trying to understand past outbreaks & mass immunization
While most scientists believed that effective vaccines could only be developed with live viruses, Salk developed a “killed-virus” vaccine by growing samples of the virus and then deactivating them by adding formaldehyde (IUPAC name Methanal, Formula CH2O) so that they could no longer reproduce. By injecting the benign strains into the bloodstream, the vaccine tricked the immune system into manufacturing protective antibodies without the need to introduce a weakened form of the virus into healthy patients. Many researchers such as Polish-born virologist Albert Sabin, who was developing an oral “live-virus” polio vaccine, called Salk’s approach dangerous.
1 of 7: question: " who owns the patent on this vaccine? "
2 of 7: the immortal cells of henrietta lacks
3 of 7: what is polio?
On a side note: Polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed in the media, not even at its height in the 1940s and 1950s,” writes David M. Oshinsky in his Pulitzer Prize winning book “Polio: An American Story.” During those decades, 10 times as many children died in accidents and three times as many succumbed to cancer. Polio inspired such fear because it struck without warning and researchers were unsure of how it spread from person to person. In the years following World War II, polls found the only thing Americans feared more than polio was nuclear war.
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For the first time, researchers used the double-blind method, now standard, in which neither the patient nor person administering the inoculation knew if it was a vaccine or placebo.
" nanos gigantum humeris insidentes " It's Latin for a metaphor for (we are) "Dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants" like Jonas Salk. The Salk Vaccine is used worldwide to this day. It's estimated that he could have made $7 billion off of patenting the vaccine but he gave it to the people without hesitation after spending 7 years of his life developing the vaccine. HELA: HEnrietta lacks
But none of Jonas Salk's research would have been possible without the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks. Whose DNA led to countless cures and discoveries..
henrietta lacks:
There are three wild types of poliovirus (WPV) – type 1, type 2, and type 3. People need to be protected against all three types of the virus in order to prevent polio disease and the polio vaccination is the best protection.
There are two vaccines used to protect against polio disease, oral polio vaccine and inactivated poliovirus vaccine. |
4 of 7: how vaccines work?
5 of 7: mrna-1273 ( human trials stared this morning )
6 of 7 : A look back
Source: https://www.healthline.com/health/worst-disease-outbreaks-history
7 of 7: How we beat smallpox
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The first ever vaccine was created when Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist, successfully injected small amounts of a cowpox virus into a young boy to protect him from the related (and deadly) smallpox virus.
But how does this seemingly counterintuitive process work? Kelwalin Dhanasarnsombut details the science behind vaccines. mRNA-1273
U.S. researchers have given healthy volunteers the first shot of an experimental corona virus vaccine as anxiously awaited testing opens. Study's first participant received the injection inside an exam room.. today (March 16).
For 10,000 years, humanity suffered from the scourge of smallpox. The virus killed almost a third of its victims within two weeks and left survivors horribly scarred.
But Simona Zompi commends the brave souls: a Buddhist nun, a boy, a cow, a dairymaid and physician Edward Jenner who first stopped the spread of this disastrous disease, to make us smallpox-free today |