Panewsletter May 2020
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
PA Polio Survivors Network Information and Inspiration for All Polio Survivors and Their Families Serving the Keystone State and Beyond www.papolionetwork.org May 2020 Our Mission: To Be in Service Providing Information to Polio Survivors, Post Polio Support Groups, Survivor's Families and their Caregivers. As the world once again realizes what it is to experience the fear of a new and frightening virus, polio has been in the news all around us. Both the International Center for Polio Education and Post-Polio Health International have been providing interesting historical information. With so much polio history front and center in our news, we found ourselves more and more curious about the “unsung” heroes of the eradication efforts. Dr. David Bodian, PhD, MD and Dr. Isabel Morgan, PhD are less known but were truly instrumental in Dr. Jonas Salk’s ability to create the famous vaccine carrying his name. There will be “unsung” heroes in the COVID19 journey. Only time will tell how long it takes their stories to be told. All over the US, polio survivors and our families watched the re-introduction of The American Experience, PBS documentary: The Polio Crusade. One night wasn’t enough. With thanks to PBS, we’ve brought you the history of that film and easy access to the video. We now have three “casual” video conversations Easily available on our website. The first was an overall information session completed with Brian Tiburzi, the Executive Director of Post-Polio Health International. The second is an extensive interview with Historian and Professor Dr. Daniel Wilson, PhD: Polio, Coronavirus, Flu and Fear Our third interview, is an informative and uplifting half hour with Primary Care Physician Dr. Marny Eulberg, MD: I’m in Pain. Is it ALWAYS a result of our Polio? Dr. Eulberg helps us understand how we can effectively approach our physicians Continued . with Post-Polio resource information and why in many areas it’s difficult to find a rehabilitative physician (physiatrist). Both Dr. Eulberg and Dr. Wilson are polio survivors who bring their own personal journey and experience into their dedication to serve others. You can find these interviews in the Post-Polio Health International section of our website (under Post-Polio Syndrome). www.papolionetwork.org/post-polio-health-international Whether in the US or abroad, May is the month we celebrate Mothers. Survivor Diane Huff learned early on that her mother’s passion to care for children with disabilities of all kinds was a gift she would carry with her all throughout her life. She knows in her heart that We Never Walk Alone. Stay well, and we quote the now famous line: “We’re all in this together” Continued . 2 Dr. David Bodian, PhD, MD Dr. David Bodian, was a medical scientist and teacher whose work helped lay the groundwork for both the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1910, Bodian attended the University of Chicago receiving both his PhD and MD (1937). His earlier contribution was to the method of staining nerve tissue. He joined the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1942. His noted colleagues, who also studied poliomyelitis, were Howard A. Howe and Isabel M. Morgan. (1)(2) Dr. David Bodian, PhD, MD He joined the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins in 1939 to teach and do research and received an additional appointment to the faculty of the School of Public Health three years later. In the 1940's and 1950's, Dr. Bodian and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins did much of the research that established that the polio virus was, in fact, three distinct viruses - Type I, Type II and Type III. The distribution percentages of (82.1%, 10.2%, 7.7% respectively) found in the early samples of the late 40s held true. Bodian demonstrated that the poliovirus was transmitted through the mouth (oral route) and digestive tract to the bloodstream and then to the nerves. This was counter to the long-held idea that the virus entered the nose and went directly to the nerves. (1)(2) Bodian’s Legacy “Dr. Bodian is the unsung hero of polio and PPS. It was he who discovered that there are three types of poliovirus. By performing scores of autopsies on animals and people who had polio, Bodian also uncovered the path that the poliovirus followed – from the intestines, to the lymph nodes and into the blood – that ultimately ended with infection of your neurons. Bodian’s discovery that the poliovirus entered the blood before it entered the neurons made a polio vaccine possible. Autopsies also allowed David Bodian to determine that the poliovirus damaged neurons’ protein factories, as well as just how many neurons on average were damaged and killed during an attack. This work revealed that the main event of poliovirus infection was not myelitis – not an inflammation of spinal cord motor neurons – but an encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. In every case of polio Bodian studied, paralytic and “non-paralytic,” he saw a consistent pattern of damage to brain neurons. Bodian’s findings revealed that In all cases of polio “an encephalitis exists whether symptoms are present or not”. (3) “His lab also introduced the use of the chimpanzee as the animal best suited for experimentation because the species had a greater sensitivity to the poliovirus. Continued . 