Word: salk
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...Salk and vaccine. the words somehow belong together-like Fleming and penicillin or Einstein and relativity. So when Dr. Jonas Salk, the developer of the first effective vaccine against polio, announced eight years ago that he was coming out of retirement to tackle AIDS, many people cheered-especially the growing numbers of patients infected with hiv. Who better to lead the charge against the current plague than the conqueror of an infamous childhood scourge? Within the scientific community, though, there was more doubt than expectation. AIDS was a tougher target than polio, and few experts believed that Salk's approach...
...generation ago, no one had ever heard of Lyme or Legionnaires' disease, much less AIDS. Back in the 1970s, medical researchers were even boasting that humanity's victory against infectious disease was just a matter of time. The polio virus had been tamed by the Salk and Sabin vaccines; the smallpox virus was virtually gone; the parasite that causes malaria was in retreat; once deadly illnesses, including diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus, seemed like quaint reminders of a bygone era, like Model T Fords or silent movies...
...sense. It would explain, for example, why so many people are coming down with postpolio syndrome now. The great postwar epidemic peaked in the U.S. in 1952, when more than 20,000 children were paralyzed by polio, and it tapered off in the early '60s, after the Salk vaccine and then the Sabin oral version were introduced. The first wave of postpolio symptoms appeared in the early 1980s, 30 years after the epidemic's peak, and if researchers are correct, the last wave should subside...
Realizing this, in the early 1950s, Dr. Jonas Salk used injections of dead polio viruses as a vaccine against the crippling and sometimes fatal disease, which rose to epidemic proportions each summer to strike victims such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt '04. On April 12, 1955, U.S. health officials proclaimed the vaccine a success...
Despite the long hours, Siber seems he is happy to continue the legacy of Jenner and Salk...