Word: polio
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Scientists, moreover, cannot guarantee that these trials will be risk free. If a vaccine is made from a whole AIDS virus, for example, there will be a slight danger that some of those vaccinated will get the disease. In 1955, during early testing of the polio vaccine, 80 children in California got the illness from improperly prepared shots. Even if the immunization works and produces large amounts of antibodies to HIV, participants will have to cope with the social stigma of being HIV positive. The antibodies generated by a vaccine are the same ones that doctors look for when they...
...serious economic assessment of health-sciences research will demonstrate that it has been remarkably cost effective. For example, the funds that were expended to develop the polio vaccine 30 years ago were quite small compared to the value derived from the virtual eradication of poliomyelitis. It has been calculated that if polio had not been prevented, the cost to the country in 1990 of caring for the millions of people with polio would exceed all the funds that have been spent by the NIH in the past 30 years. In 1955 essentially all children who developed acute leukemia died quickly...
...like this. Our infant-mortality rate is higher than Singapore's; our life expectancy is lower than Cubans'. As many as 50% of inner-city infants and toddlers go unimmunized. In the face of AIDS, our first major epidemic since polio, we are nearly helpless. Our city hospitals are overflowing with victims of tuberculosis, poverty, AIDS, old age and exposure. Our rural areas don't have this problem; they have fewer and fewer hospitals or, increasingly, less medical personnel of any kind...
...elevator of her apartment, through the front door and to the Handi-Van waiting in front of her building. It is a vehicle with hydraulic lifts that the city of Fond du Lac offers to disabled residents. Westfield, 43, who has used a wheelchair since she was stricken with polio as a child, relies on the Handi-Van to reach her doctor's office and a local hospital where she does volunteer work. She is not strong enough to push herself to the bus stop a block away, and during the winter Westfield's wheelchair could easily tip over...
...active in some, but not all, sufferers, and experts doubt it is the root of the trouble. The illness seems to involve some malfunction of the immune system, perhaps triggered by stress, that can allow any number of normally dormant viruses, including Epstein-Barr, herpes VI and even polio-like pathogens, to become active...