APRIL 12 = Salk's Polio Vaccine Works

"POLIO VACCINE EVALUATION RESULTS -- FOR RELEASE AT 10:20 E.S.T., 4/12/55
ANN ARBOR: The vaccine works. It is safe, effective, and potent."
(Above, Dr. Francis and Dr. Salk review his report)

"Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., UM Director of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine Evaluation Center, told an anxious world of parents that the Salk vaccine has been proved to be up to 80-90 percent effective in preventing paralytic polio.
At a meeting of over 500 scientists and physicians and before the penetrating eyes of cameras and powerful spotlights, Dr. Francis spoke on the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine. 
Dr. Francis declared the vaccine had produced 'an extremely successful effect' among bulbar-patients in the areas where vaccine and an inert substance had been tried interchangeably."

This was the news that greeted the world on today's date, April 12 in 1955.  In effect Polio, the scourge of generations of children since the turn of the century, had been beaten.  And Dr. Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh was the man of the hour. It had been a long haul to develop this vaccine.  And that haul of professional bickering, and jealousy was not over yet.  But polio was at last on the run, and would never come back.

Polio/ Infantile Paralysis - An Elusive Plague

"He sat on the side of the bed and pulled his bibbed overall legs over his. And was up like a flash.   And down like a flash. He crumpled onto the floor like a limp dishrag. 'What's wrong, Kid?' Aunt Naomi wanted to know. 'Nothing.' he responded as he pushed off the floor to crumple again. 'I can't wwwwalk.' he stammered.  'I'll help.' she said as she rose quickly from her chair.  She pulled the kid into a standing position then relaxed her hold for a moment to see if he could stand now.  He would have fallen if she hadn't caught him.  'Sam get in here. Something's wrong with the Kid.' By the time Sam got there, the Kid could hardly sit.  His muscles were deserting him.  All at once."

This was the moment in November of 1950 when Polio invaded the life of Frank Lee (above) a small boy living in rural Tennessee.  This moment would change the life of "the Kid" as he was called just as it would change the life of so many others.  It was recorded in his delightful book "Nekkid", but more about Frank and his memoir later.  Polio myelitis could strike any person in any walk of life regardless of their age or their social station.

Since the turn of the century polio myelitis, also called infantile paralysis,  had in regular seasons hit mostly young people in America.  Occurring usually during the summer months it appeared to be highly contagious and seemed to strike those who were not only young, but active. The symptoms could range from a mild headache and nausea, to muscle weakness, paralysis or death. Weakened chest muscles would often leave it's victims unable to breathe. At a time when America was becoming ever cleaner and more antiseptic polio seemed to pray on just such cleanliness. Eventually scientists would discover that the polio virus entered the body through the mouth passing from person to person via contaminated water, food or physical contact. And the increased cleanliness actually helped the virus as children in clean environments were unlikely to be exposed to the virus and thus develop life-long immunity

F.D.R., Basil O'Connor, and the March of Dimes

One very well known American who was taken by polio was Franklin D. Roosevelt who was struck in 1921 at the comparatively older age of 39.  F.D.R. was able to rally with his indomitable spirit, and run for Governor of New York and win in 1928. But his legs would be paralyzed and he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life (below). F.D.R. bought a resort with warm healing mineral waters in Georgia wherein he would go regularly to rest and invigorate his withered legs. To keep this resort which he

called "Warm Springs" financially viable he got his banking/ law partner, Basil O'Connor to take over its running. Basil O'Connor was a self-made man, a tough, blunt and very hard-working Irishman, who knew nothing of polio, but was an extremely skilled organizer and financier.  America was in the grip of the Great Depression by the time Roosevelt became President, and donations from the rich were drying up.  So O'Connor revolutionized charitable donations in America by asking every citizen to send one dime to the president in the White House. This "March of Dimes," backed by celebrity endorsements by the likes of Eddie Cantor and Mickey Rooney brought in tons of money from ordinary Americans who now felt that they had a personal stake in the fight against polio, with volunteers organizing fund raising drives all over America.

Killed -vs- Live Virus Vaccine; Salk -vs- Sabin

Far from merely organizing fund drives, O'Connor set up the "National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis" (the "NFIP") to collect all the funds and arrange grants for scientists to study the polio virus and maybe develop a vaccine to stop its spread.  But through many years of research a vaccine remained elusive. The standard approach used against such diseases as yellow fever and small pox was to use a greatly weakened live version of the virus itself to trick the body into producing natural antibodies to fight the virus and thus bring about life-long immunity.  But this was a time consuming process which left years for more young people to be afflicted. O'Connor wanted progress right now! And in 1949, he met a brash and ambitious young scientist who followed a different drummer. This young man, Jonas Salk, 39 believed that an effective safer vaccine could be produced using a form of the actual virus which had been killed and introduced directly into the blood stream. This was an idea which really appealed to O'Connor

who formed a fast friendship with Salk, and backed his study with NFIP funds.

