Haffkine Institute

Haffkine Institute

 

The place where I grew up from 3^rd standard onwards till college was a colony located at the back of Haffkine Institute which was bounded on one side by Parel Tank Road .The wall of Haffkine institute went all around this 2 km road and it formed a landmark to locate our colony on Golanji Hill.

 

As children, we always wondered what  this long ‘wall of china ’that separated us from the institute hid from us and as to what went inside; for, as we walked long side the wall we could get funny odors emanating  from other side. Another feature which we had marked was the rich botanical heritage that thrived on the other side in the institute with huge trees spreading their large canopies offering us shade when we walked home from school in afternoon sun

 

As one walks towards the Government Gate road on the other side of which is the K.E.M Hospital, at the turn towards Parel village we could smell of fresh horse dung and some biochemical odors and even at times hear the horses neighing. Later we learnt that these horses were maintained to manufacture serum used in many vaccines.

 

I clearly remember how I felt ‘my father strongest’ when my father returned from a visit to this Institute for Blood Donation which he did periodically. I confess here that I have never been blood donor enthusiast, donating blood only on one or two occasions. I also remember how he had taken my blood sample to Haffkine institute when some specialized tests were ordered by our family practitioner during one of my sickness.

 

My actual visit to this Institute officially took place twice .First when we had a study visit to this institute with various departments of microbiology, virology, biochemistry and immunology. This included a visit to the stables for the horses and we were also shown extraction of venom from snakes to develop antisnake serums useful in snake bites .Another tour was a part of worksites visit in the curriculum of Industrial Health. But these were boring structured visit which systematically prevented us from exploring it on our own. And the strict supervision prevented us from registering many things that would help us to remember and apply the knowledge gained. But my actual contact came when I worked for Prescription Communication Agency, when I spend hours in the Library. This was on the first floor and a Victorian staircase led one to the Library from the main entrance foyer on the left. There were huge paintings Dr Haffkine near the main entrance and a roll of honor of all the directors in the past with their tenures. In the foyer was statue of the then Governor General and one Kuber Dhar Sharma

 

I used to particularly refer to Index Medicus, and Abstracts on various subject especially chemical, biochemical and microbiology abstracts .These used to be huge volumes but I would pour onto it for hours trying to get as many references as possible and learning many newer aspects of science .International Pharma abstracts were also hot favorite would copy them down and take them to my boss Rajeshwar who would be happy and delighted. Those were days of hard work and perseverance. We had no computers or Net but it never bothered us as gathering info it self was a pleasure paralleling the discovery of the fact .I used to plan my visits or go there extempore depending on time on hand or work deadline. But it always was a great relaxation for me when I was not studying.

 

Haffkine was famous for its anti snake venom and I have seen the snakes being exvenomised and the venom gathered for injecting it into horses to give rise to antidotes after exsanguinations of  the horses partially. There was a huge hematology lab as well and a virology section where they studied some exotic viruses from the blood of patients from KEM Hospitals. This institute had quarters for its staff to stay and I wondered how they were as they were so near yet so  far. My elder sister had an opportunity to visit one of them as one common friend took her to one of those. Later I was trying to get an idea of the habitat by asking all possible details.

 

Now that the real estate prices are spiraling in Central Mumbai I have all the reasons to suspect the land mafia to have developed interest in this huge property which belongs to government. This fear is justified as of late I read in one of the leading newspaper about the non availability of Snake Antivenin from Haffkine.Now there is a double benefit situation in this scenario. If the poor die of snake bites in rural India why should the city dwellers bother .The snakes are reducing the agricultural population which is a welcome situation as food can be manufactured in factories by biotechnology and there are many entrants in this sunrise business .Pharma companies may moreover snatch the market of antivenin production and sell it for a huge profit with nexus involving doctors and chemists. And it always can be manufactured for captive consumption for army or huge corporations which have stakes in organized agricultural sectors like the tea, coffee and cash crop industry.

 

Now only yesterday, Mr Kapil Sibal announced formation of Navratna Institutes for Scientific research at various centers all over the country.Mr Sibbal this is exactly what bad governance is all about. Before making such announcements with large capital outlay, first study the status of existing research centers in the country instead of abandoning it for political gains try to revive these institute which are our science heritage sites. Many past scientists have a proud connection and memory of these premium institutes which represent their honor and dismantling of these will be a body blow to the alma mater and the scientific communities across the country. Please save Haffikine as a site of excellence where Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine and where many drugs were manufactured for use for the soldiers in second world war .Please conserve this piece of art and beauty and which is an icon of science to the Medical and scientific world of contemporary India as very nostalgic memories are attached to this monument where Dr Haffkine researched the vaccine for Cholera and plague

Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine, CIE (Russian: Мордехай-Вольф Хавкин) (15 March 1860, Odessa,^[1] Russian Empire - 26 October 1930, Lausanne, Switzerland) was a Russian Jewish bacteriologist, whose career was blighted in Russia because “he refused to convert to Russian Orthodoxy.”^[2] He emigrated and worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he developed an anti-cholera vaccine that he tried out successfully in India. He is recognized as the first microbiologist who developed and used vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. He tested the vaccines on himself. Lord Joseph Lister named him “a savior of humanity”.

Early years

Born Vladimir Aaronovich Havkin (Russian: Владимир (Маркус-Вольф) Аaронович Хавкин), the fourth of five children in a family of a Jewish schoolmaster in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), he received his education in Odessa, Berdyansk and St. Petersburg.

For a short time, young Haffkine was a member of Narodnaya Volya, but after the group turned to terrorism against public officials, he broke up with the revolutionary movement. He was also a member of the Jewish League for Self-Defense. Haffkine was injured while defending a Jewish home during a pogrom. As a result of this action he was arrested but later released due to the intervention of Ilya Mechnikov.

