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Howard Hughes: Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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Hughes' $2.5 billion estate was eventually split in 1983 among 22 cousins, including William Lummis who serves as a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dummar was largely discounted by the public as a phony and an opportunist. Jonathan Demme's film Melvin and Howard (starring Jason Robards and Paul Le Mat), was based on Dummar's tale.
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Hughes died April 5, 1976, en route by private jet to a hospital in Houston. His reclusive activities and drug use had made him practically unrecognizable; his hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails had grown grossly long, his once-strapping 6'4" frame had atrophied to 90 lbs, and the FBI had to resort to fingerprints to identify the body. He left an estate estimated at $2 billion. Four hundred prospective heirs tried to inherit it but it eventually went to twenty-two cousins. Hughes Aircraft ended up in the hands of Hughes Medical Institute.
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Over forty wills and 400 claimants vied for part of Hughes' $2 billion estate. The estate eventually settled with 22 cousins in 1983. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hughes Aircraft was owned by The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who sold it to General Motors in 1985 for $5 billion. Suits brought by the States of California and Texas claiming they were owed inheritance tax were both rejected by the court.
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The finding has important implications for the development of vaccines to combat the AIDS epidemic, according to Bruce D. Walker, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher. Walker is one of the leaders of the project, and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Partners AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Official website of the medical institute created by Howard Hughes in 1953. The history section of the site emphasises the research element of the institute and ignores any negative implications of Hughes’ supposed philanthropy.
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