Working out of a tribal-owned hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, liver specialist Brian McMahon has spent decades treating the long shadow of hepatitis B. Before a vaccine became available in the 1980s, he saw the virus claim young lives in western Alaskan communities with stunning speed.
One of his patients was 17 years old when he first examined her for stomach pain. McMahon discovered she had developed liver cancer caused by hepatitis B, just weeks before she was set to graduate from high school as valedictorian. She died before the ceremony.
McMahon thinks often of an 8-year-old boy who showed no signs of illness until he complained of pain from what turned out to be a rapidly growing tumor on his liver.
McMahon can still hear his voice.
“He was moaning in pain, saying, ‘I know I am going to die soon,’” he recalled. “We were all crying.” The boy died at home a week later.
The hepatitis B virus is transmitted through blood and bodily fluids, even in microscopic amounts, and the virus can survive on surfaces for a week. Like many of his patients, McMahon said, both children contracted hepatitis B at birth or in early childhood.
That outcome is now preventable. A birth dose of the vaccine, recommended for newborns since 1991, is up to 90% effective in preventing infection from the mother if give …