Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine Polio (Infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis) epidemics were a concern during the summer months for children globally, with records of polio from the Egyptians and Greeks to the 1950s epidemics. In the summer of 1921, this epidemic became notorious when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic contender for the vice presidency, was struck down by polio at the age of 39. Two U.S. virologists, Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh and Albert B. Sabin of the University of Cincinnati emerged as the most prominent among dozens of American researchers on the quest for a
Brian Hanley (microbiologist) Brian Hanley (microbiologist) Brian Hanley (born c. 1957) is an American microbiologist and founder of Butterfly Sciences. He is known for using an experimental gene therapy to try to improve health span, and is the first subject in the study. Hanley was 60 years old as of February 2017 and holds a PhD in Microbiology from University of California, Davis. In 2009 he founded Butterfly Sciences in Davis, California to develop a gene therapy to treat HIV AIDS using a combination of GHRH and an intracellular vaccine. He has numerous articles and blog posts, and academic publications in epidemiology, biotechnology,