This blog will highlight notable women who have influenced the direction of women’s health in commemoration of Women’s History Month. It is an honour for us to gain from these amazing women’s contributions!
Picotte, Dr. Susan La Flesche
Dr. Picotte was the first American Indian woman to earn a medical degree. She was born in 1865 in Nebraska, USA, as a member of the Omaha tribe. She was motivated to become a doctor after seeing the death of an Indigenous woman who was denied care by a white doctor, as she was a very committed community health advocate. One of the few medical institutions to train women at the time, the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, accepted Dr. Picotte’s application in 1886. After receiving recognition as her class’ valedictorian upon graduation in 1889, Dr. Picotte went back to her hometown to treat Omaha reserve members. Apart from her medical career, Dr. Picotte was a fervent supporter of public health and preventive medicine, with a particular emphasis on lowering alcoholism, enhancing food cleanliness and hygiene, and battling tuberculosis.
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Tu Youyou, Professor
Born in 1930, Professor Tu received his training in pharmaceutical chemistry from Beijing Medical College. Professor Tu was assigned by the Chinese government to find a cure for malaria, which was killing thousands of soldiers during the Vietnam War. Professor Tu, who has experience in both Chinese and Western medicine, travels throughout China to learn from practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A Collection of Single Practical Prescriptions for Anti-Malaria, a journal that compiled her research findings and included 640 prescriptions, was published. Using them as a guide, she examined 2,000 recipes before learning that a substance known as artemisinin, or qinghaosu, which is taken from the sweet wormwood plant, has anti-malarial qualities. She asked that the first human clinical trial be conducted on her since she was the first to isolate this drug. Luckily, the treatment worked and was safe, so after almost ten years of research, she published her findings in 1977. For malaria, artemisinin-based compounds remain the first line of treatment because of Professor Tu’s creative approach to drug discovery. Professor Tu’s revolutionary work, which has saved millions of lives, earned her the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. As the Chief Scientist of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, she is still at the forefront of science.
Wong Yee Ching, also known as Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal
The first person to successfully clone and understand the genetic makeup of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal, who was born in Guangzhou, China in 1946. This important research helped to establish that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was caused by HIV. In the 1970s, high rates of AIDS spread rapidly, disproportionately impacting gay males. This contributed to the negative stigmatization of HIV and the LGBT community. Destigmatizing AIDS was aided by scientific advancements made possible by individuals such as Dr. Wong-Staal. Dr. Wong-Staal completed her postdoctoral study in retrovirus research at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) after earning her Ph.D. in molecular biology from UCLA. She was able to clone HIV and finish mapping its whole genomic sequence thanks to her work at the NCI. These particular discoveries paved the groundwork for the creation of HIV blood tests and, eventually, for her work suppressing HIV in stem cells to treat AIDS. But her study also contributed to the development of COVID-19, cancer, and hepatitis C. Her method of approaching HIV altered the way that virologists currently investigate viruses. She joined the chief scientific officer of Immunosol, a biotechnology company, and carried out more research to discover a gene therapy treatment for AIDS.
Eunice Newton Foote
Eunice Newton Foote, who was born in 1819, was the first scientist to identify the greenhouse effect. Decades after Newton Foote discovered the relationship between heat and carbon dioxide (CO2), the term “greenhouse effect” was coined. When Eunice Netwon Foote exposed many glass cylinders containing various gases and gaseous mixtures to sunlight in 1856, she discovered that the glass cylinder containing wet air and CO2 warmed the most. In a paper, Newton Foote came to the conclusion that this CO2 might be a factor in the planet’s warming. This basis grew to become a pillar of climate research. John Tyndall, an Irish scientist, came to identical conclusions three years later and was dubbed the father of climate science and the discoverer of the greenhouse effect. Newton Foote’s unappreciated discoveries serve as an illustration of how women in science have always been marginalized.