An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

ALTER, Harvey James

2 entries
  • 3666.4

A “new” antigen in leukemia sera.

J. Amer. med. Assoc., 191, 541-46, 1965.

(Order of authorship in the original publication: Blumberg, Alter, Visnich.) Discovery of Australia antigen, hepatitis B antigen, Aa, later called HBsAg.  Blumberg received half of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in Biology in 1976 for the discovery of the antigen, for discovery of the hepatitis B virus, and for the discovery/ invention of the hepatitis B vaccine— the first cancer vaccine.  See B. S. Blumberg, Hepatitis B: The Hunt for a Killer Virus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.)



Subjects: HEPATOLOGY › Diseases of the Liver, IMMUNOLOGY › Immunization, INFECTIOUS DISEASE › Hepatitis, VIROLOGY › VIRUSES (by Family) › Hepadnaviridae, VIROLOGY › VIRUSES (by Family) › Hepadnaviridae › Hepatitis B Virus
  • 13540

Transmissible agent in non-A, non-B hepatitis.

Lancet,1, 459-463, 1978.

The first paper recording the discovery of what was, eleven years later in 1989, named the hepatitis C virus (see No. 12653). Harvey Alter (Nobel Prize 2020) and colleagues inoculated the serum/plasma of 4 patients with non-A/non-B hepatitis into 5 chimps, and the chimps showed both biochemical and histological evidence of a typical hepatitis. The experiment was performed with a negative control. Order of authorship in the original paper: Alter, Purcell, Holland....

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)



Subjects: VIROLOGY › VIRUSES (by Family) › Hepadnaviridae › Hepatitis C Virus