Famed Medical Test 'ELISA' Celebrates Its 35th [audio 5min]

Every so often, a new technology completely changes the medical practice. It's impossible to imagine an internist without a stethoscope, or an orthopedist without an X-ray machine. In 1971, two Swedish scientists, Eva Engvall and Peter Perlman, who died in 2005, invented a test that revolutionized medicine. Called the ELISA test, the method uses antibodies to seek out the presence of hormones or viruses. In the past, testing for these was cumbersome and time-consuming. But ELISA tests can be done in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes. The test is widely used today, for detecting malaria in small villages in Africa to home pregnancy testing.