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Professor Ian Lipkin Brings Science to Hollywood's "Contagion"

Internationally-renowned "microbe hunter" worked closely with film creators to support scientific accuracy of star-studded Soderbergh movie about pandemic

Professor Ian Lipkin Brings Science to Hollywood's Contagion
 
Internationally-renowned “microbe hunter” worked closely with filmmakers to ensure accuracy of star-studded Soderbergh movie about pandemic
Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s new movie Contagion imagines a deadly virus outbreak that quickly sweeps around the world.  The gripping story is fiction, but the global pandemic it portrays is entirely realistic. Soderbergh and Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns were committed to the truth of the film right from the start and sought out Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, one of the world’s foremost microbe hunters and a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, to tap his scientific expertise as they developed the concept.

It wasn’t the first time Hollywood had knocked on Dr. Lipkin’s door, but it was the first time he said “yes.”  Lipkin was persuaded that “this was an effort to accurately represent the science and to make a movie that would entertain as well as educate.” Now that it is opening in theaters, he hopes that Contagion will help people to understand the urgent public health challenges that we face in the 21st century due to increasing international trade and travel, urbanization, loss of wildlife habitats, and inadequate investment in infrastructure for surveillance  and vaccine production and distribution.

After early conversations about the movie concept, Lipkin signed on as technical adviser to Contagion in March, 2009 and played an active role throughout production.  He suggested the movie’s plot might be triggered by an outbreak of a virus similar to Nipah, a deadly virus that has, on occasion, migrated from animals to people.

At Columbia, Dr. Lipkin is the director of the Mailman School of Public Health’s renowned Center for Infection and Immunity, which does cutting-edge work in microbe detection and discovery. He has identified more than 400 new viruses and was the first to determine that West Nile virus was the cause of the 1999 encephalitis epidemic in New York City.

Some of the scenes in Contagion reflect Dr. Lipkin’s vivid memories of Beijing when he assisted the World Health Organization and the Chinese Health Ministry manage the SARS outbreak in 2003.  At risk on the frontlines of the epidemic, as public health professionals sometimes are, he became ill and was quarantined when he returned to the U.S.  On the movie set, Dr. Lipkin shared his experience in China with Matt Damon, offering the actor insight into what it feels like to be behind glass and cut off from loved ons. 

Dr. Lipkin also coached Contagion actors on the practices and process of scientific research. Kate Winslet and Jennifer Ehle visited the Center for Infection and Immunity to learn the mechanics of being a bench scientist, working with the lab’s equipment to do technical procedures. And Elliott Gould, who plays a research scientist named “Ian,” talked to Dr. Lipkin about the intellectual process of making a scientific breakthrough. Suggesting to the actor how to look through a microscope and reflect on what it reveals, “I told Elliott it’s important that you get this right, because you are playing me,” Dr. Lipkin recalls.

The laboratory at the Center for Infection and Immunity, where Dr. Lipkin and his team of 65 conduct their research, also has an invisible role in the movie. In pursuit of authenticity, Contagion’s production crew traveled to the lab to record centrifuges whirring, liquid nitrogen hissing, and even the squeaky noise of opening animal cage doors for the film’s soundtrack.

In addition to his work at Columbia, Dr. Lipkin co-chairs the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was established in response to a Homeland Security Presidential Directive recognizing that infectious diseases are an increasing threat to the nation. From that perspective, Dr. Lipkin hopes that Contagion will be a wake-up call for the public that today’s fiction could easily become fact tomorrow.  He says, “Science is critical to address these challenges. We’ve been through this with SARS. We will be through it again.”

Link to NBAS Report at http://www.cdc.gov/about/advisory/pdf/NBASFinalReport_April2011.pdf ;
About The Center for Infection and Immunity
The Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health is committed to global health through innovative research and training programs in infectious diseases.
In addition to establishing and implementing programs for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of acute outbreaks of infectious disease, Center for Infection and Immunity scientists investigate chronic diseases in which prenatal or early life exposure to infections or immunotoxins may be implicated, including premature birth, cerebral palsy, autism, AD/HD, obsessive compulsive disorders, schizophrenia, type I diabetes mellitus and some forms of cancer. This work is pursued using animal models, genomic and proteomic tools, and unique databases and biological materials obtained from partners in a global network. In collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, we are investigating gene-environment-timing interactions in neurodevelopmental disorders and discovering biomarkers to enable early identification and treatment of children at risk for autism and related disorders.
 

