Health and Human Services Logo

  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | National Institutes of Health

Bernice Eddy, Ph.D. (1903-1989)

Bernice Eddy was born in Glendale, West Virginia, but grew up in Marietta, Ohio after her father’s death. She took pre-medical courses at Marietta College, intending to be a physician like her father and two brothers.

During her senior year of college, she was awarded a fellowship in bacteriology at the University of Cincinnati, thus starting on her path to research. She also received her masters and Ph.D. while there. She later researched leprosy at a Public Health Service hospital in Louisiana, where she met her future husband Dr. Jerald G. Wooley, who would lead them to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Eddy Joined the NIH Laboratory of Biologics Control (which became the Division of Biologics Standards [DBS] in 1955) in 1937.

Professional photo of Bernice Eddy in a suit with a pearl necklace

FDA History Office
In August 1954, Dr. Bernice Eddy had been testing a batch of polio vaccines from Cutter Laboratories when she noticed that the vaccine had given polio to a test monkey. She found that three of the six samples had paralyzed test monkeys. Dr. Eddy knew something was wrong and brought it to the attention of her supervisor, Dr. William Workman. Because of the previous polio epidemics and the race to create a vaccine, Dr. Eddy and her team had been working around the clock testing the Salk vaccine. Amidst the scientific and bureaucratic chaos, Workman never told the licensing committee, and the Cutter vaccine was approved and shipped out. In the spring of 1955, the year following a field trial that showed the Salk inactivated (killed) polio vaccine to be safe and effective, DBS licensed several firms to produce the vaccine. Cutter Laboratories accidentally released vaccine that retained live polio virus, resulting in 260 paralytic cases of the disease, a disaster that caused panic among parents and scientists alike. Amidst the controversy, Dr. Eddy was relieved of her polio control testing duties in 1955 but continued to work in biologics. Dr. William Workman was also forced out of his job as head of the Laboratory of Biologics Control (predecessor to DBS, which Dr. Roderick Murray would head beginning in 1955) but stayed on as Chief of the Laboratory of Control Activities until he retired in 1963. The NIH Director at the time, William H. Sebrell Jr., also resigned in 1955, amidst the Cutter controversy.

In 1956 she worked with Dr. Sarah Stewart of the National Cancer Institute, and they identified the S-E (Stewart-Eddy) polyoma virus, which can cause tumors. Dr. Eddy also identified the simian virus 40 (SV-40). Her work led to the newborn hamster being the preferred animal for testing potentially oncogenic viruses of mammalian origin. Twice Drs. Stewart and Eddy were nominated for the Nobel Prize for their work on the S-E polyoma virus, but unfortunately, they never won.

In February 1961, Dr. Murray informed Dr. Bernice Eddy that her research interests conflicted with her control work on respiratory viruses. It seemed that as long as Dr. Eddy was engaged in basic research with only minor relevance to her control activities, she was allowed to continue her work, but if her research began to identify factors which might require changes in regulatory control of vaccines, her work was to stop. In July 1961, Dr. Eddy began her new role in research only. Much of the treatment of Dr. Eddy was revealed in the hearings in Congress as part of the Consumer Safety Act of 1972.

Beginning in July 1961, Dr. Eddy was the Chief of the Section on Experimental Virology within the Laboratory of Virology & Rickettsiology in the DBS. This was her new research-only role that kept her out of control activities for vaccines.

Dr. Eddy was an expert on pneumococcus and streptococcus, influenza and polio-myelitis vaccines, and on tumor-producing viruses.

While she had been at the center of the polio controversy, she had the courage to stand by her convictions and research against significant opposition. She continued to contribute to the field of biologics and went on to discover the S-E polyoma virus and SV-40.

Dr. Eddy later won a Superior Service Medal from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW) in 1967 for her work on control testing of vaccines for polio-myelitis and respiratory diseases, and for her discovery and characterization of tumorigenic viruses.

Dr. Eddy worked in Building 29, Room 207, then moved to Building 29A once it opened in 1967, where she worked in Room 3B20.


Publications:

a scan of a photo in the NIH Record of Bernice Eddy with her hair up seated in a chair wearing a lab coat in the lab

The NIH Record 1968

a black and white group photo of the biologics staff in the 1930s in front of their Washington DC NIH office building

Photo of the staff of the Laboratory of Biologics Controls in 1938 (Dr. Eddy is on the right, front row) National Library of Medicine

Photo here

Group photo circa 1960 for polio meetings on campus. Dr. Eddy is third from right. Image from Always There

Return to top