Dr. Alexander Duncan Langmuir (born 1910)

"This is a photograph of Alexander Duncan Langmuir (September 12, 1910–November 22, 1993). Langmuir, a renowned epidemiologist who created the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), developed the practice of modern public health surveillance in the United States and abroad."[HP006H][GDrive]

Wikipedia 🌐 Alexander Langmuir 


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Saved Wikipedia (April 29, 2021) : "Alexander Langmuir"

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Alexander Duncan Langmuir (12 September 1910 – 22 November 1993) was an American epidemiologist. He is renowned for creating the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

Biography

This photograph depicts Dr. Alexander D. Langmuir seated beside Ms. Ida Sherwood during an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) luncheon.

Alexander D. Langmuir was born in Santa Monica, California. He received his A.B. in 1931 from Harvard, his M.D. in 1935 from Cornell University Medical College, and his M.P.H. in 1940 from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. After serving as a public health officer in New York and as an epidemiologist with the U. S. Army from 1942 to 1946, Langmuir returned to Johns Hopkins to become associate professor of epidemiology in the school of medicine. In 1949, he became director of the epidemiology branch of the National Communicable Disease Center (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in Atlanta, a position he held for over 20 years. He wrote extensively on all phases of epidemiology on a global basis and was recognized internationally as a leading contributor in epidemiology. Langmuir was a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health from 1988 until his death in 1993.

References

External links

1996 - American Journal of Epidemiology :  Vol. 144, No.8 : "Alexander D. Langmuir-A Brief Biographical Sketch"

Source : [HP006J][GDrive]

Date of Birth: September 12, 1910 [,] Santa Monica, California

Education:

Appointments: 

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.630.5871&rep=rep1&type=pdf

2009-surveillance-and-society-woven-of-war-time-fabrics-public-health-surveillance-martin-french.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18dd-kFRMJzFWti4eyExSjxcfc8-411pY/view?usp=sharing 

Surveillance & Society

Woven of War-Time Fabrics: the globalization of public health surveillance

By Martin A. French Department of Sociology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. mailto: 3mf6@queensu.

French, Martin A. 2009. Woven of War-Time Fabrics: The Globalization of Public Health

Surveillance. Surveillance & Society 6(2): 101-115. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org | ISSN:

1477-7487

© The author(s), 2009. | Licensed to the Surveillance Studies Network under a Creative Commons

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license


Abstract - This article considers the imbrication of war-time logics with the ideational and institutional development of public health surveillance. It suggests that, as the Cold-War–era gave way to the ‘age of globalization’, public health discourse became less concerned with ideological enemies, and more concerned with ontological enemies. The discourse of emerging infectious disease exemplifies this preoccupation and illustrates how public health surveillance, dominated by war-time logics, is both globalized and predisposed to marginalized local orders of concern. However, at the same time that militarized configurations of public health surveillance set certain tendencies in motion, local orders of concern deconstruct, contest, resist, and negotiate these tendencies. Hence, this article concludes with a call for further empirical attention by Surveillance Studies scholars to the multiplicity of local sites that enact public health surveillance.


Introduction

In 1951 the United States (US) Department of Defense and the US Federal Civil Defense Administration aired a television program entitled What You Should Know About Biological Warfare. The program featured Alexander Langmuir, a decisive figure, as it turns out, in the history of public health. In the program, Langmuir presented a scary picture of the precise ways in which biological weapons could be deployed in attacks against the United States. He also made the case for a public health system that could defend against this threat. Elizabeth Fee and Theodore Brown give the following description:

At one point in the program, Langmuir turned on a Waring blender filled with dry ice for a vivid demonstration of how clouds of aerosol mist could contaminate a whole studio and infect everyone inside. He then used a familiar can of insecticide to demonstrate the working of an aerosol spray. Employing much the same principles, he said, an enemy could mount aerosols on airplanes and cover a city with a vast cloud of infectious material. Langmuir also injected colored liquid into a model of the water supply of a city to show how easily a biological warfare agent could spread. How could anyone protect or defend against such an attack? […] In short, he said, the country needed an epidemic intelligence service (2001: 722-723).

