Triumphs against smallpox, polio, AIDS
As Harvard celebrates its 375th anniversary, the Gazette is examining key moments and developments over the University’s broad and compelling history. Over Harvard’s history, researchers and physicians have played key roles in vanquishing disease, from testing and distributing the first American smallpox vaccine in 1800, to the breakthrough in the 1940s that led to a polio vaccine, to the myriad advances of today’s broad-ranging medical research. In just the past few decades, labs on Harvard’s campuses, at its affiliated hospitals, and in research centers have been the birthplace of key findings against disease, from the 1980s characterization of a frightful condition called AIDS, to new ways of fighting cancer by choking off its blood supply, to pioneering stem-cell-based approaches that use a cell’s innermost secrets to attack degenerative ailments. Harvard’s disease fighters today share the mission of those who preceded them, but they wield weapons that would be foreign to doctors of yesteryear....