Salk Polio vaccine licensed in USA, at the same time the diagnostic criteria for polio was altered

On April 12, 1955, Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was licensed in the US the same day "researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective".  It was hailed as "an historic victory over a dread disease...ushering in a new medical age".  Between 1948 and 1955 several Polio (known officially as poliomyelitis) epidemics had occurred and people were fearful of the "disease". [1, 4] US physician Jonas Salk tested his experimental killed-virus vaccine on himself and his family in 1953. Then on "April 26, 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used, for the first time, the now-standard double-blind method." [2, 3] Within days of Salk's "inactivated" polio vaccine rolled out, cases began emerging across America of children who had become paralyzed in the limb that were injected with the new technology vaccine which had known live virus issues, and who's mass produced formulations had not been tested in humans - The Cutter Incident.  Later forumulation problems also with Wyeth manufacturing (now Pfizer) but CDC covered this up.  [7] The polio case definition..> READ MORE

Earth Charter: the transition document to sustainable development

The idea of the Earth Charter originated in 1987 from the recommendations in "Our Common Future" document, when the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development called for a new charter to guide the transition to sustainable development. [1] The drafting of the Earth Charter text was done during a six-year worldwide consultation process (1994-2000), overseen by the independent Earth Charter Commission, which was convened by Martin Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev with the purpose of developing a global consensus on values and principles for a sustainable future. It was approved at a meeting at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in March 12-14, 2000, it contains a preamble, 16 main principles, sixty-one supporting principles, and a conclusion entitled “The Way Forward.” [5] The document was justified as a "five year review of the implementation of Agenda 21 demonstrated, so far the world has failed to take the new course towards sustainable development." The Preamble affirms that “we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny,” and the Earth Charter encourages all people to recognize their shared responsibility, each according to his or her situation and capacity, for the well-being of the whole human family, the greater..> READ MORE

Photograph 51, that led to the discovery of DNA double helix

In the 1940's, scientists began to suspect that the molecules responsible for heredity were not proteins, but in fact DNA. [5, 6] King's College London, Molecular Biologist Rosalind Franklin and graduate student Raymond Gosling, around May 6, 1952, took an x-ray diffraction image, photograph 51, of DNA fibre, revealing the “interesting orientation of the molecule deoxyribonucleic acid”.  This image became the “critical piece of evidence leading to the identification of the structure of DNA" as a double helix. [1, 2, 3] Watson and Crick, who began collaborating in 1951, used Franklin's image (passed secretly to them by Wilkins) to develop their 1953 double helix, structural model of DNA from studying Linus Pauling's work [10]. On April 25, 1953 Watson and Crick published  their proposed DNA model in Nature, briefly mentioning Franklin.  [4, 7, 9] In 1955, the enzyme DNA polymerase was isolated.  "In modern molecular biology labs, purified DNA polymerase is used routinely - to copy DNA by PCR (the polymerase chain reaction), for various recombinant DNA techniques, and to run sequencing reactions." [8] In 1962, after Franklin´s death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their findings about DNA’s molecular structure and explaining..> READ MORE