Robert Palmer Beasley (April 29, 1936 – August 25, 2012) was an American physician, public health educator and epidemiologist whose work on hepatitis B involved extensive investigations in Taiwan.
From 1986 to 1987, Beasley served as Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of AIDS and Chronic Viral Infections at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
In 2005, he stepped down from the Deanship and had been an Ashbel Smith Professor, Director of the Center for International Training and Research (CITAR) and Dean Emeritus at the UTHealth School of Public Health until his death on August 25, 2012.
[7] Currently, CITAR attracts international students from Asia—primarily Vietnam, Thailand, China—as well as Africa to attend courses and seminars and conduct research in HIV/AIDS and cancers caused by infectious agents.
While working on a project on the efficacy of the rubella vaccine, Beasley became interested in hepatitis as "the infectious disease problem least understood and seemingly most important among those that remained unconquered after polio, smallpox, and measles had been brought under control".
[9] In 1964, Baruch Samuel Blumberg discovered a surface antigen for hepatitis B in the blood of an Australian aborigine and, together with his team, developed a screening test.
With that hypothesis I went to Taiwan and, with the Abbott Laboratories test, began screening and detecting carrier pregnant women in the obstetric clinics at the hospitals in Taipei.
[12] This observation led to new clinical trials on the hypothesis of whether the hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) protects newborns from being vertically transmitted from their mothers.
[9] Nonetheless, Beasley pursued his controversial hypothesis by designing one of the first large cohort studies to test the link between hepatitis B and liver cancer.
However, skepticism remained "because many people feel that establishing causation requires elucidating a plausible mechanism by which the effect occurs," he recalled.
[6] Following the recommendation of the World Health Organization in 1992, HBV vaccine has been used globally and was, at the time, the only immunization available to prevent a major human cancer.
[15] "Dr. Beasley has saved countless lives from cirrhosis and liver cancer through his work on the epidemiology and prevention of hepatitis B," according to Herbert L. DuPont, Director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at UTSPH.
These studies elucidated its virology, immunology, transmission and clinical manifestations, including its causal link to chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma."
[6] According to Cladd E. Stevens, his former student at the University of Washington who worked with Beasley in Taiwanese studies, "Dr. Beasley's work has lead to [sic] the thorough understanding and effective prevention of HBV infection and its long-term consequences on a global scale, making hepatocellular carcinoma and cirrhosis of the liver—one of the primary causes of death for much of the developing world of Asia, Africa and the Middle East—a thing of the past for current and future generations.
[16] On that occasion, Roberta T. Ness, Dean of UTSPH, said in The Medical News, "Dr. Beasley's contributions to understanding the link between hepatitis B and liver cancer have saved thousands of lives.
This program has stimulated increasing numbers of students and faculty to learn about global health issues and seek experiences in developing countries.
[25][26][27][28][29][30] In his obituary in The New York Times on August 27, 2012, DuPont commented on Beasley's pioneer work in Taiwan, saying, "It's almost like an Albert Schweitzer trying to figure out Africa.
The article quoted part of an interview in which he said, "I decided what we now call hepatitis B looked like the most poorly understood and least-controlled infectious disease problem in the world, and, therefore, the most important frontier.