(Above: L to R, Sabin, Salk, O'Connor)
But most of the established scientific community took an extremely dim view of this "killed virus" idea. The "live virus" vaccine, the type being sought by scientists such as Albert Sabin of Cincinnati's Children's Hospital was, in their view,  the only vaccine which could bring a lasting immunity to the polio virus. Sabin was a brilliant, and imaginative scientist from the prestigious Rockefeller Institute in New York, and really believed that he was right, that Salk was a mere "kitchen chemist" whose vaccine could never give lifetime immunity to Polio, and warned that Salk's vaccine would leave people vulnerable to the dreaded polio virus.  But to the extent that Salk was ambitious, and (perhaps) a bit of a glory seeker, Sabin was arrogant, and unyielding to anyone who disagreed with him.  And O'Connor refused to heed Sabin's warnings, To his mind, Salk alone understood that there were kids who needed a vaccine NOW, not five or ten years from now after Sabin had completed his work. Salk "...is aware of the world and concerned about it. He sees beyond his microscope.  He takes an overview." in O'Connor's words.

The Successful Field Trial of 1954

There was continued disagreement between these two men over the next several years, much of it very much in public. But, Salk forged ahead with his research and developed a vaccine which was ready for a trial on human patients, as most of the test work had heretofore been done on Chimpanzees. The Field Trials took place in April of 1954. In the words of Melvin Glasser one of the coordinators "This was virgin territory, the biggest medical gamble in history."  The NFIP was privately running the whole show, in this day before government got into the health care business.  But after a full year spent reviewing the results, Dr. Thomas Francis made the announcement to the deliriously happy press corps at Ann Arbor Michigan, on today's date, exactly ten years after the death of F.D.R. who had put O'Connor in charge of the whole Polio program.  The Salk vaccine had proven effective in up to 90% of the subjects who had been tested.  Salk was toasted all over as the man who had beaten Polio. But his scientific colleagues were considerably less effusive in their attitudes to Dr. Salk whom they viewed as having sold out scientific principle for fame.  There was indeed a brief suspension of the vaccinations when some of the vaccine produced by the Cutter Company caused an adverse reaction in some of the patients.  Hundreds of patients became sick.  Many became permanently paralyzed.  A few even died. Salk was haunted by the possibility that his vaccine may have caused this. But he never gave up his belief that his vaccine was both safe and effective.  And investigation proved this to be a result of the company, Cutter Laboratory not following safety protocols accurately.  This in turn resulted in much more thorough government oversight of the vaccine production process.  And after a stoppage of just eight days, the problem was identified and vaccinations resumed.

And Who Remembers Polio?

Salk's vaccine finally punched polio out of the fears of Americans for good.  Albert Sabin's live virus vaccine was licensed in 1962.  Because it was an oral vaccine (given to most children on sugar cubes), it was easier to administer than Salk's vaccine which required injections.  But today, both vaccines are widely in use.  Basil O'Connor died in 1972, at the age of  80  having lived to complete the task which his old friend, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had assigned him.  Albert Sabin died in 1993 at age 87, and Jonas Salk died in 1995 at age 81.  Neither man was ever awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. And Polio? It still has occasional outbreaks in the underdeveloped countries of the world, but it has nearly been eradicated from the earth.  And the great polio epidemics of 1916, the 20's, 30's 40's and the 50's are now but distant memories.




Sources:

http://www.sph.umich.edu/about/polioannouncement.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/polio-transcript/

"Polio - An American Story" by David M. Oshinsky, Oxford Univ. Press, 2005

"Splendid Solution - Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio" by Jeffrey Kluger, G.P, Putnam's Sons, New York 2004

"Breakthrough - the Saga of Jonas Salk" by Richard Carter, Trident Press, New York, 1966

"Nekkid" by Frank M. Lee, Connie Breitbeil and Connie Lee, Co-editors, Cincinnati Book Publishing, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2013

I wish to make  special mention about this book which pretty much turned me on to this subject.  It is the story of a little boy, "the Kid" and his struggle to maintain his boyish outlook on life in spite of being poor and suffering the debilitating effects of the now forgotten scourge of Polio. Throughout this sometimes silly and sometimes touching book, "the Kid" never gives up his little boy's
view of the world.  It is truly a delightful read and I strongly recommend it to all of my  "Today in History" readers.
- B.T. Bolten

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French junior bodybuilder Lorenzo Becker

Lorenzo is only 22yo and he's training very hard to gain mass! 

