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This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I'm BobDoughty.

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And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week, learn about some medicalheroes.

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The French chemist Marie Curie wasthe first person ever to win two Nobel prizes. The first was inphysics, the second in chemistry. Marie Curie worked to increase theunderstanding of radioactivity. She discovered the highlyradioactive element radium. She also helped develop the use ofX-rays during the First World War.

Marie Curie was born in Poland in eighteen-sixty-seven. Sheworked with her husband, Pierre. Both handled radioactive materialsfor years without protection. As a result, both suffered healthproblems. Pierre was killed in a road accident in nineteen-oh-six.Marie Curie died in nineteen-thirty-four of a blood disorder causedby radiation.

Their daughter Irene also won a Nobel Prize for discoveries withher husband about radiation. She died of leukemia, cancer of theblood.

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At the start of the twentieth century, the United States Army hada Yellow Fever Commission. The Army wanted medical experts to studyyellow fever and find a way to stop the disease. One team worked inCuba to test the idea that mosquitoes spread yellow fever. In Augustof nineteen-hundred, the group began to raise mosquitoes and infectthem with the virus.

Nine Americans permitted the infected insects to bite them.Nothing happened. Then two more let the mosquitoes bite them. Bothmen developed yellow fever.

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A doctor named Jesse WilliamLazear recognized something. The mosquitoes that had bitten the lasttwo men had been older than the others. Doctor Lazear proved thatmosquitoes did carry yellow fever. However, he too was bitten anddied.

No one is sure just how Doctor Lazear was bitten. He said ithappened accidentally as he treated others. Some said he placed themosquito on his arm as part of the experiment. Medical historianssay he may have reported the bite as an accident so his family couldget his life insurance money.

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The team in Cuba was led by Walter Reed, the Army doctor andscientist noted for his work on infectious diseases. The death ofDoctor Lazear shocked Walter Reed and the others on the team. Butthey continued with their work.

More people let themselves be bitten by mosquitoes. Others wereinjected with blood from victims of yellow fever. Some people inthis test group developed the disease, but all recovered to fullhealth.

Members of the research group praised the work by Jesse Lazear.They called it a sacrifice to research that led the way to one ofthe greatest medical discoveries of the century.

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The research had answered the question of how yellow feverspread. Now the question was how to protect people. The researchershad a theory. They thought that people who were bitten by infectedmosquitoes, but recovered, were protected in the future.

To test this idea, the team in Cuba offered one-hundred dollarsto anyone who would agree to be bitten by infected mosquitoes.Nineteen people agreed. The only American was Clara Maass. She was anurse who worked with yellow fever patients in Cuba.

Clara Maass was bitten by infectedmosquitoes seven times between March and August of nineteen-oh-one.Only one of the nineteen people developed the disease until thatAugust. Then, in that month, seven people got yellow fever. ClaraMaass died six days after she was bitten for the seventh time.

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Cuba and the United States both made postage stamps in honor ofClara Maass. Today, a hospital in her home state of New Jersey iscalled the Clara Maass Medical Center.

The experiment showed that the bite of an infected mosquito isnot a safe way to protect people from yellow fever. Medicalhistorians say the death of Clara Maass also created a publicprotest. This reaction ended experiments with humans in yellow feverresearch.

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Joseph Goldberger was a doctor forthe United States Public Health Service. In nineteen-twelve, hebegan to study a skin disease that was killing thousands of peoplein the American South. The disease was pellagra.

Doctor Goldberger traveled to the state of Mississippi where manypeople suffered from pellagra. He studied the victims and theirfamilies. Most of the victims were poor. The doctor came to believethat the disease was not infectious, but instead related to diet.

He received permission from the state governor to test this ideaat a prison. Prisoners were offered pardons if they took part. Onegroup of prisoners received their usual foods, mostly corn products.A second group ate meat, fresh vegetables and milk. Members of thefirst group developed pellagra. The second group did not.

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But other medical researchers dismissed the findings. For theSouth, pellagra was more than simply a medical problem. There wereother issues involved, including Southern pride.

So Doctor Goldberger had himself injected with blood from aperson with pellagra. He also took liquid from the nose and throatof a pellagra patient and put them into his own nose and throat. Heeven swallowed pills that contained skin from pellagra patients.

An assistant also took part in the experiments. So did DoctorGoldberger's wife. No one got sick. Later, the doctor discoveredthat a small amount of dried brewer's yeast each day could preventpellagra.

Joseph Goldberger died of cancer in nineteen-twenty-nine. He wasfifty-five years old. Several years later, researchers discoveredthe exact cause of pellagra: a lack of the B vitamin known asniacin.

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Doctor Matthew Lukwiya died ofthe Ebola virus in December of two-thousand. He was the medicaladministrator of Saint Mary's Hospital in the Gulu District ofnorthern Uganda. The hospital was the center of treatment for anoutbreak of Ebola. The virus causes severe bleeding. There is nocure. Health workers can only hope that victims are strong enough tosurvive.

Doctor Lukwiya acted quickly to control the spread of infection.He kept the people with Ebola separate from the other patients. Heordered hospital workers to dress in protective clothes.

One day he had to deal with a patient who was dying of Ebola. Theman had been acting out of control. Doctor Lukwiya knew him well.The patient was a nurse who worked at the hospital. He was coughingand bleeding. Doctor Lukwiya violated one of his own rules. He woreno protection over his eyes.

Ugandans mourned the death of Doctor Lukwiya. He was forty-twoyears old. Saint Mary's is one of the best hospitals in east Africa.Matthew Lukwiya was an important influence in the community. Medicalexperts say his work during the outbreak in two-thousand helped stopthe Ebola virus from spreading out of control.

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Our final medical hero isCarlo Urbani. He was a disease expert from Italy. He worked inVietnam for the World Health Organization.

On February twenty-eighth, two-thousand-three, the Vietnam-FranceHospital in Hanoi asked for help to deal with an unusual infection.Doctor Urbani recognized it as a new threat. He made sure otherhospitals increased their infection-control measures.

On March eleventh, Doctor Urbani developed signs of severe acuterespiratory syndrome. Four days later, the World Health Organizationdeclared it a worldwide health threat.

Carlo Urbani was the first doctor to warn the world of thepneumonia we now know as SARS. He died of it on March twenty-ninth,two-thousand-three. He was forty-six years old.

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VOICE ONE:

Our program was written by Nancy Steinbach. Cynthia Kirk was ourproducer. This is Bob Doughty.

VOICE TWO:

And this is Faith Lapidus. Listen again next week for moreSCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English.