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Manuel Patarroyo is used to marching out of step with the international malaria research community. Ever since the Colombian immunologist burst onto the scene in 1987 with a paper in Nature describing a synthetic vaccine that seemed to protect monkeys from the disease, his claim to have produced a new weapon in the war against malaria has been viewed with intense skepticism. Many researchers argued that Patarroyo's vaccine couldn't be all it was cracked up to be--particularly as there seemed to be no correlation between antibody responses to the vaccine and protection against malaria. And when Patarroyo launched straight into a huge program of testing his vaccine in thousands of Colombians, that initial distrust soon turned to open criticism of the design--not to mention the ethics--of Patarroyo's trials. "His initial data and the studies that generated them were obviously flawed," says Ripley Ballou of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
The gulf between Patarroyo and the malaria research establishment may be about to narrow, however, with a paper scheduled for publication in the 20 March Lancet that Patarroyo believes will silence his critics. The paper describes a new Colombian trial--designed in consultation with a former skeptic--involving more than 1500 people. It shows the vaccine reduced the risk of malaria by 39% in immunized volunteers. Indeed, with a Walter Reed group now planning a clinical trial in Thailand using a U.S.-made version of Patarroyo's vaccine, and an international trial in Tanzanian children already under way (Science, 9 October 1992, p. 207), 1993 could be the year in which the maverick Colombian scientist--and his controversial vaccine--finally come out of the cold. "There's no question about it," says malaria vaccine pioneer Ruth Nussenzweig of New York University School of Medicine. "He's coming back into the mainstream."
For Patarroyo, the skepticism he's encountered until now is easy...