Congratulations to this young man for all his effort and we wish him to become even bigger :)

Country: France

Birthdate: 1992

Height: 170cm/5'7''

Competition weight: ?

Offseason weight: 115kg/255lb

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DENNIS NEWMAN 01

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APRIL 12 = President Franklin D. Roosevelt Dies

"At one o'clock,the butler came in to set the table for lunch. Roosevelt glanced at his watch and said, "We've got just fifteen minutes more." Then, suddenly, Shoumatoff recalled, "he raised his right hand and passed it over his forehead several times in a strange jerky way." Then his head went forward. Thinking he was looking for something, Suckley went over to him and asked if he had dropped his cigarette. "He looked at me," Suckley recalled, "his forehead furrowed with pain, and (he) tried to smile. He put his left hand up to the back of his head and said 'I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.' And then he collapsed."


Moganthau Notices Roosevelt's Decline

These were the final moments in the life of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as recalled by his cousin Margaret Suckley and reported by Doris Kearns Goodwin in her 1994 book "No Ordinary Time"  United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on this date, April 12, in 1945. Roosevelt, who had been elected in 1932 and been re-elected to an unprecedented third term in 1940, and to a fourth in 1944, had undergone severe stress during his third term. He had long since lost the use of his legs due to the effects of the disease polio. The added strains of leading the country during World War II had taken their toll on his health. And his physical appearance had shown his ill-health. His Treasury Secretary, Henry Morganthau, had noticed the change a few days before when he visited the President who was pouring a drink for his guest:

"I was terribly shocked when I saw him. I found that he had aged terrifically and looked very haggard. His hands shook so that he started to knock over the glasses. I had to hold each glass as he poured out the cocktail...I have never seen him have so much difficulty transferring himself from his wheelchair to a regular chair, and I was in agony watching him."

Truman Learns of Roosevelt's Death

The death of Roosevelt that day at 4:45 p.m. at his residence in Warm Springs, Georgia was revealed to his Vice President, Harry S. Truman a short time later by F.D.R.'s widow, Eleanor. He was summoned to the White House at 5:25 that day. Truman may have suspected something was wrong, but if so, he never revealed it:

"I thought I was going down there to meet the President. I didn't allow myself to think anything else. I thought that maybe he wanted me to do some special piece of liaison work with the Congress..." When he arrived at the White House, he was ushered to Mrs. Roosevelt's sitting room: "Mrs. Roosevelt stepped forward and gently put her arm on Truman's shoulder. 'Harry, the President is dead.' Truman was unable to speak. 'Is there anything I can do for you?' he said at last. 'Is there anything WE can do for YOU,' she said. 'For you are the one in trouble now.'"

When he met with a group of reporters the next day, he expressed his reaction quite clearly:

"Boys, if you ever pray, please pray for me now. I don't know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

READERS!! If you would like to comment on this, or any "Today in History" posting, I would love to hear from you!!  You can either sign up to be a member of this blog and post a comment in the space provided below, or you can simply e-mail me directly at:  krustybassist@gmail.com  I seem to be getting hits on this site all over the world, so please do write and let me know how you like what I'm writing (or not!)!!

Sources:


"No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II"
by  Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994.

"Truman" - David McCullough
Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992.

+ 64.
+ 73.

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CELL PHONE TRACKING BENEFITS

When you have to keep an eye on somebody, for instance your youngsters or maybe your workers, cellular telephone spy programming is a magnificent approach to do so without being ran across!

Previously, when mobile phones worked on a simple sign it was important to utilize an examining gadget to listen into discussions being led on cell telephones. This was an equitably basic methodology with the right gear though an untrustworthy one. Then again, with the most recent developments in innovation cell telephones now utilize advanced stations and this strategy for examining is no more conceivable. Actually, spying on cells is currently additionally testing. That is, unless you have a cell telephone spy application like mspy, Mobistealth available to you!

With a cell phone spy application you basically sign up for a general membership either by method for an one of charge for the year or through regularly scheduled installments. When you have joined you will have the capacity to download and introduce the application on to the telephone you wish to spy on. You will need access to the telephone for a couple of minutes to do along these lines, yet once introduced it is totally imperceptible. All that remaining parts is to situated up the proper characteristics relying upon what kind of PDA movement you need or need to screen.

