Webster created and grew a globe-spanning influenza research program at St. Jude. The researchers he trained and inspired continue his legacy, staying one step ahead of pathogens for the children of St. Jude — and the world at large.
As for the skepticism about why he chose to do his work at St. Jude, Webster has a clear logic to support that decision. “Immunosuppression, leading to infections such as influenza, mumps, measles, and the common cold, was the real threat to our kids at the time,” he said.
When Webster joined the St. Jude faculty in 1969, cure rates for pediatric cancers were improving drastically. One supportive care factor that improved those successful treatments even further was a better understanding of how to counter infectious disease threats to patients.
When it came to understanding the flu, one of the first steps was figuring out where new flu strains in humans came from. Over 50 years ago, no one knew where the annual seasonal flu viruses originated. Several animal reservoirs were being considered then, and Webster published an article describing the potential relationship between bird flu and human flu in Nature in 1967. Webster and his colleague Graeme Laver, PhD, noticed a pattern of birds in Australia succumbing to mysterious illnesses, prompting them to test seabirds at the Great Barrier Reef. Initial findings were positive for influenza virus and published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization in 1972, along with another article describing how human pandemic flu may have arisen from an avian virus.