Harald zur Hausen: groundbreaking HPV researcher and vaccination advocate

bmj;381/jun20_13/p1421/FAF1fahausen160623.f1Credit: Thomas Lohnes/DDP/AFP/Getty ImagesIn 1842 an Italian physician in Florence observed that married women were getting cervical cancer while nuns in local convents weren’t, but he did not link sexual activity to the disease. It was more than a century before Harald zur Hausen, a modest, impeccably polite physician turned researcher, demonstrated what had eluded the Florentine doctor. He did so in the face of ridicule and hostile opposition from the scientific establishment.Zur Hausen and his team at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, where he was scientific director for 20 years, showed that human cervical cancer is caused by certain papillomaviruses, genes from which are incorporated into the host cells’ DNA.This Nobel prize winning discovery led to the development of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines and tests to detect the virus. In 2008 all British schoolgirls aged 12-13 were given the option of vaccination against HPV-16 and HPV-18. In…
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