NPR

How The World Has Changed! Science During The 40 Years Of 'Morning Edition'

When NPR's morning show debuted in 1979, AIDS was an unknown acronym, computers were specialized tools of scientists and engineers, and climate change was a bipartisan issue.
Cards representing AIDS victims are held aloft during a 1983 interdenominational service in New York's Central Park.

When Morning Edition first went on the air on Nov. 5, 1979, AIDS was an unknown acronym. And the ideas of a cloned mammal or a map of human DNA may as well have been science fiction.

But much has changed in the past four decades. During that time, spectacular advances across the scientific disciplines have had a major impact on the way we live today.

In 1981, Morning Edition aired a story about a strange set of cancers called Kaposi's sarcoma.

"In the last three months,

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