Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 23 January 2008 | Nature 451, 379 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451379a
News: Q&A
Q&A: Larry Brilliant
He's a physician who has had a major role in the eradication of smallpox and in tackling blindness. Now Larry Brilliant is heading up Google.org, the dotcom giant's philanthropic arm, which plans to tackle emerging diseases, climate change and poverty. Declan Butler talks to him about his diseases strategy.
How will the organization work to anticipate new pandemics?
With our 'Predict and Prevent' initiative we hope to develop an entire new science of epidemiology and surveillance, both for existing diseases and to spot emerging ones early on. One way is to strengthen national health services — look at the polio surveillance system in India, for example, which is the finest for any disease.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email redesign@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
I was very happy when I read that Google managed to get Larry Brilliant to direct their philanthropic arm. The accounts of Dr. Brilliant's work to control polio in India are fascinating. With this initiative Google is moving way beyond their motto "do no evil" to "help people". Maharaji will be proud. Bravo
Dr. Brilliant's aim to do global screening for human viral pathogens is right on and the technology required is described in Emerging Infectious Diseases 9:768-773,2003, and commented on in Nature 423:471, 2003. The basic work described was done at The Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant gas centrifuge laboratories in the NIH-AEC Zonal Centrifuge Program. One result was the K-II ultracentrifuge designed to recover the viral load from 100 liters of crude vaccine in one day. It is the largest liquid ultracentrifuge ever built, but is dwarfed by the gas centrifuges then under construction. The aim of the K-ll was to produce on a large scale a human cancer vaccine. This machine is now used world-wide to purify commercial flu vaccine and accounts for the virtual elimination of vaccination deaths. Plans to develop a new two-dimensional version for isolating a putative AIDS virus were abruptly terminated when President Reagan inexplicably abolished gas centrifugation for uranium enrichment in the US 1965. We know now the HIV project would have worked and would have saved about two years research. Reagan's terminally mistaken decision is only now being corrected in a crash US program to catch up with, and hopefully surpass, the rest of the world. It explains why no DOE facilities are available now when it is essential to completely contain and remotely operate this system. It also explains why so few people were available who could tell a gas centrifuge rotor from commercial aluminum pipe. The K-II screening project now aims to rapidly isolate and shotgun sequence the viruses from the hundreds of liters of excess diagnostic serum collected nationally, but now discarded. This would eventually put into a few drops essentially all the deadly viruses in circulation at that time. Since no human, in the history of the planet, has every been exposed to such a mixture, it is essential to provide good containment and remote operation. Containment was originally developed largely for handling plutonium for making nuclear weapons, and for processing nuclear fission products. It was adopted almost unchanged for biological warfare, and then gradually morphed into technicians working in space suits. Nuclear R&D and space research has taken a different approach using remote, robotic and often automatic systems that can be made leak proof. There is already a history of current high level containment involving people in space costumes leaking. While NASA is doing complex research on MARS from earth, no such level of complexity infects the biosciences. We would all be very indebted to Dr. Brilliant if he could provide an new and independent assessment of all this. Norman G. Anderson normananderson@viraldefense.org Viral Defense Foundation PPI-VDF E209 Holland Laboratory of the American Red Cross 15601 Crabbs Branch Way Rockvlle MD 20855 301 770 2780 Cell: 301 792 8126 Fax: 301 770 9091