A History of Polio in Children

Procedures such as amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS) represent the standard diagnostic methods used by clinicians to screen fetuses for abnormalities or genetic disease such as Down syndrome. In amniocentesis, a needle is inserted into the amniotic sac of the mother and a small sample of amniotic fluid is obtained. Fetal tissue is contained within the amniotic fluid and is subsequently analyzed genetically and cytogenetically for abnormalities. In the case of CVS, a sample of placental tissue is obtained through the mother’s cervix for downstream genetic analysis as in the case of amniocentesis (CDC,

Poliomyelitis was a highly infectious disease that spread through many Americans in the early 20th century. As a matter of fact, over 3,000 Americans died of the disease each year. Families were overwhelmingly desperate for doctors to find a cure. When one suffered from polio, they generally experienced painful symptoms which included not only fatigue and muscle weakness, but even death. Therefore, when the polio vaccine was introduced by scientist Jonas Salk in 1953, it greatly contributed to Americans in numerous positive ways. Environmentally, the vaccine saved countless young American lives affected by the disease thus decreasing American mortality rates. Socially, the polio vaccine convenienced families who were either directly afflicted

Poliomyelitis (polio) is a disease that attacks the nervous tissue in the spinal cord and the brain stem resulting in paralysis (Document One). Polio is caused by the poliovirus, but it is unknown how this virus is acquired. The virus enters the digestive tract and stays in the intestines for up to eight weeks, and then attacks the lymphatic system, the blood stream and eventually travels to the brain and spine (Document Four). Once it is infected in one’s body, the disease is highly contagious and can be spread through contact of saliva, food, germs, or feces (Document Two). “The poliovirus causes most of its infections in the summer and fall. At one time, summer epidemics of polio were common and greatly feared” (Document Four). This may

Misinformation about polio vaccine and political unrest has been cited as the main challenges holding back the global goal of achieving a polio-free world, a study has revealed.

David Oshinsky's 2005 Polio: An American Story, is a history of the fight to eradicate polio in the 20th century. Polio became one of the most, if not THE most, feared diseases of the century due to the influence and example of President Franklin Roosevelt, who was stricken with the disease as an adult in 1921. Owner of a Warm Springs, GA resort dedicated to polio rehabilitation(where he died in 1945), Roosevelt needed to raise funds to keep the resort operational. In 1934, he allowed planners to throw a nationwide series of birthday parties (over 6,000) for him to raise money for the care of polio survivors and for the upkeep of Warm Springs. The success of these parties and recognition that the key to raising money during the Great Depression

“The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on the planet is the virus” Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg once said. Throughout history, this statement has proved to be true. In fourteenth century Europe, the Bubonic Plague killed off almost half of the European population. During the first interactions between Columbus and the natives, Smallpox eradicated entire Native tribes. And in the time of the Industrial Revolution, cholera outbreaks have left millions dead. Since their outbreaks, many of these deadly viruses have been met with cures, saving millions of lives to come. However, for almost 3,500 years, one incurable virus had been attacking humanity: the poliovirus.1P

The discovery of the polio vaccine was an important medical and scientific breakthrough because it saved many lives since the 1950s. In the summer of 1916 the great polio epidemic struck the United states. By the 1950s hundreds of thousands of people had been struck by the poliomyelitis. The highest number of cases occurred in 1953 with over 50,000 people infected with the virus.