Langmuir was able to successfully capitalize on fear about biological warfare by capturing the political will and funding for one of the most comprehensive public health surveillance undertakings in the world.

His creation of a highly trained cadre of disease detectives, and the institutional apparatus to support them, stands out amongst the achievements in the history of American public health. To some, Langmuir’s use of the biological warfare issue to build public health infrastructure amounted to making

[...]

1979 (March) - Interview of Dr. Alex Langmuir

Youtube channel Global Health Chronicles   /   Live on youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NICfQM9d0CM 

See Dr. Donald Ainslie Henderson (born 1928) /  Dr. Alexander Duncan Langmuir (born 1910)   /  

Leaders in American Medicine: Dr. Alexander D. Langmuir Interviewed by [Dr. Donald Ainslie Henderson (born 1928)]. A National Medical Audiovisual Center Production in cooperation with Alpha Omega Alpha. Atlanta, Georgia

Saved copy of video : [HV00HD][GDrive]  /  Download image :   [HV00HE][GDrive]  

Watch on Housatonic.Live 3 below : 

(Mar 1979) Alex Langmuir (epidemic intelligence service / “cutter Incident”) Donald Henderson int.  🟥Live3  /  BitChute  /  Odysee  /  Rumble 

Video notes : 

2015, Emerging and Infectious Diseases, Vol21 : "Alexander Duncan Langmuir"

doi: 10.3201/eid2109.141445   /    PMCID: PMC4550144   /  PDF source : [HP006G][GDrive] 

Emerging Infectious Diseases • www.cdc.gov/eid • Vol. 21, No. 9, September 2015   : 1635–1637.      /    Myron G. Schultz and William Schaffner

Alex Langmuir was born in Santa Monica, California, and grew up in New Jersey. His uncle, Irving Langmuir, a physicist and chemist, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932. At Harvard College, Alex Langmuir tried to follow in his uncle’s footsteps, but he found that the mathematics of advanced physics was beyond him and thus decided to pursue a career in medicine. He received his AB (cum laude) in 1931 from Harvard and his MD in 1935 from Cornell University Medical College. As a college student, Langmuir was inspired by Massachusetts Commissioner of Health George Hoyt Bigelow to enter the field of public health. His first 2 jobs were with the New York State Health Department; he began as a medical consultant and then became an assistant district health officer in Albany. After graduating with an MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1940, Langmuir became a deputy commissioner of health in Westchester County, New York. His family was dismayed that he chose a career in public health rather than clinical medicine, but Langmuir expressed in his later years that his time in local public health taught him lessons that were fundamental to his achievements. From 1942 to 1946, he served as an epidemiologist with the Armed Forces Epidemiologic Board’s Commission on Acute Respiratory Diseases, stimulating his lifelong interest in influenza. In 1946, Langmuir returned to Johns Hopkins University as an associate professor of epidemiology. However, by 1949 he was restive in academia and was attracted to the challenge of becoming the first chief epidemiologist of the newly established Communicable Disease Center (now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]) in Atlanta, Georgia, a position he held for over 20 years. When Langmuir retired from CDC, he became a visiting professor of epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and, later, a visiting professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. He wrote extensively on all phases of epidemiology and public health surveillance on a global basis and was recognized internationally as an assertive public health authority. 

[  Consider this - One Health and CDC are this historically connected to biowarfare ] 

In 1951, following the start of the Korean War, Langmuir established the EIS program as an early warning system against biologic warfare. EIS officers then and now are physicians, veterinarians, nurses, and health scientists who serve 2-year assignments. In an obituary written for the New York Times, Lawrence Altman said Langmuir “taught what he called ‘shoe leather epidemiology,’ stressing that investigators go into the field to collect their own data and view directly the locale of the public health problem they were investigating.” Langmuir said: “Each epidemic aid call was an adventure and a training experience, even the false alarms.” He stressed that field epidemiology should be taught in the field, not in the classroom. Admission into the EIS program was highly selective. Langmuir believed that when competent persons were thrust into challenging circumstances with supportive supervision, excellent results were certain. He regarded the EIS officers as members of his extended family, backing them firmly when they found themselves in difficulty and joining them for the roasts of CDC leaders during the officers’ annual skit night—often at his own expense.

