Medicine: The Painkillers

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The Lasker Foundation awarded two other 1978 prizes, each also worth $15,000. The Clinical Medical Research Award was shared by three scientists: Dr. Robert Austrian of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, for developing a vaccine that could prevent three quarters of the nation's estimated 750,000 annual cases of pneumococcal pneumonia; Dr. Emil Gotschlich of Manhattan's Rockefeller University, who developed a vaccine that is 90% effective against meningococcal meningitis; and Dr. Michael Heidelberger of New York University, for research that helped produce both vaccines.

The Special Public Service Award was given to U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Elliott L. Richardson and Dr. Theodore Cooper of Manhattan's Cornell University Medical College. In 1972, when Richardson was Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and Cooper was director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the two inaugurated the National High Blood Pressure Education Program. With its educational and medical contributions, the program has since helped cut the U.S. death rate from heart disease by 15%, from stroke by 20%.