Q: Okay. There was the Hoekten Silver—

Tullis: Hoekten Silver Medal. That is a prize that's awarded by the A.M.A every year, I believe, for research in a new field that has direct implications in the practice of medicine. The biomechanical equipment which I had helped design, and which I named after Dr. Cohn, had reached the stage where we put on demonstrations of how one could collect blood, and separate it into its component parts as part of the collection process. We demonstrated this at one of the meetings of the A.M.A and were surprised later to find out that we were awarded the Hoekten Prize because of this.

Q: What year was that?

Tullis: I'm sorry; I'd have to look it up. I believe it was 1954, 1955, along in there? Maybe a little later than that. Yes, I'd say about 1956.

Q: Okay. Could you comment on the Lasker Group Award?

Tullis: The Mary Lasker Group Award was given by the American Public Health Association; that Winged Victory that you see behind your chair represents that. It was given each year in honor, not to a single individual, but a whole laboratory that was working as a broad, multi-disciplinary group, an approach to a new set of problems in medicine that had public health implications. It was given to Dr. Cohn’s group. I was the youngest member of the group, so I didn't have access to that Winged Victory until all the others had left, I guess I'm the last one alive or not retired, and so it's now in my office here.

Q: Are there some other names you could identify who were part of the group?

Tullis: Oh, yes: Dr. Edsall, Dr. Cohn, Dr. Oncley, Dr. Surgener --can I stop there, because I don't remember who the official members were. Those names come to my mind first.

Q: There's a silver medal you received from the Pasteur Institute?

Tullis: That had to do with the work I was doing on platelet antibodies and their role in ITP. That was awarded in the early 1960s--it seems to me it was about 1962, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Q: There's an award that's called the Katsunuma Award, from the International Society of Practic—

Tullis: When Dr. Katsunuma was President of the International Society; he wanted to start an award which would be given at the annual meeting every other year, each time the International Society met. On that first occasion, Dr. Bessis was privileged to get it from Europe and I was given the award for the United States for the fractionation of the proteins which dealt with autoimmune processes, such as immune nutropenia, and idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, which we were doing just by an electrophoretic analysis, and so on. Unfortunately, Dr. Katsenuma died shortly thereafter, and he had not done the necessary legal things to make this a permanent prize, so there were only the two awards that were ever given.

Q: There's a Glycerol Producers Research Award?

Tullis: That had to do with the work I was doing for the Defense Department in establishing frozen red cell as a technology which could be practically applicable through the use of our biomedical equipment, for the freezing of blood, and apparently they have a prize which they award.

Q: And there was the Meritorious Civilian Award of the Defense Department.

Tullis: That was given to me because of the role I had helped play with Dr. Berry in establishment of the Berry Plan as a law of the land for how to use physicians who were being drafted during peacetime as civilians and to be sure they were used in the proper medical specialty, rather than in work unrelated to their training.

Q: Lastly, you have the Alpha Therapeutic Award of the American Blood Resource Institute.

Tullis: The Alpha Therapeutic Award was set up by a Japanese physician by the name of Dr. Naito. He was head of Green Cross Pharmaceutical Co. in Japan. He purchased the biologic division of Abbott Laboratories in California about 1970, and started a plasma products firm, called Alpha pharmaceutical using the Abbott division. They gave me the prize for what I had done with albumin in about 1976 or 1977. The National Institute of Health asked me to do a study, and then organize a national meeting at that time, on the use and abuse of albumin. A series of papers derived from the meeting followed by published guidelines on the appropriate clinical use of albumin. It was for this that the Alpha Therapeutic award was given.

Q: Thank you. Are there any other points that you would like to comment on?

Tullis: I think not. I've enjoyed thinking this through myself. I never looked backwards before!

Q: Thank you very much, Dr. Tullis.

[End of interview]

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