Word: polio
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...test vaccine was given in 127 areas, deliberately picked because they had had a high polio-attack rate for several years. This was to make sure that there ivould be enough cases for the epidemiologists and their statistical machines. No fewer than 1,830,000 children were studied in the trials (440,000 were inoculated with the vaccine, 210,000 got a dummy substance, 1,180,000 were merely observed as "controls...
Among these children, there were only 1,013 cases reported as polio (in the U.S. as a whole there were 38,000 cases...
...smallpox and yellow fever. When they attack human beings or other mammals, most viruses stimulate the invaded system to manufacture tiny protein particles called antibodies. If the system under assault does not have enough of these antibodies or cannot manufacture them fast enough, the victim may die or, with polio, suffer permanent crippling...
...Polio virus is unusual in that there are three main types. All can cause paralysis, but one type causes more than the others combined. Within each type there are many different strains. The Salk vaccine is made by taking a representative strain of each type and growing it-till it reaches many times its original strength-in a broth made with snips of monkey kidney. (To keep production going, 4,000 monkeys a month are flown in from India and the Philippines.) Then the virus in each deadly brew is killed with formaldehyde. Strangely, although the virus particles now lose...
Never before in history had a medical development been big, instantaneous news over a large part of the world. Ironically, poliomyelitis has always been a relatively uncommon disease with a comparatively low death rate.** Polio is actually less of a public-health problem than rheumatic fever and some forms of cancer which single out the young. But, largely because of its long-term crippling effects, no disease except cancer has been so widely feared in the last three decades. With polio's dramatic defeat, as the Detroit Free Press wrote, "The prayers and hopes of millions . . . in all parts...