3 Unsung Heroes (continued) Bodian was involved in research that concluded that the poliovirus multiplied within parts of the brain as well as the spinal cord. His studies published during the 1940s showed that monkeys that appeared not be affected by polio may have had as much nerve damage as those who did but that the distribution of the destroyed motor neurons were too scattered to show clinically-evident functional loss. His histopathologic study of 24 human brains of those who died from acute poliomyelitis showed that all had damage or lesions in the brain, but with great variation in the severity of the involvement. The same centers were involved in almost all cases. The severest lesions were found in the brain stem.”(2) The Vaccine The experiments carried out by Dr. Bodian, Dr. Howard Howe and Dr. Isabel Morgan at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health established that an effective polio vaccine must have antibodies to fight all three viruses. The researchers went on to develop a vaccine that protected monkeys against polio and a vaccine used in an early inoculation project that raised the antibody levels of children. A full professor since 1957, he was director of the department of anatomy from then until 1976 and was professor of neurobiology and professor of anatomy when he reached emeritus status in 1977. David Bodian died in 1992 at the age of 82. (1) Sources: (1) www.nytimes.com/1992/09/22/obituaries/david-bodian-82-leading-force-in-development-of-polio-vaccines (2) www.polioplace.org/people/david-bodian-phd-md (3) The Polio Paradox (Richard L. Bruno, PhD) p. 34 Dr. Isabel Morgan, PhD The daughter of two accomplished biologists (her father won a Nobel Prize in 1933), Dr. Isabel Morgan was an early and important player in the race to find a polio vaccine. “Isabel Morgan is really one of the unsung heroes of the polio fight,” says author David Oshinsky. “She was a brilliant researcher.” (1) Receiving her A.B. from Stanford University in 1932, she pursued her interest in bacteriology and received an M.A. from Cornell University in 1936 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1938, earning a PhD in Dr. Isabel Morgan, PhD bacteriology, Morgan worked at the Rockefeller Institute for six years before moving to a top-notch lab at Johns Hopkins where she joined David Bodian's poliomyelitis laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. (2) Continued . 4 Unsung Heroes (continued . ) There, with March of Dimes funding, her team strove to immunize monkeys against polio. At the time, most other prominent virologists believed a vaccine could only be achieved using a live virus, but Morgan thought otherwise. After five years of work, her team became the first to successfully inoculate monkeys with a killed-virus vaccine. Morgan’s research looked incredibly promising to those hoping for a human vaccine, but in 1949, at the height of her career, Morgan surprised the scientific community by leaving polio research behind forever. Morgan reportedly told friends that she quit the field because she was afraid of the next step: testing the vaccine on human children. Like many American women in the years after World War II, much of her energy went into being a homemaker for her husband and stepson. In Morgan’s case, this may have been a serious blow to the scientific community. “She was probably a year or two ahead of Jonas Salk in the race for a vaccine,” says Oshinsky. “Had she stayed the course, there’s a good chance today we’d be talking about the Morgan vaccine and not the Salk vaccine.” Morgan’s Legacy Dr. Morgan spent the following years as a homemaker and stepmother, also working for 11 years at the Westchester County Department of Laboratory Research. After her stepson died in a plane crash in 1960, Dr. Morgan earned a masters degree in biostatistics and consulted at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York City. She died in 1996. “The important thing to remember about her is that the science of polio was the science of building blocks,” says Oshinsky. “It wasn’t just Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. Other people did so much of the research that these two scientists built upon.” Sources: (1) www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/polio-bio-morgan/ (2) www.polioplace.org/people/isabel-merrick-morgan-phd Leaders in the effort against polio were honored at the opening of the Polio Hall of Fame on January 2, 1958.