Robert W. McCollum, Who Studied Viral Diseases, Dies at 85 - Obituary (Obit)

The cause washeart failure, said his daughter, Cynthia McCollum.

Most of Dr. McCollum’s research was done during his nearly three decades as a professor and later chairman of the epidemiology department atYale.

Working on a team at Yale led byDr. Dorothy M. Horstmannin the early 1950s, Dr. McCollum and his colleagues collected blood samples from people with polio and their families. They used some of the samples to isolate the polio virus and discovered that before it reached the spinal cord and paralyzed patients, it circulated in the blood.

That finding was a breakthrough in the understanding of how the virus causes the disease and formed a basis for the development of polio vaccines, which elicitantibodiesto block the virus before it enters the spinal cord.

In the late 1950s, while still at Yale, Dr. McCollum collaborated withDr. Saul KrugmanatNew York Universityto study hepatitis, which can causeliver diseaseand significantly contribute toliver cancer. Their team investigated the disease’s spread through blood transfusions by tracing its patterns in patients at theWillowbrook State Schoolon Staten Island.

The study drew controversy in the late 1960s after accusations that the team had used retarded children as human guinea pigs. But its chief critic in the New York Senate, Seymour B. Thaler of Queens, later conceded that the work had been conducted properly.

The research distinguished serum hepatitis, which is caused by the transfusions, from the more common form, infectious hepatitis, which is spread directly from person to person. That led to research by Dr. McCollum and Dr. Krugman that found that gamma globulin— antibodies collected from blood donors— can prevent hepatitis resulting from a blood transfusion.

Dr. McCollum was also a member of a research team that discovered that using blood from paid donors was risky because it tended to transmit hepatitis. The recommendation that blood banks stop using blood from paid donors has been widely adopted. Dr. McCollum was also on a team at Yale that discovered the viral cause of infectious mononucleosis.

“Bob made substantive contributions to our understanding and the prevention of viral diseases that affect millions of people globally,” Dr. John F. Modlin, a professor ofpediatricsat Dartmouth, said on Friday.

Robert Wayne McCollum Jr. was born on Jan. 29, 1925, in Waco, Tex., the youngest of four children of Robert and Minnie Sue McCollum.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Baylor in 1945, his medical degree from Johns Hopkins in 1948 and, 10 years later, a doctorate in public health from theLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was hired as research assistant inpreventive medicineat Yale in 1951, but a year later was serving in Korea as a captain in the Army Medical Corps, assigned to a special MASH unit researching hemorrhagicfever.

Dr. McCollum left Yale in 1982 to become dean of the Dartmouth Medical School. In his nearly nine years as dean, he oversaw substantial increases in research financing and established eight new endowed chairs for the school’s faculty. He also played a central role in the creation of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Dr. McCollum retired as dean in 1990 and retired from teaching in 1995.

Besides his daughter, he is survived by his wife of 56 years, the former Audrey Talmage; a son, Douglas; and two grandchildren.

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