If there's a researcher who comes to mind when you think of the polio vaccine, it's probably Jonas Salk. It should be Dr. Isabel Morgan.
Morgan's lab was the first to develop a vaccine that successfully immunized monkeys against polio. Her team used a killed virus rather than a live one, a technique eventually used to immunize humans. She left the field abruptly, due in part to her ethical concerns regarding testing the vaccine on children.
As people who live in the future, we have the gift of seeing Dr. Morgan's work through a particularly praiseworthy lens. Her research was done at Johns Hopkins. Research powerhouse that it is, Dr. Morgan's shift away from the institution came but two years before the harvesting of cells from Henrietta Lacks. Her ethical clarity was as ahead of its time as her research.
We've chosen to honor this hero in the fight against polio for a very personal reason - Dee's grandmother lost her brother to an after-effect of the virus when he was just nine years old. His parents' only son, the family name of that branch died with him. His memory is a constant reminder that childhood diseases are worth fighting with everything we have.
The cookie we've made in Dr. Morgan's honor is a play on a Boston Cream Donut (Massachusetts being her birthplace). With a thick chocolate glaze atop a vanilla custard flavored cookie, the cookie gets at the heart of the donut despite not being filled. As a lovely bonus, our Boston Cream Cookie bares a striking resemblance to a berger cookie, an actual fudge topped vanilla cake cookie common to Maryland, the place where Dr. Morgan's best known work happened.
sold by the half-dozen
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