One of the principle bunches who have truly seen the profit of this kind of programming is folks. It is very nearly like having an additional pair of eyes on your tyke. Not just would you be able to see who they are conversing with, additionally what they are discussing, what sites they visit and with the assistance of GPS you can even see where they go when you are not with them. You will have the capacity to screen approaching and cordial quick messages regardless of the possibility that they are erased from the telephone as a duplicate is spared on your online record with mspy. Calls can additionally be screened on the off chance that you covet. Not just will you see the points of interest including the contact name and number and the call time and span, yet you can additionally listen to the discussion either continuously or at a later date.

Mobile phone spy applications are getting basic for folks who are worried about their youngster's prosperity. Be that as it may, it is not simply folks who are procuring the profits. Numerous bosses additionally screen organization issued mobile phones to track workers effectiveness and to guarantee that the gadgets are not being utilized for individual utilization.

The sum of this might be accomplished without stimulating suspicions with the assistance of cell spying engineering.

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All About My Week: Exhausted!

Whew.

It is Friday evening and my week is done. I am deliriously tired. It has been a nonstop, crazy, busy, but productive and positive week. I have worked nonstop between my job and the gym.

The majority of my week was devoted to setting up, running, and being involved at a leadership workshop for management; and then a communication workshop for employees. It was 3 all-day events that required a lot of preparation. My role is steadily growing at work and I truly could not be more thrilled. However, that combined with my weight loss journey gets exhausting, but I push on. I know it's worth it.

The workshops were Wednesday, Thursday, and today. Monday and Tuesday I spent majority of my days handling the logistics of everything. Part of that was purchasing refreshments for morning and afternoon breaks. Look at this pure torture that was in my car...

I did pretty good at staying away from most it; but I did sneak a brownie bite... or two. Ha. Tuesday afternoon as I was putting all of the pamphlets together and organizing our meeting rooms, I decided to get a little creative. I could tell a few of the department manager's were not looking forward to the workshops so I put an inspirational business related quote with the binders. It may be cheesy, but I like it. Others did as well.

Wednesday was day one of the management workshop. I of course, had to look my best. I also wore my new shirt that I have had for a week and worn probably 4 times now, ha. I can't help it, it has quickly turned into my favorite! The leadership workshop was really fun to me. I thrive in group settings especially when discussing business. I am the youngest manager by a long shot at my company; so I really made a point to ensure I was assertive and participate. People noticed. It was great!

Today was probably the most exhausting of days. All of the overtime from the week was catching up with me and I had a lot to do. After my morning meeting with my President, I took off to a 5-star hotel down the road from my office to negotiate with a sales manager about renting one of their ballrooms for my company's big quarterly meeting next month. We worked everything out and I cannot be more excited to hold our event here. The place is called "The Ballantyne Hotel". It is absolutely beautiful! The President stayed there when he was in Charlotte last year. We have a great room with a gorgeous view. I think everyone will really enjoy it.

This afternoon I picked up my new guitar. I have sang and written music my entire life. I played piano for 5 years also when I younger; but I did not enjoy it. I always wanted to play the guitar, but my parents would not let me. I have no idea why. For a few years I pondered the idea of playing the acoustic guitar but did nothing about it. Then this past Christmas time the thought of learning to play was eating me alive; but I still did not pursue it. However, now I feel it is the time.

The main reason I want to do it is for some emotional fulfillment. I am healing from my break up; it's been 6 months now, but it is still really hard on me at times. I live away from all of my family as well. Plus I live alone. I have a lot of friends, all of whom I absolutely adore, but sometimes I feel like something is still missing. There is still a hole in my heart. Exercising is my favorite hobby to do; but one can only train so much. I am very grateful and have a very full life with my job, weight loss and training, friends and going out, but I need to have something that I truly love - that relaxes me but still gives me hope. Something to ease my mind. Right now that is not a man or a partner. I feel it's music. Music was my first love in life; but it scares me because I do love it so much. As I have been healing from my break up, losing weight again, and adjusting to the abundance of changes in my life, I have written many, many songs. I have a voice to go with the songs, now I just need to the instrument to bring everything together. I have my first lesson this upcoming Thursday and I truly can't wait. I want to be the female version of Aaron Lewis. This video here moves me like no other. The day I post a video of me singing and playing this song will be the day all of my dreams come true, ha!

I am off to pick up dinner then start learning on my guitar a little bit. Have a great weekend everyone.

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