Joseph
B. McCormick was born in Tennessee and raised on a farm in Indiana.
He graduated cum laude from Florida Southern College with majors in
chemistry and mathematics. He lived in Brussels and attended the Alliance
Francaise and the Free University for a year to acquire sufficient
French to enable him to teach sciences and mathematics in a secondary
school in the Congo (Kinshasa). He worked in the local hospital, that
introduced him to medicine and particularly tropical medicine. He
entered Duke Medical School in 1967 from which he graduated in 1971,
having also obtained an MS from Harvard School of Public Health in
1970. His did an internship and residency in pediatrics at Children's
Hospital of Philadelphia under Dr. C. Everett Koop.
In 1974,
Dr. McCormick became an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer (EIS),
at the CDC. He was also a fellow in the Preventive Medicine Residency
Program at the Centers for Disease Control. As an EIS officer, he
was a PAHO/CDC consultant for the Brazilian government for meningococcal
meningitis during the extensive outbreaks from 1974-1976. On completion
of his epidemiology training, he went to West Africa to found the
CDC Lassa fever Research Project in Sierra Leone. Just as he was setting
up this project, his knowledge of language and culture in the Congo
was put to the test and he was called to join the team investigating
the first Ebola epidemic in 1976. He returned after this investigation
to Sierra Leone, living and working for three years in the Eastern
Province, conducting extensive and definitive studies of the epidemiology
and treatment of Lassa hemorrhagic fever. Data from these years included
a landmark publication in the New England Journal of Medicine on definitive
effective antiviral treatment for this disease. He returned to Atlanta
in 1979 and became Chief, Special Pathogens Branch, Division of Viral
Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control. In 1979, he also led
a WHO team in investigating a second Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak
in Sudan.
He was
director of the Biosafety level 4 laboratories at CDC for 9 years,
and inaugurated the current BSL 4 facility at CDC. He was also director
of the WHO Collaborating Center for Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers. During
this period, he also became involved in the study of HIV/AIDS in Africa,
leading the original team that established the Project SIDA in Kinshasa,
Zaire, and later led the team that established the Project Retro-Ci
in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He co-authored numerous papers in major journals,
including Science, and established a key point in the natural history
of HIV infection in Africa, reported in the New England Journal of
Medicine, by testing specimens saved in his laboratory from the 1976
Ebola outbreak including isolation of the oldest HIV virus.
In 1993,
he was recruited to take up the post of Chairman, Community Health
Sciences Department, at the Aga Khan University Medical School (AKU).
He has established an epidemiology program, resembling the CDC Field
Epidemiology Training Programs, but built on an academic private university
model, with a Masters' degree in Epidemiology. At least 45 papers
have now been published by faculty and trainees from this period.
He left Pakistan in early 1997 and moved to France where he founded
epidemiology programs for the Institute Pasteur and for Aventis Pasteur,
the world's largest vaccine manufacturer. On January 1st. 2001, he
took up the position of Assistant Dean, UT Houston School of Public
Health, with responsibility for the new Brownsville campus.
His many
awards include humanitarian awards from Florida Southern College and
Duke University Medical School. He has held several university positions
and had over 30 consultancies with organizations such as the WHO,
Pan American Health Organization. He has acted as reviewer for many
journals.
Recently
his activities in viral hemorrhagic fevers and major contributions
to the science and epidemiology of emerging pathogens have been aired
on television, newspapers and periodicals and in several books for
the lay reader. With his wife, Sue Fisher-Hoch he co-authored a popular
account of their adventures that was translated into nine languages,
and has been reissued in hard cover and paperback by Barnes and Noble.
Dr. McCormick is a member of several scientific organizations and
has about 200 scientific publications involving co-authors from over
20 different countries. He is an accomplished amateur pianist, and
enjoys outdoor activities such as running, cycling, back packing,
skiing and fly-fishing.