In 1955, Langmuir and his young staff achieved early recognition due to the “Cutter Incident.” The new inactivated (Salk) polio vaccine was causing cases of polio. Surgeon General Leonard Scheele asked Langmuir to develop a surveillance system to determine the extent of the problem. Langmuir deployed his staff, and within days they determined that the cases were caused by vaccine from a single manufacturer: Cutter Laboratories. “Langmuir was able to predict with great accuracy the expected size of the epidemic and the number of secondary cases that would occur,” former CDC director William Foege noted. This response enhanced the reputation of the young agency and established epidemic aid as one of its singular characteristics.

Today, the EIS program has evolved into a surveillance and response unit for all types of health problems. During 1951–2014, more than 3,500 physicians, veterinarians, nurses, and health scientists were trained as EIS officers. Many of the nation’s medical and public health leaders, including CDC directors, state health department directors, state epidemiologists, and deans of the country’s premier schools of public health, are EIS alumni. Since 1980, CDC has supported the development and implementation of 48 two-year field epidemiology training programs that cover 60 countries and are modeled after the EIS in their teaching and practice of applied field epidemiology. More than 3,000 epidemiologists have graduated from these programs; many of these graduates now hold leadership positions within their countries’ ministries of health, the World Health Organization, and other global health organizations.

The idea of effective national disease surveillance captured Alex Langmuir’s imagination throughout his career. He believed that surveillance is the foundation for evidence-based public health action. Langmuir preached the importance of the systematic collection of pertinent data, the consolidation and analysis of these data into useful information, and the dissemination of the results to all who need to know so that they can take action. His goal was to use surveillance systems to define populations at risk for disease, determine interventions, and monitor their impact. Langmuir and his staff developed novel national surveillance programs for an array of communicable diseases and for chronic diseases, injuries, and reproductive health. Indeed, he considered the population explosion to be the most serious epidemic of all.

Altman described Langmuir as “a tall man who could command immediate attention when he stood to speak to audiences in his deep voice. He thrived on controversy and took pride in overcoming local political pressures to crusade for preventive medicine and other measures to safeguard public health.” Philip Brachman, who succeeded Langmuir as EIS director, described Langmuir as “visionary, clairvoyant, tenacious, well prepared, scientifically honest, and optimistic.” Langmuir enjoyed being a civil servant and working to benefit the public. “His concerns were to control and prevent disease by applying the principles of epidemiology to the identification of causes and solutions,” Brachman wrote. Foege described Langmuir as someone with a public health message who arrived at the right time and place in history to be able to broadly disseminate his message.

In 1979, when Alex Langmuir was interviewed by [Dr. Donald Ainslie Henderson (born 1928)] about being recruited to work at CDC in 1949, Langmuir said, “As I looked it over and saw the vision, there was no question, [former CDC director] Justin Andrews took me to the mountain and showed me the Promised Land.” At CDC, Alex Langmuir changed the way epidemiology is used in public health practice, first in the United States and then throughout the world. In the 65 years since Langmuir’s arrival at CDC, his disciples—EIS and field epidemiology training program officers—have played pivotal roles in combating the root causes of major public health problems. Millions of persons live longer and healthier lives because of the accomplishments of Langmuir and his progeny in controlling and preventing disease. This is Alex Langmuir’s grand legacy.

