When Ripley Ballou — Rip to his friends — started to feel sick at a party in 1987, he thought it was because of his friend's home-brewed beer.
Ballou was taking a break from his work on developing a malaria vaccine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, which he was doing in collaboration with the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Back then, researchers could be a principal investigator as well as volunteer in their own projects.