Q&A with Dr. W. Ian Lipkin about the production of Contagion

Steven Soderbergh's new film Contagion, which opens in theaters on September 9, imagines a virus outbreak that quickly sweeps around the world. Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, one of the world's foremost microbe hunters and John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, worked closely with the film's creators to ensure the scientific accuracy of this gripping portrayal of a very realistic global public health threat. 

Dr. Lipkin is the Director of the Mailman School of Public Health's renowned Center for Infection and Immunity, which does breakthrough research in microbe detection and discovery. His work is at the frontiers of public health, creating and implementing state-of-the-art molecular tools in a global network to reduce the risks of acute and chronic diseases.

Dr. Lipkin is also co-chair of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The NBAS was established in May 2005 in response to the Homeland Security Presidential Directive recognizing the emergence of significant health-related threats to the nation. Its mission is to "ensure that the Federal Government is meeting the goal of enabling state and local government public health surveillance capabilities."

Q. How did you get involved with the production of Contagion?
I started to talk with Scott Burns and Steven Soderbergh late in 2008 when they were first developing the concept for Contagion. I'd been approached by other screenwriters who wanted to do dark, apocalyptic or implausible projects like I Am Legend and Outbreak that really didn't interest me.
This, in contrast, was an effort to really get the story right, to represent the science accurately and to make a movie that would entertain as well as educate and motivate people to become involved in proactively addressing the challenges of infectious diseases. Scott and Steven made it clear that they wanted the movie to be realistic and the plot to be rooted in solid science. I frankly wouldn't have done it otherwise.
Together with Jeffrey Engels, I co-chair the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS), which reports to the federal government on our readiness for responding to biological threats and makes recommendations for improvement. Our most recent report can be found at the following website
http://www.cdc.gov/about/advisory/pdf/NBASFinalReport_April2011.pdf ;
This movie reflects vulnerabilities described in that report and makes a more compelling case for addressing those vulnerabilities than the dry text associated with a government committee. 

Q. What was your role in the making of this film?
My role evolved over the course of production. Along with several other scientists, I was initially involved in suggesting potential plot lines.  As the film went into production I played an active role in helping Scott with the script, and the set designer with props and costumes. Two actors trained in our laboratory at Columbia. We also helped design the virus and track its evolution over the course of the pandemic, adapted a 3-D model of its structure from published literature, and provided much of the soundtrack used for scenes in laboratories and animal facilities. Steven [Soderbergh] is a fiend for accuracy.   

Q. What idea did you suggest for the plot?
Some viruses can be transmitted from an animal to a person but don't go further.  An example is H5N1 influenza virus that has been transmitted from birds to people but has not developed the capacity for person-to-person transmission. Nipah virus was thought to be in this category until shortly before we began working on the Contagion plot. Nipah was discovered during an outbreak of encephalitis in Malaysia in Chinese pig farmers. The pigs had been infected by bats. In outbreaks in Bangladesh where people don't farm pigs, the virus went directly from bats to man via palm sap collected in trees and sold as a beverage. What was different in Bangladesh is that there were reports of human-to-human transmission. Together with our colleagues at EcoHealth Alliance we have a Nipah surveillance program at Center for Infection and Immunity.

Q.  How did you work with screenwriter Scott Burns as the script developed?
Scott was thinking deeply about a wide range of issues.  He would call me up every other day, sometimes every day, to check a fact or to propose a scenario.  He would ask, when there is an outbreak, who would the CDC send out to investigate? What's the nature of their interaction with other scientists working on the outbreak? What would you do to identify an infectious agent? What would the virus look like? How would you move vaccines; would you have refrigerated trucks or would you not? What kind of numbers of victims would you expect?

Q. Did you work with other members of the production team?
I worked with Howard Cummings who was nominally the set designer but in fact much more. He's brilliant, and he handles costumes, props and digital media. Steven wanted authentic sounds of things like centrifuges whirring, freezers opening, liquid nitrogen hissing, cage doors opening with the squeakiness of metal against metal and wheels as they roll down a corridor. The sound engineers recorded these at my lab.
We also went on the road to the Biosafety Level 4 U.S. Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Frederick, MD to see functional containment facilities and personal protective equipment. The laboratory and animal facilities were built on set in Chicago in an old tool and dye factory. 

