catsmate
No longer the 1
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
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Actually he died on the third but I only heard today. Probably most people here, outside the medical types and possibly those who've been pregnant, have never heard of him but his work saved, quite literally, milllions of lives.
Back in the '60s Pollack, along with Vincent Freda and John Gorman, worked to develop a teatment for erythroblastosis fetalis, commonly called Rh disease, a blood disorder in pregnant women caused by differences in Rh status between the maternal and fetal blood types.
It occurs when a pregnant woman is Rh negative and her fetus is Rh positive. In the mixing of blood between pregnancy the mother’s Rh-negative blood cells produce antibodies that attack the blood cells of the fetus. The effects vary on the strength of the mother’s immune response, but range from mild anemia to death.
The three men produced a vaccine (made from a passive Rh-negative antibody) that patrols the mother’s body, dispatches invading Rh-positive cells but causes no harm to the fetus. This not only solves the mother’s temporary immunity problem but also (and more importantly) because the vaccine wears out, it prevents her immune system from mounting a full-fledged response of its own, which would endanger the fetus she was carrying as well as any future ones.
The vaccine went onto the market in 1969 after clinical trials showed it to be safe and 99% effective. In 1971 the WHO recommended it be a standard part of maternity care.
It reduced Rh disease cases from >200,000pa globally to "very rare" and saved millions of babies lives (estimated at 50,000 in the USA alone by 1973)
Obit.
Back in the '60s Pollack, along with Vincent Freda and John Gorman, worked to develop a teatment for erythroblastosis fetalis, commonly called Rh disease, a blood disorder in pregnant women caused by differences in Rh status between the maternal and fetal blood types.
It occurs when a pregnant woman is Rh negative and her fetus is Rh positive. In the mixing of blood between pregnancy the mother’s Rh-negative blood cells produce antibodies that attack the blood cells of the fetus. The effects vary on the strength of the mother’s immune response, but range from mild anemia to death.
The three men produced a vaccine (made from a passive Rh-negative antibody) that patrols the mother’s body, dispatches invading Rh-positive cells but causes no harm to the fetus. This not only solves the mother’s temporary immunity problem but also (and more importantly) because the vaccine wears out, it prevents her immune system from mounting a full-fledged response of its own, which would endanger the fetus she was carrying as well as any future ones.
The vaccine went onto the market in 1969 after clinical trials showed it to be safe and 99% effective. In 1971 the WHO recommended it be a standard part of maternity care.
It reduced Rh disease cases from >200,000pa globally to "very rare" and saved millions of babies lives (estimated at 50,000 in the USA alone by 1973)
Obit.
