Word: salk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...good way to assess the great figures of medicine is by how completely they make us forget what we owe them. By that measure, Dr. Jonas E. Salk ranks very high. Partly because of the vaccine he introduced in the mid-1950s, it's hard now to recall the sheer terror that was once connected to the word polio. The incidence of the disease had risen sharply in the early part of this century, and every year brought the threat of another outbreak. Parents were haunted by the stories of children stricken suddenly by the telltale cramps and fever. Public...
...that is hard to remember, because by the time of Salk's death last week, of heart failure at the age of 80, polio was virtually gone from the U.S. and nearing extinction throughout the world. The beginning of the end for the virus can be dated precisely. On April 12, 1955, a Salk colleague announced that a vaccine developed by Salk and tested on more than 1 million schoolchildren had proved "safe, effective and potent." As a result of the nationwide effort of mass inoculation that followed, new cases in the U.S. dropped to fewer than...
That triumph made Salk one of the most celebrated men of the 1950s. Streets and schools were named for him; in polls he ranked with Gandhi and Churchill as a hero of modern history. Though his fame was expertly fostered by the public-relations machinery of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and its March of Dimes campaign, which helped finance Salk's work, national adulation was still an unexpected fate for a dedicated scientist in an unglamorous field...
...Jonas Salk,the medical pioneer who developed the first polio vaccine, died of heart failure in La Jolla, Calif. this afternoon. Salk became a hero to millions of Americans in the 1950s when he ignored scientific doubters and used killed virus to develop the polio vaccine. Similarly, he ignored skeptics later in life when he tried to devise a vaccine-like treatment for AIDS...
Then why did the FDA panel vote for wider testing? Clearly, Salk himself was a big selling point. "He has a reputation among some scientists as a god," says one top AIDS researcher. "He's a powerful advocate, and they find it very hard to turn him down." The committee may also have had a hard time saying no to the AIDS patients who participated in the early pilot programs. They fear that if the FDA does not expand the trial, they will no longer receive the shots. And many are convinced that the treatments are helping. Mike Slattery...