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BOB DOUGHTY: On February twenty-eighth, two thousand three, the Vietnam-France Hospital in Hanoi asked Carlo Urbani for help. The Italian doctor was an expert on communicable diseases. He was based in Vietnam for the World Health Organization.
The hospital asked Doctor Urbani to help identify an unusual infection. He recognized it as a new threat. He made sure other hospitals increased their infection-control measures.
On March eleventh, Doctor Urbani developed signs of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Four days later, the World Health Organization declared it a worldwide health threat.
Carlo Urbani was the first doctor to warn the world of the disease that became known as SARS. He died of it on March twenty-ninth, two thousand three. He was forty-six years old.
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FAITH LAPIDUS: Our final medical hero is molecular biologist Anita Roberts. She was widely recognized by other researchers for her work with a protein called transforming growth factor-beta. TGF-beta can both heal wounds and make healthy cells cancerous.
In nineteen seventy-six, Anita Roberts joined the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. She worked for many years with another researcher, Michael Sporn.
They found that TGF-beta helps to heal wounds and is important in the body’s defense system against disease. At the same time, though, the two scientists found that the protein can also support the growth of cancer in some cells.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25