1954

John Enders, Thomas Welles, and Fred Robbins receive Nobel Prize in Medicine for work, begun in 1948, showing that polio virus could be successfully grown in cells not obtained from nervous tissue (of monkeys) – in cells from human fetal arm, foreskins (from circumcisions), human and monkey kidneys. This meant that large quantities of polio virus could be grown in cells in the lab, with animals no longer needed to the virus; that polio virus could be grown outside of nervous tissue (relieving concern about [very rare] paralysis and death arising from nervous tissue vaccines; and that live polio virus could be detected quickly by looking at infected cells through a microscope (not be seeing if it paralyzed live animals (Offit, loc 319-340).