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Elizabeth Gaspar
Vinson 6B
December 24, 2014 The 1970s
Well be remembered more for what we destroy than we create (Chuck Palahniuk).
Throughout history our country has been through everything, from civil wars to segregation but
thats mostly what we remember our country from, the bad things. We have discovered new
ways of improving our lifes during the harsh things. From the discovery of new advances in
plastic surgery, new public safety services, new advances in science, the discoveries of vaccines
and the useful help of marijuana, the 1970s was a decade for a new life.
Plastic surgery is now a very common way to rejuvenate yourself but we could not have
had this without the discoveries made throughout the 1970s. Lipoplasty or liposuction, a
technique in cosmetic surgery for removing excess fat from the under skin by suction, began to
be used by the plastic surgeons of the 1970s. This method was used to sculpt the area beneath
the chin and the jaw line. A swedish surgeon, Dr. Tord Skoog published his work and stated that
getting rid of the excess skin was not enough and proposed, SMAS, Superficial
Musculoaponeurotic System. He believed that this method was more effective because it tighten
the underlying skin of the face and the neck making it better and longer lasting. People of the
70s particularly the women benefited from this new method because it lasted longer and became
reachable to anyone who wanted to have this done.
Public safety has always been a problem for the United States, specially for the people
that were and are serving our country. During the 70s, a time where our country was still at war
with Vietnam, there were important additions that made the living ratio of the soldiers more
pleasant. A new development that became useful to our serving soldiers was the creation of

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MASH, Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. These new mobile hospitals allowed experienced
surgeons to be closer to the front lines, when soldiers were extremely injured the surgeons were
now able to perform surgeries when the soldiers actually needed it. With the additions to these
new mobile hospitals the chance of a soldier for survival was 97%. The creation of services like
these had more surviving soldiers come home to their families during the harsh times that our
country was going through.
The new advances of science have been able to not only extend our living life but help us
understand the inside of our body better. The discovery of a remedy for asthma was done by
Allen and Hanbury called becotide, inhalers containing the active ingredient of beclometasone
dipropionate. This discovery allowed for asthma patients to be able to control their asthma when
it happened. Another advance was done in 1970, when the cardiac care units were introduced.
Lidocaine, discovered by Swedish chemist Nils Lofgren, was used to manage irregular
heartbeats. Beta blockers were used to lower blood pressure in the first three hours after a heart
attack. Clot busters drugs began to be more widely used and the coronary artery bypass surgery
began more prevalent. In 1972, Godfrey Housefield developed an x-ray computed tomography
called CAT-scanning. Later in 1977, Frederick Sanger and his colleagues published the first
sequence of a whole DNA genome. This new advances in science have been able to help us
understand the inside of our body in ways that we could not have expected and not only that but
we have found ways in which our problems now have solutions.
Vaccines have always been a big part in our lives, even as newborns we get vaccines that
prevent us from containing any infection or disease that can harm us. In 1970 the vaccine for
rubella was discovered by Dr. Kevin McCarthy, this vaccines contained a live but harmless virus
of the rubella but gave safe and long lasting immunity to the person. This vaccine was first

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offered to the girls suffering from this and later to the guys. In 1976 the vaccine for the swine flu
was discovered by Maurice HIlleman and other scientists. They all met with the president Gerald
Ford that they have found a way that the swine flu could be outbroken. In late september of
1976, over eleven million doses were distributed around the country. Later in 1977 the vaccine
for pneumonia was discovered in New York by Robert Austrian and William Tillett. The next
year in 1978, the vaccine for meningitis was discovered by a Rockefeller University scientist
named Emil C. These vaccines had a great impact in every persons life here in our country
because it was something new to them, something miraculous.
In the late 1970s and early of 1980 marijuana was considered being helpful to any kind
of patients, specially cancer patients. In 1980 in the NCI, the National Cancer Institute conducted
a test between marinol, a synthetic version of THC and smoked marijuana for the cancer
patients. They found that the oral version of THC, marinol was the most effective way and safer
than smoked. Marinol was made out of an active ingredient of marijuana, which was what helped
the cancer patients. This new discovery of the use of marijuana was used by the patients in the
hospitals of San Francisco. Bob Randall was the first legal medical marijuana patient in the
United States. Marijuana was a new discovery that helped the pain for many type of patients in
the United States, and the 1970s gave this new discovery a chance to change the country.
Countries tend to remember more about the bad things that have happened rather than the
new
creations that their country has made and helped their citizens. The 1970s was definitely a
decade where a lot of change was made and changed the lives of many people. From plastic
surgery, new public safety services, advances in science, new vaccines to the use of marijuana,
the 1970s was for sure a decade of change. Our country should focus on the good things that our

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country has made rather than focusing on what it has been through and the bad things that has
comed as a result. If we shall learn something about our past history, we should learn about the
good flourished outcomes.