Footnotes

Suggested citation for this article: Schultz MG, Schaffner W. Photo quiz. Emerg Infect Dis. 2015 Sep [date cited]. http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid2109.141445

Suggested Reading

1. A tribute to Alexander D. Langmuir. Am J Epidemiol. 1996;144(8 Suppl):1 p preceding S1, S1–78. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

2. Altman LK. Alexander Langmuir dies at 83; helped start U.S. disease centers. New York Times [cited 2015 June 23]. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/24/obituaries/alexander-langmuir-dies-at-83-helped-start-us-disease-centers.html

3. Brachman PS. Epilogue: Alexander Duncan Langmuir. Am J Epidemiol. 1996;144(8 Suppl):S74–5. 10.1093/aje/144.Supplement_8.S74 [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]

4. Foege WH, Alexander D. Langmuir—his impact on public health. Am J Epidemiol. 1996;144(8 Suppl):S11–5. 10.1093/aje/144.Supplement_8.S11 [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]

5. Langmuir AD. The surveillance of communicable diseases of national importance. N Engl J Med. 1963;268:182–92. 10.1056/NEJM196301242680405 [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]

6. Langmuir AD. The Epidemic Intelligence Service of the Center for Disease Control. Public Health Rep. 1980;95:470–7. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

7. Langmuir AD, Henderson DA. Leaders in American medicine. Videotape series. Menlo Park (CA): Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society; 1979. [Google Scholar]

1993 (Nov 24) - NYTimes : "Alexander Langmuir Dies at 83; Helped Start U.S. Disease Centers"

By Lawrence K. Altman  /   Nov. 24, 1993  /  Source : [HN01MI][GDrive] 

Dr. Alexander D. Langmuir, a leader in public health who is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives through his innovations in controlling epidemics, died on Monday in Baltimore, where he lived. He was 83.

The cause was kidney cancer, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

In 1949, Dr. Langmuir created a corps of epidemiologists at what is now the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The corps was ready to fly anywhere immediately to investigate reports of an epidemic or an unusual cluster of cases. Known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the program played a crucial role in turning what was then an obscure and fledgling operation into a large Federal agency.

From 1949 to 1970, Dr. Langmuir was the disease centers' chief epidemiologist. When he retired, he taught at Harvard Medical School, staying until 1977.

Trained 500 Health Workers

As the Government's chief disease detective, he created the concept of surveillance for infectious diseases. The agency uses it to track dozens of diseases and to analyze patterns to take steps to prevent clusters and outbreaks from becoming epidemics. The agency also responds to requests from state health departments to investigate unusual cases and clusters.

It is through such investigations that scientists at the disease centers discovered the bacterium that causes Legionnaire's disease, identified toxic shock syndrome, and last week reported isolating and growing the strain of Hantavirus that causes a fatal illness first reported among Navajo Indians in New Mexico this year.

Dr. Langmuir trained the first 500 of the more than 2,200 doctors, veterinarians, statisticians and other health workers who have graduated from the epidemic intelligence program. Many now teach and conduct research in the country's schools of medicine and public health, and many others work in health departments throughout the country. Some have gone on to establish similar programs in other countries.

But when Dr. Langmuir formed the Epidemic Intelligence Service, he said the Atlanta agency's activity was limited primarily to malaria. It was "a bouncing, thriving, adolescent, gawky and awkward organization," he said.

"The information about malaria in the country was abominable," he recalled when he left the disease centers in 1970. Texas was reporting 10,000 cases a year, other states, 5,000. "It was perfectly clear there was gross error in the reporting," Dr. Langmuir said, adding that he was upset that the centers did not challenge the diagnosis of the doctors and state health officials.

Relished Jurisdictional Fights

Dr. Langmuir was a tall man who could command immediate attention when he stood to speak to audiences in his deep voice. He thrived on controversy and often took pride in overcoming local political pressures to crusade for preventive medicine and other measures to safeguard public health.

He relished jurisdictional and other fights with state and Federal officials and other scientists, including some on his own staff. In creating the E.I.S., Dr. Langmuir said he and officials of the National Institutes of Health "almost went to fisticuffs" as he overcame their opposition.

Dr. Langmuir taught what he called "shoe leather epidemiology," stressing that investigators go into the field to collect their own data and view directly the locale of the public health problem they were investigating. His graduates wore lapel pins of a shoe with a hole in the sole.

