Webster defines a missionary as one who propagates faith or carries out humanitarian work. J. Glenn Morris, Jr., MD, MPH & TM, professor of medicine and chairman of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine, could be considered a missionary of sorts, for he works to promote human health and welfare. The only child of missionary parents, John Glenn Morris Jr., was born in Jackson, MS, and moved to Thailand when he was six weeks old. His father, a PhD theologian, taught Hebrew and Greek to Thai and Chinese; his mother worked with refugee populations. The missionary contract allowed the Morrises to return to the United States for a year every four years; so although Dr. Morris spent the majority of his youth in Bangkok, he also lived in Louisville and Kansas City. “Growing up in Bangkok had a profound effect on me,” he says. “There were annual cholera epidemics, and there was always a risk that the epidemics would reach our family and friends. Everyone knew someone who had died from cholera.”
Dr. Morris chose to major in medieval Chinese history at Rice University, but it was his second major—biology—that opened his eyes to his future. As he delved more deeply into his studies, he became increasingly interested in medicine as a way to address the public health issues he had seen overseas. He attended medical school at Tulane University because of its strong tropical medicine curriculum and its master’s degree in public health and tropical medicine.
“I was aware that I could make a greater contribution in America than by returning to Asia. I was aware of the need for high quality medical research in the United States to deal with prevention and control of diseases that had such a devastating effect in tropical countries,” Dr. Morris says.
After a residency at the University of Texas Southwestern, he joined the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as an epidemic intelligence officer, a track often taken by leading investigators in public health and infectious diseases. He was assigned to the enteric diseases division to work on cholera and other water and food-borne diseases. “Working in this area was very exciting to me,” Dr. Morris says, “because it was so closely linked to my upbringing. But I knew I needed more depth of knowledge; I needed to be able to work at a molecular level.”
So, after two years of training and an additional year-long residency at Emory University, Dr. Morris arrived at Maryland in 1982 on a fellowship. He was lured here by Myron M. “Mike” Levine, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and director of the school’s center for vaccine development (see p. 11). “His program was—and still is—recognized as the premier organization of its kind in the world,” he states. “I wanted to continue my research on cholera, but wanted to do so with top-notch molecular geneticist Jim Kaper, PhD (now professor of microbiology).” In 1984, Dr. Morris completed his fellowship, accepted a faculty position as assistant professor of medicine, and married his wife, Deborah, now an internist in private practice.
By this time, Dr. Morris had obtained his first grant funding and started his career with a laboratory focusing on molecular pathogenesis and molecular epidemiology. He also continued to look at more general public health issues relating to prevention of food-borne illnesses. Over the next several years, the National Academy of Sciences asked him to serve on a series of committees looking at alternative methods of food inspection and seafood safety. In 1992, he was appointed full professor at Maryland.
The Clinton Administration, responding to public concern about E. coli outbreaks on the west coast, in 1994 appointed the first undersecretary of agriculture for food safety, with a mandate to rewrite the United States’ food safety regulations of 1906. One of the undersecretary’s first actions was to recruit Dr. Morris to help direct the process. He and his USDA team changed this country’s entire approach to food inspection, and in July 1996 published Pathogen Reduction, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Systems: Final Rule, which, for the first time, set microbial standards for food safety.