Q. Did you work closely with any of the actors?
Yes, I worked with many of them in different ways. 
Jennifer Ehle and Kate Winslet came to our center at Columbia. Our faculty and staff showed them how to walk the walk and talk the talk with pipettes, microscopes, and PCR.  Jennifer plays a laboratory scientist. Kate is cast as a field epidemiologist.  I introduced her to CDC leadership and to Anne Schuchat, the Assistant Surgeon General.
I also spent quite a bit of time on the sets. I had wonderful conversations Laurence Fishburn, who plays Kate's supervisor at the CDC.  It's a gut-wrenching role because of the life and death decisions he has to make and the ethical dilemmas he faces.
I also helped the actors understand what things feel like.  For example, Gwyneth Paltrow was going to have a seizure and then the question was what does a seizure look like?  And immediately after the seizure, you know, what should she feel?  So I asked, "Do you have migraines?" She does, so I said, "You know that sort of feeling you have after a migraine where you're not quite with it?" She knew exactly.  I said, "Go with that."
And watching Elliott Gould playing a character based on me was fantastic.  I showed him how to look at a microscope and lean back and think about what it was he had seen. He was such a natural. I said, "it's important that you get this right, because you are playing me in the movie."

Q: You said that the model of the virus was made in your lab?
Yes, Craig Street, a bio-infomatician at the Center for Infection and Immunity, and I collected genetic sequences of various paramyxoviruses and spliced them together to create the virus used in the movie. Ann Moscona and Matteo Porotto of Cornell University provided micrographs that we modified for Elliott's scenes. The 3-D model of the virus was based on work of Bowden and colleagues at Oxford University.
Everything about the virus is plausible.  The way the infectious agent spreads is a function of transportation corridors, air routes. That is accurate as well.

Q. Did the film always get it right?
Well, there were a number of occasions where I saw things that weren't quite right. One of them, for example, was in a scene with Jennifer Ehle that involved the way a vaccine was being delivered.  I said, "You know, this is just not right."  Steven and Scott said, "You know, we really don't want to reshoot it. Is it really critical?" I said, "It's obviously your call, because if you want accuracy this doesn't work."   And Steven, to his credit, said, "Okay. We'll reshoot the scene." So they brought Jennifer back and they reshot the scene.

Q.  Did any experiences from your career inform the movie?
In 2003 when SARS emerged, we were among the first to develop a rapid diagnostic test for SARS. I was invited by the Ministry of Science and Technology to go to Beijing because it was the height of the outbreak, and they needed help in screening patients and developing a research program. The scenes that you see in the movie where streets are deserted and there are blockades and such, this directly comes out of my vivid memories of what it was like to be in Beijing during that crisis.
When I returned from China, I became ill, and I was quarantined. Thus, I also have a sense of what it's like to be told "You're going to stay put over here.  You're going to have no interaction with anybody." It's an eerie experience.
I was able to communicate that to the actors. Matt Damon, for example, is isolated in that fashion. What does that feel like to know that you can't really come into contact with your loved ones and they have to talk to you through glass or over a telephone?

Q. What do you hope the public learns from Contagion?
We need to get our heads out of the sand and realize the real risks that we face. Our public health system is underfunded and overwhelmed. We must invest in diagnostics, better ways of manufacturing and distributing drugs and vaccines. We need more scientists. It is important that we find ways to control infectious diseases in the developing world as well as here. First, because it's the right thing to do because diseases are causing enormous morbidity and mortality. It's important to do this from a selfish vantage point as well, because whatever's over there can also come here.

Q. You've said this is like a Sputnik moment.  What does that mean?
When I was kid the launch of Sputnik made us aware that the U.S. was falling behind in the race for space. The race here is not against another country but microbes themselves. Contagion takes the stance that the real heroes here are the scientists and the public health people who put themselves on the line in trying to solve real problems and trying to reduce morbidity and mortality. I believe that the EIS, the Epidemiologic Intelligence Service, is going to have a lot of applicants as a result of this movie.  I am also hoping that the film will persuade people in college or even before college to start thinking about careers in science and engineering and mathematics. This is what the country and the world needs. 
http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/news/media/professor-ian-lipkin-brings-science-hollywoods-contagion#qa1%0A