He paid careful attention to studying the way infectious and communicable agents spread -- through the air, water and food. Dr. Langmuir attributed his success to good communications with other scientists and health officials. He required investigators to write reports immediately and to send copies to all who needed the information.

Under his leadership, epidemiologists at the disease centers traced a number of cases of paralytic polio to the defective manufacture of a polio vaccine by Cutter Laboratories.

When the possibility of biological warfare was raised during the Korean War, scientists looked to epidemiology as the first line of defense. But the country was not prepared. Dr. Langmuir seized the opportunity to strengthen disease surveillance and his program. He found many young doctors facing the draft willing to spend two years learning epidemiology in the Public Health Service to fulfill their military service.

In later years, Dr. Langmuir criticized the disease centers for what he said was the poor quality of its epidemiological investigations of AIDS.

Grew Up in New Jersey

Alexander Duncan Langmuir was born on Sept. 22, 1910, in Santa Monica, Calif., and grew up in New Jersey.

At Harvard College, his studies were influenced by his uncle, Irving Langmuir, a physicist and chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932. But Alexander Langmuir said he found the advanced mathematics of physics "just impossible." So he went to medical school, receiving a degree from Cornell and interning at the Boston City Hospital. His math training and a flair for statistics helped him earn a degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

He then worked for the New York State Health Department in Albany and as Deputy Commissioner of Health for Westchester County. In World War II he was a member of the Army's Commission on Acute Respiratory Diseases at Fort Bragg, N.C.

After the war he returned to Johns Hopkins. But he left for the disease centers because, he later said, he "was rather disenchanted with academic life at Johns Hopkins."

In 1988, he returned to Johns Hopkins where, earlier this year, students selected him as an outstanding teacher.

Among his awards were those from the Charles A. Dana Foundation for pioneering achievements in public health, the American Public Health Association and the Royal Society of Medicine in England. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a number of other professional organizations.

Dr. Langmuir married twice. His first wife was the former Sara Ann Harper. His second was Dr. Leona Baumgartner, a former Commissioner of Health in New York City. Both have died.

He is survived by three daughters, Anne Ruggles of Atlanta, Susan Davis of Philadelphia and Lynn Adams of Boston; a son, Paul H., of Providence, R.I.; a brother, David, of Los Angeles; a sister, Edith Leverenz of Naples, Fla., five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

https://vaxopedia.org/2018/08/15/who-is-alexander-langmuir/

Who is Alexander Langmuir?

By Vincent Iannelli, MD / August 15, 2018 / Alexander Langmuir, epidemiology, GBS, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, measles, polio, swine flu, The Cutter Incident

Alexander Langmuir is typically described as a hero or titan of public health.


Then why do some folks think he was against the flu and measles vaccines?


Who is Alexander Langmuir?

Dr. Alexander Langmuir has been called the father of infectious disease epidemiology.


Why?


In 1949, he established the CDC’s Epidemiology Program. Actually, at the time, the CDC was still called the Communicable Disease Center.


Dr. Alexander Langmuir and his Polio Surveillance Unit at the EIS in 1955.

Dr. Alexander Langmuir and his Polio Surveillance Unit at the EIS in 1955.

Dr. Langmuir, as Chief Epidemiologist at CDC for 21 years, also:


founded the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)

instituted a malaria surveillance system

established national disease surveillance system for the United States

was involved in resolving the Cutter incident

brought the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report to CDC

investigated the swine influenza virus vaccine incident, when it was thought that some people developed GBS after getting the new swine flu vaccine in 1976

His work saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.


Don't believe any propaganda or quotes without sources attributed to Alexander Langmuir.

Don’t believe any propaganda or quotes without sources attributed to Dr. Alexander Langmuir.

Did he ever tell folks to not get a flu shot?


Was he ever concerned about mercury in flu shots?


Considering that Dr. Langmuir died in 1993, before folks became concerned about thimerosal in vaccines, that’s unlikely. That’s especially so considering that the only place you can find these types of quotes are on anti-vaccine websites.


Still, Langmuir was critical of flu shots.