Short Term Impacts
After the Salk vaccine made its entrance to the public, it was so popular that a 1954 Gallup Poll revealed that more Americans knew about the polio vaccine testing than the full name of the current American president, Dwight Eisenhower.
"Since the vaccination program began last month, seventy-seven persons inoculated with the Salk vaccine have developed polio. Of these, five have died. In all, some 5,000,000 have received shots of the vaccine, most of them school children."
~ New York Times May 19, 1955 Within 10 years after both polio vaccines were introduced to the public, polio cases in the U.S. dropped by 99%. "In the immediate pre-vaccine era (i.e., early 1950s), between 13,000 and 20,000 paralytic cases were reported each year. After the development of the inactivated (Salk) injectable vaccine in 1955 and the live (Sabin) oral vaccine in 1961, the number of polio cases dropped dramatically. In 1960, there were 2,525 paralytic cases reported, but by 1965 this number had fallen to 61."
~ Immunization Action Coalition |
After the initial mass test, Dr. Salk wanted
to ensure the vaccine was 100% effective. In the fall of 1955 he began blood tests on school children in Pittsburgh to discover the presence of antibodies for each type of polio strain. Dr. Salk explained, "The object of these studies will help us evaluate the composition and levels of potency that will produce the highest proportion of individuals with antibody after a one, or two, dose course of primary immunization." ~ New York Times October 2, 1955 |