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Obituary
Paul Francis Wehrle
26 June 2004

Credit: American Academy of Pediatrics

Paediatrician and researcher who gained an international reputation for diagnosing and developing treatments for polio and smallpox

Before Paul Francis Wehrle joined the University of Southern California (USC) department of paediatrics as its chairman in 1961, academic research was a relatively low priority for a staff focused on delivering an average of 40-50 babies per day. Operating on a longstanding apprentice system of doctors, fitting volunteer teaching rounds in between attending to their patients, the department of paediatrics boasted a strong team of clinicians but little impetus for research.

But during his tenure as chairman of USC's department of paediatrics from 1961 to 1988, Wehrle, a paediatrician and expert on infectious and communicable diseases, not only oversaw the running of the busy county hospital, but transformed it into a well respected centre for medical research.

"When Professor Wehrle first arrived, USC didn't have much of an academic reputation," said Professor Joan Hodgman, who has been on the faculty of USC's paediatrics department since 1948 and was a close colleague of Wehrle's. "He would travel all over the world waving the flag for USC." It was not for nothing that the USC medical school staff dubbed their chairman "our visiting professor."

Wehrle's research interests sent him all over the globe. In 1969, on a sabbatical from USC, he spent a year working as a medical officer for the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) on a campaign to eradicate smallpox. He travelled to Africa, South America, Nepal, India, and Afghanistan, lecturing and immunising people against the disease. The WHO mandate also involved training local people in these areas to give vaccinations to members of their communities and providing better vaccines than were available at that time.

In the same year, Wehrle also conducted a study of an outbreak of smallpox in a German hospital, contributing to the understanding that virus particles of the disease could be carried some distance through the air to infect other people. "To this day, Wehrle's study remains one of the best demonstrations of the airborne transmission of smallpox," Dr John Leedom, emeritus professor of medicine at USC, told the New York Times. At the end of his sabbatical year, Wehrle signed the official proclamation declaring worldwide eradication of the disease.

Wehrle also pursued his research interests closer to home. Shortly after arriving at USC, he established a virology research laboratory. During his tenure, he published numerous academic articles and textbooks on infectious and communicable diseases and attracted reputable scholars to USC Medical School.

In addition to paediatrics and infectious and communicable diseases, Wehrle long fostered an interest in environmental hazards, such as air pollution. During his years at USC, for example, he studied a local high school track team to chart the inverse relationship between ozone and athletic performance. When the air was clean, he discovered, cross-country runners improved at a steady rate as they progressed through a season of 21 meetings. On smoggy days, there was no improvement and many athletes ran slower.

Born in Ithaca, New York on 18 December 1921 and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Wehrle gained a biology degree at the University of Arizona and his medical degree with honours from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He went on to teach at the universities of Illinois and Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins University and State University of New York before being recruited to head the paediatrics unit at USC. In the early 1950s, Wehrle worked on the clinical trials of the Salk polio vaccine, which was first administered in 1954.
Wehrle held key positions within many professional societies, including serving as president and vice president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and president of the International Congress of Paediatrics. He also served on the Air Pollution Training Committee of the US Public Health Service.

But even with his strong reputation, turning USC Medical School into a research powerhouse was an uphill struggle for Wehrle. Raising money was one of the biggest obstacles. Beyond the fact that USC was not highly regarded as a centre for academic research, the county hospital did not allocate funds for "ancillary reasons." However, according to Hodgman, the greatest challenge facing Wehrle stood beyond the powers of hospital administrators. "County bureaucracy made life hard," said Hodgman. "There was always less money and more regulations."

Having served his term as chairman, Wehrle moved to a more administrative role in the Medical School director's office. But because, according to Hodgman, he was a "hands on" doctor, Wehrle only lasted two years in this job before moving to a new position as interim chairman of paediatrics at the University of California at Irvine.

Wehrle continued to write and consult for as long as his health would allow. He died of natural causes on 11 May 2004 at the age of 82 in San Clemente, California. Described by his sister-in-law Marcia Sanford in an article for the Arizona Daily Star as a "down-to-earth person" who enjoyed repairing classic cars, Wehrle also played saxophone in a local swing band as a young man growing up in Tucson, before joining the Navy in 1942.
Wehrle leaves his wife of 59 years, Beth; and four children.

Paul Francis Wehrle, chairman Department of Pediatrics, USC Medical School, 1961-1988 and interim chairman of paediatrics, The University of California at Irvine (b 1921; q Tulane University 1947) died on 11 May 2004