Life-saving drugs in China and Africa. 8:00 minutes today conclusion next week.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning.

0:02 Speaker 2 Well, there’s so many bad things happening in the world, but there are a lot of good things.

0:06 Speaker 1 Happening in the world.

0:08 Speaker 2 This morning with us is Roy Vagalis. And Roy Vagalis was a chairman of the Merch Company for a long time over twenty years, and then he served as chairman of the Board of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and currently he is chairman at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and the board of Trustees at the University of Pennsylvania. He studied the chemistry when

0:37 he was growing up. Well, royalists, you have done so many good things in the world. I’m not going to say the country, the world. You have saved many lives in Africa, you have saved many lives in China. And one of your expressions was that there should be no who politics involved when science is involved and you’re able

1:05 to save lives. Tell us, tell us about your experiences at Merk.

1:12 Speaker 3 Yes, John there my time work started nineteen seventy five where I was head of the Merk Research Laboratories, so the head of research for ten years, and then the next ten years eighty five to ninety four through ninety four I was CEO and chairman. During that period the work Research Group came up with a number of very

1:41 important drugs that are important to all people of the world. Those include, of course the discovery of the statins for control of blood cholesterol, and that was of course a drug that revolutionize the treatment of disease based on cholesterol levels.

2:03 And I’m sure there’s some large numbers of patients, probably over age sixty five. They’re probably ninety percent of people take a stating and that was due to the discoveries and merged and so. But in addition to drugs for common diseases like art disease, there was also excusely there was also drugs for high blood pressure, infectious diseases, antibiotics

2:43 and other things that were important everywhere in the world. But on occasion they came up with drugs or vaccines vaccines that were not popular and not very much represented in large populations of the world that can afford to buy them. And two examples. One is the discovery of a drug that can control river blindness. And river blindness

3:14 is a disease that occurs is largely sub Saharan Africa, but also in parts of Asia and Latin America. But the drug is called mechazan and that was discovered by Bill Campbell and the team in Merk Research about nineteen seventy five, and we discovered that it was dynamite drug for killing parasites in all kinds of farm animals. And

3:52 farm animals have their growth blocked by picking up parasitic worms from the soil and then taking a drug that would kill those parasitic.

4:09 Speaker 2 And doctor vagelist I understand we saved as many as one hundred million lives in Africa.

4:18 Speaker 3 Well, let me tell you about that. That is. The drug was first used to kill animal parasites and help them gain weight faster, and so they went on the market about nineteen seventy eight or nine, and then in nineteen eighty one they discovered that the drug also worked to kill this parasite that causes river blindness. River blindness is caused by a oncle surch of marlbulus, which

4:55 is the worm which is spread by a bite of a black fly, and the black flies live along rivers and therefore call river blindness because the orb that’s carried by these flies who were injected into a human, because they become tiny little microfilaria that caused enormous, enormous uh itching and they also travel through all the skin and

5:28 people are going crazy with itching. But they go into the eye and cause blindness. Wow, and the blindness is very prevalent. So there are over one hundred million people who who are at risk for losing their vision. And so so we had a drug that was that was able to control that and kill all the parasites. But

5:55 when given when dosing once per year, once or twice per year, and so we had this dynamized magical life drug that would kill these parasites and was very safe in humans. In nineteen eighty seven, the drug was shown to be safe in the sective and large political studies in Africa. And then we had a drug that was

6:23 available but could not be afforded by any of the people who needed it. These people were dirt poor and then were also dying of starvation. And so we approached the governments of Africa and other places as well as the US government to see whether the governments could get behind this drug buy it for the people. And the

6:48 answer was that it was not in their budget. They couldn’t do it. And so when faced was that Merk made the decision in nineteen eighty seven and the announcer that they would contributed to blood free to anyone in the world for as long as it was required to make sure they did not become blier. And I started

7:11 nineteen eighty seven and each year since then because I retired at stand of nineteen ninety four, so the next CEO made the decision again and right up to the right up to the president. Each year the company has it contributed more mecus air to prevent river blindness, but also lymphatic philriosis another another parasitic infection which causes this

7:41 one causes elephantiasis, so that between those two, between those two diseases, mectus n is given away contributed as the level of Let’s see last year with three hundred million people were treated free by MERK three.

8:04 Speaker 1 That is tremendous, tremendous.