Polio is an infectious disease. This condition is caused by a virus, most often the poliovirus. This condition spreads easily from person-to-person (contagious). The virus can spread by:

The title of the technique, the “Three Parent” technique, is misleading because the significant DNA is from two people. Despite potentially avoiding a fatal disease for babies in the future, the techniques only point of contingency for me would have been that the baby would not have the same DNA that it would have had otherwise, thus making it a different person that what it was destined to be. However, the article explains that only the mitochondrial DNA is changed. The mitochondrial DNA works different from ordinary DNA in that it provides power. With that said, replacing only the mitochondrial DNA would have no effect on the baby’s potential personality, thus disproving my only point of contingency with the

Henrietta Lacks is a women who died 62 years ago from an aggressive form of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951 but her cells are still alive which are the human cell lines scientists most commonly used. George Gey is a researcher who researched cancer cell for ten more years and found the cells from Henrietta Lacks’s uterus can keep alive. He was the head of tissue culture at Johns Hopkin when Henrietta was being treated for cervical cancer and he had been actively trying to grow an immortal cell line. They were the first human cells which grown in a lab. George Gey named this sample Hela from the initial letters of Henrietta Lacks’ name. Though Gey had the mind of a scientist and the hands of skilled craftsman, he often got caught up in his experiments without much thought of the consequences. He relied on his wife named Margaret Grey, who was trained as a surgical nurse, to take care of the day-to-day details of running a proper lab. More, Mary Kubicek was the lab assistant which attended an autopsy at

“A 1916 Polio epidemic in the United States killed 6,000 people and paralyzed 27,000 more” (“Polio Vaccine”). This lead to the creation of the polio vaccine that has helped to prevent polio for a very long time. The IPV and OPV vaccines played a huge role in all of this. Jonas Salk, who created the IPV vaccine and Albert Sabin, who created the OPV vaccine saved millions of people all around the world from polio (Petersen, Jennifer B). The IPV and OPV polio vaccine helped eliminate polio from the United States and helped prevent polio in other parts of the world (“Polio Vaccine”).

The virus that I had for this project was the virus Polio. The scientific name for this virus is poliomyelitis. poliomyelitis was discovered in 1908 by Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper. They discovered the infectious disease was infact polio. They even went as far as taking the spinal cord fluid from a person, who in fact had the disease, and they injected it into a monkey and that monkey was infected with the Polio Virus. They were further able to find that the muscle paralysis was linked to the polio virus. Even though they knew the virus was polio, they could not physically see the disease until the 1950’s due to the invention of the electron microscope. Polio is a Rna based Virus that infects the muscle system on your body that can have

The polio vaccine is a vaccine administered to the human body in order to give immunity to polio. There are two types of the polio vaccine; one using dead poliovirus (IPV) and the other using weakened poliovirus taken by mouth (OPV). The first functioning polio vaccine ever was discovered and developed by Jonas Salk in 1955.

There are three ways that a mother can be tested during pregnancy to see if their child will have Down syndrome. One is amniocentesis, which is the removal and analysis of a small sample of fetal cells from the amniotic fluid. Amniocentesis can not be done until the 14-18th week of pregnancy and with this process there is a lower risk of miscarriage than with the other two processes. Another process is chorionic villus sampling (CVS), which is the extraction of a tiny amount of fetal tissue at 9 to 11 weeks of pregnancy. The tissue is then tested for the presence of extra material from chromosome 21. Chorionic villus sampling has a 1-2% chance of the mother having a miscarriage. The last process is percutaneous umbilical blood sampling (PUBS), which is the most accurate method used to confirm the results of CVS or amniocentesis. During PUBS the tissue is tested for the presence of extra material from chromosome 21. PUBS cannot be done until the 18-22nd week and it carries a high risk of the mother having a miscarriage.

The similarity between the poliovirus and already solved plant virus’s led to a better understanding of how the poliovirus can regenerate within a host. Although the virus was similar to other plant viruses. The poliovirus was covered with more elaborate loops that are the site of monoclonal antibody escape mutations (Hogle, Chow and 229: 1358-1365Filman, Science). Individual proteins of the virus particle are produced by proteolytic cleavages from a larger precursor, yet the amino and carboxy-termini produced by proteolysis are very distinct. By noting this, Hogle and his team were able to conclude that proteolysis was not just making a lot of proteins from one gene, it is also controlling the timing of assembly (Hogle, Chow and Filman, Science 229: 1358-1365).