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Jonas Salk Vaccine

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Our world to this day has been impacted so much by many different heros of all different types. One such hero is Jonas Salk, the creator of the vaccines for polio and influenza. Salk became a cultivator of modern medicine by creating a vaccine that saved countless lives without the benefit of modern technology.
Jonas Salk was born in 1914, a time in which childhood disease and illness was great and commonly led to death. He grew up into a wealthy family and was the first of his siblings to graduate college. Salk went to college and intended study law but became interested in medical science. There were no known cures for major illnesses such as influenza and polio. In 1939, Salk became a scientist physician and a short time later began conducting research on cures for major illnesses, which later led to a great amount of success.
In 1942, Salk was first called on to begin researching and conducting experiments on an illness called influenza, also known as the flu. Influenza is a disease that is highly contagious and almost like a common cold but more severe. It usually affects the respiratory system and left untreated can lead to death. This disease was very …show more content…

Salk used a vaccine that was called a non-infectious or, “ a killed virus” vaccine. Jonas’s method was called tissue-culture. Tissue-culture was the process of injecting a child or adult with the virus and attempting to come up with a way to deactivate the virus, without harming or injuring the patient in the process. Although technology has taken over, Salk found a way to cure diseases without using technology. He was able to find a cure in less than 5 years which successfully worked. Salk tested the cure out on his wife, and their 3 sons. The amount of polio cases dramatically dropped from 28,985 in 1955 to 5,894 in 1957. He had a huge impact on our worlds death rates. Soon after his research for Aids, Salk died, but his method of vaccinations

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