lot of people know who Jonas Salk is, but they should know William Pollack’s name, too. This disease was a major, major problem, and it’s been virtually eradicated”, said Dr. Richard L. Berkowitz, the obstetrics and gynecology director of resident education at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital.

In 1980, Dr. Pollack and his colleagues received the Lasker Award, popularly known as the American Nobel Prize, for excellence in biomedical research.

William Pollack was born in London on Feb. 26, 1926, one of two children of David and Rose Pollack. His father was a carpenter. After serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, he received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London in 1948 and a master’s degree in chemistry there in 1950.

With his wife, Alison, he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, in the mid-1950s to work as a researcher at the Royal Columbian Hospital. In 1963 he went to work for Ortho Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson known mainly for developing spermicidal jellies, contraceptives and intrauterine devices. (It is now part of Janssen Pharmaceuticals.) While pursuing his idea for an Rh disease vaccine, he earned a Ph.D. in zoology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Dr. Pollack, who later taught immunology at Rutgers and Columbia, left Ortho after 25 years to work at other pharmaceutical companies before starting a company of his own, Quotient Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing, in Anaheim, Calif.

Besides his son Malcolm, he is survived by another son, David, who was a partner in Quotient, and by four grandchildren. His wife died in 2006.

In a 1967 interview with Science News, Dr. Pollack cautioned that the Rh gamma globulin solution he and his colleagues had developed was not a cure for Rh blood disease. To be effective, the vaccine has to be given to susceptible patients every time they become pregnant.

“The cure,” he said, “is for the next generation.”

William Pollack Dies at 87; His Vaccine Saved Infants

By PAUL VITELLO, The New York Times, November 12, 2013