Word: diphtheria
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...value of vaccinations is most obvious to those who remember row upon row of iron lungs occupied by victims of polio epidemics and the quarantine signs posted on the homes of people stricken by diphtheria, whooping cough, smallpox and measles. Of these scourges, smallpox has been wiped out and the others have become rare and largely preventable through the use of vaccines. Says Duke University pediatrics professor Samuel Katz, a leading authority on vaccines: "Immunization is the single intervention that has most dramatically reduced childhood morbidity and mortality...
More concerns were raised last month when a congressional-subcommittee hearing learned that DTP, a combination vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough), is still on the market. As far back as 1994 the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences warned that DTP was responsible for cases of brain inflammation and permanent brain damage. A safer version, called DtaP, is now recommended...
Pneumonia, syphilis, gonorrhea, diphtheria, scarlet fever and many wound and childbirth infections that once killed indiscriminately suddenly became treatable. As deaths caused by bacterial infections plummeted, a grateful world needed a hero. Fleming alone became such an object of public adulation, probably for two reasons. First, Florey shunned the press, while Fleming seemed to revel in the publicity. Second, and perhaps more important, it was easier for the admiring public to comprehend the deductive insight of a single individual than the technical feats of a team of scientists...
...mysterious symptoms and tie them together. That lack allowed an illness like AIDS to arise in rural Africa and achieve a firm foothold before anyone realized what had happened. Basic public-health measures like vaccinations and sanitation are inadequate in many areas, with the result, for example, that diphtheria in Russia and cholera in Latin America have bounced back...
...prestigious Eli Lilly Award in 1941 for isolating and crystallizing the diphtheria toxin and identifying its chemical characteristics...