Lawrence Eron is an
infectious diseases specialist practicing in
Honolulu, Hawaii
Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...
. In 2009 he received the Clinician Award from the
Infectious Diseases Society of America
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) is a medical association representing physicians, scientists and other health care professionals who specialize in infectious diseases. It was founded in 1963 and is based in Arlington, Virginia. ...
"for outstanding achievements in the clinical practice of infectious diseases." In 2011, he was also included by
Pacific Business News
American City Business Journals, Inc. (ACBJ) is an American newspaper publisher based in Charlotte, North Carolina. ACBJ publishes The Business Journals, which contains local business news for 44 markets in the United States, Hemmings Motor News ...
on the list of Best Doctors in Hawaii.
He graduated from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
in 1966 with a degree in Biochemistry.
[ Princeton University Library Special Collections, The Trustees of Princeton University.] He then spent a year doing post-graduate research in microbiology at the
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...
in England before attending
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
in 1967. While at Harvard Medical School, he worked on a research team with the American geneticist
Jonathan Beckwith, and in 1969, the team successfully isolated a single group of genes from a bacterial chromosome. They are credited as the first researchers to accomplish isolation of a single genetic element according to an article that appeared in the
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
on December 8, 1969. He subsequently graduated
magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School in 1971 and then performed his internship, residency, and fellowship in infectious diseases at the
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston from 1971 to 1976.
From 1976 to 1978, Eron served as a senior investigator at the Bureau of Biologics of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) prior to entering private practice in Virginia. He founded an infectious diseases private practice with Donald Poretz in 1978. Together with Poretz, they were the first to recognize the potential value of
outpatient intravenous antibiotic therapy (OPAT) for clinically stable patients. They also cared for an ill animal handler in Reston, Virginia, from a laboratory that experienced an outbreak of the deadly
Ebola virus. This real-life event became the basis of a best-selling book,
The Hot Zone
''The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story'' is a best-selling 1994 nonfiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebolaviruses and marburgviruses. The basis of the book ...
and the fictional 1995 Hollywood movie
Outbreak
In epidemiology, an outbreak is a sudden increase in occurrences of a disease when cases are in excess of normal expectancy for the location or season. It may affect a small and localized group or impact upon thousands of people across an entire ...
.
On October 1, 1985, the New York Times featured Eron in an article about his then novel approach to treating genital warts caused by the
Human Papillomavirus
Human papillomavirus infection (HPV infection) is caused by a DNA virus from the ''Papillomaviridae'' family. Many HPV infections cause no symptoms and 90% resolve spontaneously within two years. In some cases, an HPV infection persists and res ...
(
HPV
Human papillomavirus infection (HPV infection) is caused by a DNA virus from the '' Papillomaviridae'' family. Many HPV infections cause no symptoms and 90% resolve spontaneously within two years. In some cases, an HPV infection persists and re ...
). Eron and his colleagues used the anti-viral hormone
interferon to clear patients of genital warts. Over a 9-month period, 85% of Eron's patients were cleared and remained free of genital warts.
Since 1998, Eron has served as an Infectious Disease Consultant at Kaiser Moanalua Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. In his current post at Kaiser, Eron is recognized as one of the early pioneers of
telemedicine, which has been particularly useful in treating patients who live in geographically remote regions in the Pacific, without immediate access to hospitals and other healthcare facilities. He is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at the
University of Hawaii
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Eron, Lawrence
1944 births
Living people
American infectious disease physicians
Harvard Medical School alumni
Physicians from Hawaii