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Careers converge in vaccine for polio

Careers converge in vaccine for polio image
Parent Issue
Day
10
Month
April
Year
2005
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Careers
converge
•1 nvacc1• ne
for polio
Long-standing links
between Francis, Salk
shaped research roles
BY GEOFF LARCOM
News Staff Reparter
The cure for polio came
through the collaboration of
Thomas Francis Jr. and Jonas
Salk, a mentor and protege whose
career paths intersected in several
places, most notably Ann Arbor.
Francis was born in Gas City,
Ind., grew up in western Pennsylvania
and graduated from Allegheny
College in 1921. After
earning his medical degree from
Yale in 1925, he worked at the
Rockefeller Institute and then
New York University as he began
to specialize in influenza research.
Salk was born in New York
City, the son of Russian-Jewish
immigrants. He attended City
College of New York and then
medical school at New York University,
where he began research
on influenza.
At NYU, Salk met Francis,
then department chairman and
a professor of bacteriology and
the first American to have isolated
the flu virus.
In 1941, Francis came to the
University of Michigan to head
up its new School of Public
Health. He built a virus laboratory
and department of epidemiology
that studied infectious
diseases.
The next year, Salk came to
U-M on a research fellowship,
where he again studied under
Francis. Salk learned more about
vaccine development, laying the
groundwork for what would become
his defining discovery.
In 1947, Salk moved to the
University of Pittsburgh Medical
School. He became involved
with the National Foundation
for Infantile Paralysis and devoted
himself to developing a
vaccine against the dreaded
crippler, polio.
Salk's vaccine was a killed polio
virus, which immunized but
did not infect pa_tients, an idea
that stemmed from Francis'
work with the influenza vaccine.
Mentor and protege reunited
again in 1953, when Francis was
asked to design, supervise and
evaluate the field trials of Salk's
vaccine.
Francis undertook a wideranging
study that involved 1.8
million subjects in three different
countries. He insisted on a
double-blind format where neither
those giving the shots nor
the recipients knew whether
they were getting the real vaccine
or a placebo.
The vaccine worked. So began
the eradication of the
dreaded disease known as poliomyelitis.
News of the discovery was
made public in Ann Arbor on
April 12, 1955, with Francis'
memorable and oft-quoted description
of the vaccine as "safe,
effective, and potent."
News staff reporter Geoff Larcom