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KF5JRV > TODAY 26.03.19 12:42l 59 Lines 3276 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 33401_KF5JRV
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Subj: Today in History - Mar 26
Path: IZ3LSV<IK6ZDE<VE2PKT<N3HYM<KF5JRV
Sent: 190326/1138Z 33401@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.18
On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces
on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine
against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of
polio. In 1952–an epidemic year for polio–there were 58,000 new cases
reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 died from the
disease. For promising eventually to eradicate the disease, which is
known as “infant paralysisö because it mainly affects children, Dr. Salk
was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time.
Polio, a disease that has affected humanity throughout recorded history,
attacks the nervous system and can cause varying degrees of paralysis.
Since the virus is easily transmitted, epidemics were commonplace in the
first decades of the 20th century. The first major polio epidemic in the
United States occurred in Vermont in the summer of 1894, and by the 20th
century thousands were affected every year. In the first decades of the
20th century, treatments were limited to quarantines and the infamous
“iron lung,ö a metal coffin-like contraption that aided respiration.
Although children, and especially infants, were among the worst
affected, adults were also often afflicted, including future president
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1921 was stricken with polio at the age of
39 and was left partially paralyzed. Roosevelt later transformed his
estate in Warm Springs, Georgia, into a recovery retreat for polio
victims and was instrumental in raising funds for polio-related research
and the treatment of polio patients.
Salk, born in New York City in 1914, first conducted research on viruses
in the 1930s when he was a medical student at New York University, and
during World War II helped develop flu vaccines. In 1947, he became head
of a research laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh and in 1948 was
awarded a grant to study the polio virus and develop a possible vaccine.
By 1950, he had an early version of his polio vaccine.
Salk’s procedure, first attempted unsuccessfully by American Maurice
Brodie in the 1930s, was to kill several strains of the virus and then
inject the benign viruses into a healthy person’s bloodstream. The
person’s immune system would then create antibodies designed to resist
future exposure to poliomyelitis. Salk conducted the first human trials
on former polio patients and on himself and his family, and by 1953 was
ready to announce his findings. This occurred on the CBS national radio
network on the evening of March 25 and two days later in an article
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Salk
became an immediate celebrity.
In 1954, clinical trials using the Salk vaccine and a placebo began on
nearly two million American schoolchildren. In April 1955, it was
announced that the vaccine was effective and safe, and a nationwide
inoculation campaign began. Shortly thereafter, tragedy struck in the
Western and mid-Western United States, when more than 200,000 people
were injected with a defective vaccine manufactured at Cutter
Laboratories of Berkeley, California. Thousands of polio cases were
reported, 200 children were left paralyzed and 10 died.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
email: KF5JRV@ICLOUD.COM
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