8:07 Speaker 2 Now, you also saved a lot of lives in China where they had hepatitis.

8:13 Speaker 3 I believe that’s right. That’s right, John, we did, and that is we discovered another product which was a vaccine past that was developed in the United States and recombinant vaccine which was approved in the US for use in children vaccinate children and was approved in nineteen eighty six.

8:37 And the vaccine prevented an infection by a virus, hepatitis B virus which gets into the liver and causes it to sail in some people. The prevalence of that virus in the US was about one half of one percent.

9:00 The virus goes on in the liver causing chronic liver disease and also liver cancer.

9:07 Speaker 2 And it estimated that you saved another one hundred million people in China. Is that a good number.

9:15 Speaker 3 No, the number is not big enough. I’ll tell you what it was, and that is we developed this vaccine and recombined vaccine, the first in the world, and put it on the market in the US. The Chinese came and they explained to us, the Chinese government did. They explained that the prevalence, that is the presence of that

9:41 virus in their population was nine percent. Nine percent of people were carrying in their liver a virus that caused it chronic liver disease and liver cancer. And it was the number two cause of death in China, after number one, which was cigarette smoking. And so it was very important to them, and they had no money they had no money,

10:10 so we wanted to do something for them, and we finally landed on the idea of training Chinese scientists and the engineers to make the vaccine. They came and spent months and the Mirk facilities to learn how to make the vaccine, which they did in nineteen ninety four, started manufacturing the vaccine in China that was the Merk vaccine,

10:44 no royalty, no cost to them. They made not a penny of profit. But they did this and the infection rate was in China was nine percent at this time when they were fully vaccinated, had dropped to less than zero point five percent, less than one half of one percent.

11:11 Speaker 1 That is wonderful. That is wonderful.

11:14 Speaker 2 Tell me how you feel that you’ve saved so many lives by the actions you took. Give me your inner feelings.

11:22 Speaker 3 Well, my inner feelings are those of a doctor. You know. I was an MD from Columbia who practiced for a short time but then did research and ended up in drug discovery. And the numbers of patients that are drugs saved lives or improved hell, there’s many, many, hundreds of millions.

11:48 And that’s what I love about my profession and love about my career and tried to convince young people to follow suits and to both practice medicine and get into a drug discovery if they’re interested, because it’s a wonderful wedd of Now.

12:09 Speaker 2 Now, doctor Ragulus, you’ve been involved in the last ten years fifteen years with another company called Regeneron, which has created a lot of miracle drugs too.

12:24 Speaker 3 Yes, Regeneral was a startup when I started. I retired from merc as the end of nineteen ninety four and at the beginning of nineteen ninety I joined the board of Regenera, a startup that was having some difficulties, and I had the idea of helping them by being chairman of their board for a couple of years. As it

12:51 turned out that took the help that was extended because I remained as chairman for twenty eight years and the company has done quite well.

13:07 Speaker 2 And a lot of your wealth you have donated back to Columbia Presspytuitian Hospital.

13:16 Speaker 1 Tell us what you’re doing with Columbia.

13:18 Speaker 3 Well, what we’re doing with Colombia is helping to train new young doctors who are really smart and are interested in health related careers of all sorts. So some of them will become practitioners, primary care doctors, many will become specialists, and some of them will go into research. And we want all our students to understand what the science is

13:49 so they can help their patients maximally and they do a wonderful job. So we support scholarships, We support the student uh. The students who have financial need can come to Colombia Medical School and they will have all expenses paid if they if they have financial need, tuition and living expenses, everything so that our students graduate from medical

14:22 school with no debt at all. And so this is a wonderful thing for them and my wife and I love to do that kind of thing. But we also contribute to undergraduate students at the University of Pennsylvania and Apartment College, and these are our three areas of targeting to help students, mostly in the science side.

14:54 Speaker 2 Understood, Professor, Professor and doctor Roy Gradualist. Thank you so much for everything you do and I look forward to talking again in the future on more accomplishments. And God bless you and God bless America.

15:11 Speaker 3 John. I looked forward to having you attend our meeting in the Board of Advisors because you’ve been very helpless to the medical school and in Columbia which is now fancilous College of Physicians and Surgeons. So thanks a lot for the giving me an opportunity to tell you some of the things that happened at Merriton.

15:35 Speaker 1 I look forward to it and have a great weekend

15:39 Speaker 3 You too, job Bye, bye bye