Haffkine continued his studies with famous biologist Ilya Mechnikov, but after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the government increasingly cracked down on people it considered suspicious, including intelligentsia. Mechnikov left the country for Pasteur Institute in Paris.^[2]

In 1888, Haffkine was allowed to emigrate to Switzerland and began his work at the University of Geneva. In 1889 he joined Mechnikov and Louis Pasteur in Paris.

 Anti-cholera vaccine

At the time, one of the five great cholera pandemics of the nineteenth century ravaged Asia and Europe. Even though Robert Koch discovered Vibrio cholerae in 1883, the medical science at that time did not consider it a sole cause of the disease. This view was supported by experiments by several biologists, notably Jaume Ferran i Clua in Spain.

Haffkine focused his research on developing cholera vaccine and produced an attenuated form of the bacterium. Risking his own life, on July 18, 1892, Haffkine performed the first human test on himself and reported his findings on July 30 to the Biological Society. Even though his discovery caused enthusiastic stir in the press, it was not widely accepted by his senior colleagues, including both Mechnikov and Pasteur, nor by European official medical establishment in France, Germany and Russia.

The scientist decided to move to India where hundreds of thousands died from ongoing epidemics.^[2] At first, he was met with deep suspicion and survived an assassination attempt by Islamic extremists during the first year there (1893), he managed to vaccinate about 25,000 volunteers, most of whom survived.^[3] After contracting malaria, Haffkine had to return to France.

In his August 1895 report to Royal College of Physicians in London about the results of his Indian expedition, Haffkine dedicated his successes to Pasteur, who recently had died. In March 1896, against his doctor’s advice, Haffkine returned to India and performed 30,000 vaccinations in seven months.

 Anti-plague vaccine

“Unlike tetanus or diphtheria, which were quickly neutralized by effective vaccines by the turn of the century, the immunological aspects of bubonic plague proved to be much more daunting.”^[4] In October 1896, an epidemic of bubonic plague struck Bombay (now Mumbai) and the government asked Haffkine to help. He embarked upon the development of a vaccine in a makeshift laboratory in a corridor of Grant Medical College. In three months of persistent work (one of his assistants experienced a nervous breakdown, two others quit), a form for human trials was ready and on January 10, 1897^[5] Haffkine tested it on himself. “Haffkine’s vaccine used a small amount of the bacteria to produce an immune reaction.”^[6] After these results were announced to the authorities, volunteers at the Byculla jail were inoculated and survived the epidemics, while seven inmates of the control group died. “Like others of these early vaccines, the Haffkine formulation had nasty side effects, and did not provide complete protection, though it was said to have reduced risk by up to 50 percent.”^[4][6]

Haffkine’s successes in fighting the ongoing epidemics were undisputable, but some officials still insisted on old methods based on sanitarianism: washing homes by fire hose with lime, herding affected and suspected persons into camps and hospitals, and restricting travel.

Even though the official Russia was still unsympathetic to his research, Haffkine’s Russian colleagues’ doctors V.K. Vysokovich and D.K. Zabolotny visited him in Bombay. During the 1898 cholera outbreak in the Russian Empire, the vaccine called “лимфа Хавкина” (”limfa Havkina”, Havkin’s lymph) saved thousands of lives across the empire.

By the turn of the century, the number of inoculees in India alone reached four million and doctor Haffkine was appointed the Director of the Plague Laboratory in Bombay (now called Haffkine Institute)^[2].

Connection with Zionism

In 1898, Haffkine approached Aga Khan III with an offer for Sultan Abdul Hamid II to resettle Jews in Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman Empire: the effort “could be progressively undertaken in the Holy Land“, “the land would be obtained by purchase from the Sultan’s subjects”, “the capital was to be provided by wealthier members of the Jewish community”, but the plan was rejected.

 Little Dreyfus affair

In 1902, nineteen Punjabi villagers (inoculated from a single bottle of vaccine) died of tetanus. An inquiry commission indicted Haffkine, and he was relieved of his position and returned to England. The report was unofficially known as “Little Dreyfus affair“, as a reminder of Haffkine’s Jewish background and religion.

The Lister Institute reinvestigated the claim and overruled the verdict: it was discovered that an assistant used a dirty bottle cap without sterilizing it.

In July 1907, a letter published in The Times called the case against Haffkine “distinctly disproven”. It was signed by Ronald Ross (Nobel laureate, malaria researcher), R.F.C. Leith (the founder of Birmingham University Institute of Pathology)^[7], William R. Smith (President of the Council of the Royal Institute of Public Health), and Simon Flexner (Director of Laboratories at New York Rockefeller Institute), among other medical dignitaries. This led to Haffkine’s acquittal.

 Late years

Since Haffkine’s post in Bombay was already occupied, he moved to Calcutta and worked there until his retirement in 1914. Professor Haffkine returned to France and later moved to Lausanne, where he spent the last years of his life. During his brief visit to the Soviet Union in 1927, he found drastic changes in the country of his birth.

Haffkine received numerous honors and awards. In 1925, the Plague Laboratory in Bombay was renamed the Haffkine Institute. In commemoration of the centennial of his birth, Haffkine Park was planted in Israel in 1960s.

Orthodox Judaism

In his later years, Haffkine returned to Orthodox Jewish practice. In 1916, he wrote A Plea for Orthodoxy. In this article Haffkine advocated traditional religious observance and decried the lack of such observance among “enlightened” Jews. In 1929 he established the Haffkine Foundation to foster Jewish education in Eastern Europe.

Source : Wikipedia