On 26 March 1953, American Dr. Jonas Salk reports that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio. Polio, a disease that mainly affects children, attacks the nervous system and can cause paralysis. Since the virus is easily transmitted, epidemics were commonplace in the first decades of the 20th century. Salk’s discovery came in the midst of major polio epidemics in Europe, Asia and the United States. Two years later, a massive child inoculation program was underway. In 1957, the development of an oral vaccine by Polish-American researcher Albert Sabin greatly facilitated distribution of the Polio vaccine.
On This Day….
Posted by: biologyblog | March 26, 2009 | 1 Comment |Responses - Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
With a vaccine that can fight polio our world can be come a safer environment for everyone. After the vaccine was discovered in 1957, children and adults were able to be cured of the crippling disease. It is a shame that former president Franklin Rosevelt had the disease and later died from it. He was not able to walk on his own in his final days as our Commander and Chief in 1945. The disease is also shown in the movie Forrest Gump, as a child he has to wear leg braces that make him look like a handycapped idiot but when he runs from the boys at school and Jenny yells “Run Forrest run!” he breaks out of the braces and this is suppose to be when the cure for polio was discovered. Our medicines have come a long way and it is great to see that polio is no longer a threat to mankind.
question 1) Do you think that more or less people today are born with polio even though we have the cure?
By: Branden B on April 16, 2009
at 9:03 pm
