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N0KFQ > TODAY 23.02.13 17:09l 58 Lines 2652 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 36408_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Feb 23
Path: IZ3LSV<IK6ZDE<VE3UIL<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 130223/1455Z 36408@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.53
...
Feb 23, 1954:
Children receive first polio vaccine
On this day in 1954, a group of children from Arsenal Elementary
School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, receive the first injections
of the new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk.
Though not as devastating as the plague or influenza,
poliomyelitis was a highly contagious disease that emerged in
terrifying outbreaks and seemed impossible to stop. Attacking the
nerve cells and sometimes the central nervous system, polio
caused muscle deterioration, paralysis and even death. Even as
medicine vastly improved in the first half of the 20th century in
the Western world, polio still struck, affecting mostly children
but sometimes adults as well. The most famous victim of a 1921
outbreak in America was future President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, then a young politician. The disease spread quickly,
leaving his legs permanently paralyzed.
In the late 1940s, the March of Dimes, a grassroots organization
founded with President Roosevelt's help to find a way to defend
against polio, enlisted Dr. Jonas Salk, head of the Virus
Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. Salk found that
polio had as many as 125 strains of three basic types, and that
an effective vaccine needed to combat all three. By growing
samples of the polio virus and then deactivating, or "killing"
them by adding a chemical called formalin, Salk developed his
vaccine, which was able to immunize without infecting the
patient.
After mass inoculations began in 1954, everyone marveled at the
high success rate--some 60-70 percent--until the vaccine caused a
sudden outbreak of some 200 cases. After it was determined that
the cases were all caused by one faulty batch of the vaccine,
production standards were improved, and by August 1955 some 4
million shots had been given. Cases of polio in the U.S. dropped
from 14,647 in 1955 to 5,894 in 1956, and by 1959 some 90 other
countries were using Salk's vaccine.
A later version of the polio vaccine, developed by Albert Sabin,
used a weakened form of the live virus and was swallowed instead
of injected. It was licensed in 1962 and soon became more popular
than Salk's vaccine, as it was cheaper to make and easier for
people to take. There is still no cure for polio once it has been
contracted, but the use of vaccines has virtually eliminated
polio in the United States. Globally, there are now around
250,000 cases each year, mostly in developing countries. The
World Health Organization has set a goal of eradicating polio
from the entire world by 2010.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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