Teachable moments: Salk took risks in testing vaccine that corralled polio
Global effort to end the scourge of infantile paralysis took many risks
It is difficult to remember the fear that a virus, poliomyelitis, struck into the hearts of Americans during the early 1950s. Its impact on children, which led to it being called infantile paralysis, sent helpless chills through every community as springtime approached.
Parents learned the “belly button” test, a simple question they asked of their children who went to bed with a cold and awoke fevered and weak the next morning. They asked, “Can you lift your head and look at your belly button?”
In the summer of 1952, 58,000 children (nearly triple the historical annual average of cases in the U.S.) could not lift their heads. They were infected with polio and admitted to a hospital while the virus ran its course; there is no cure. More than 3,000 died that year; thousands more suffered a range of lasting effects.
Polio was first recognized as a disease in 1840, but epidemics were not known until the late 19th century. By the 20th century, it became one of our most feared health threats, as sanitation systems were inadequate to deal with the rise in town and city crowding.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was stricken by a paralytic illness in 1921, when he was 39; his legs were paralyzed. Though the diagnosis of poliomyelitis was later questioned because of his age, Roosevelt’s illness provided the catalyst for an unprecedented assault on a disease when he established the March of Dimes in 1938 to raise money to treat and fight the disease.
The $233 million the organization raised between 1938 and 1955 resulted in success when Jonas Salk’s vaccine proved effective in boosting children’s immune systems to ward off infection.
Salk, who was born on Oct. 28, 1914, was one of many researchers racing to understand the disease and find a vaccine. It was a race where extraordinary risks were taken.
“He felt that he couldn’t ask other parents to let him give this vaccine to their children if he wasn’t willing to first try it on his own,” said Dr. Darrell Salk, Jonas Salk’s son, in an extremely rare 2004 newspaper interview. While the risks would not be tolerated today, in 1952, Salk and his researchers tested their vaccines on themselves and on Salk’s family.
Salk’s dead virus approach, because it could be mass-produced sooner and more effectively, became the first large-scale vaccination program when it was announced on Apr. 12, 1955. Two other vaccine efforts, Hilary Koprowski’s live virus injection and Albert Sabin’s live virus oral vaccine, were not ready for production, though both later became successful vaccines.
It was a triumph of facts over fear. In 1954, a widespread test that included nearly 2 million children went ahead despite fearful warnings from a range of critics scientific and popular, including a damning radio broadcast from Walter Winchell on the eve of the trial describing the caches of “little white coffins” held in readiness for disaster.
The number of polio cases fell from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,600 in 1957, and in 1961, there were 161 cases in the U.S.
Salk became one of the most celebrated scientists in America and established the Salk Institute in San Diego as a center for biological research.
The global effort to control and eradicate the disease has not ceased; there were 223 cases around the world in 2012 and 301 so far this year.
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