Polio is an infectious disease that can be traced all the way back to ancient Egyptian civilization. The disease reached pandemic proportions in the first half of the 20th century across Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, and by 1950 the peak age incidence of paralytic poliomyelitis in the United States had shifted from infants to children aged five to nine years. In 2015 polio has been nearly eradicated across the globe, but there is one place where the disease is being used in the most astonishing way — at Duke University’s cancer research laboratory. Last night on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley aired a report on how researchers have re-engineered the polio virus to attack cancer cells, and as Dr. Henry Friedman, the director of Duke University’s Brain Tumor Centre describes: “This, to me, is the most promising therapy I’ve seen in my career, period.”
SEE ALSO: Watch The Trailer For Ken Burns’ Mindblowing New PBS Special “Cancer: The Emperor Of All Maladies”
