The Salk Vaccine Testing
In April 1954, the testing became the largest public health experiment in U.S. history.
Personal Interview
"My mom would be afraid every time we had a temperature that we might have polio and it was on everyone's mind. It was either in 5th or 6th grade, and our elementary school would have March for Dimes walks. Our school was on the ground floor and we would walk up three flights of stairs to go to other classes. We would have to walk past this giant iron lung where they would keep kids who had polio until they could ship them to a quarantined area. It was a giant metal box with just one small window in the front of it and we all knew that it was a place we never wanted to have to go. It was very terrifying as a young child to hear about polio. I also went to a free vaccine day, but I don't remember the year or if we received a shot."
~ Anonymous
~ Anonymous
The Oral Polio Vaccine
In 1962, Dr. Albert Sabin created an oral polio vaccine (OPV). It quickly replaced Salk's injected polio vaccine (IPV) because it was cheaper to produce and easier to administer.
The major difference between the OPV and the IPV is that the oral vaccine uses live virus, while the injectable contains killed virus. Therefore, there is a slight risk OPV patients can contract paralytic poliomyelitis. Today, the World Health Organization urges polio-free nations to use IPV, so polio has no chance of resurfacing.
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The Vaccine Makers Project - Merits of OPV and IPV
"The advantage of the oral vaccine, the main advantage, is
that it gives a stronger immunity in the intestine. And therefore particularly
in poor countries, it reduces the spread of wild, or natural, polio viruses.
And of course there is the ease of administration, that is giving it by drops,
rather than by injection. In this country we have switched from IPV to OPV back
to IPV because the safety of IPV is better than the safety of OPV. In
developing countries where there is still wild polio, OPV is the vaccine of
choice. So there is really no conflict between the two, it is a question of what is
the best tool at a particular time considering the circumstances in the
country. In the United States, where sewage disposal is good, where hygiene is
relatively good, you don’t need an oral vaccine to protect against polio.
Conversely, in places where sewage runs in the streets etcetera, you are better off
with an oral vaccine."
~ Stanley A. Plotkin M.D. |
"The only way to eradicate poliovirus from the world the way that the smallpox virus has been eradicated will be to stop using live poliovirus vaccine. That is because the live polio vaccine constantly reintroduces living viruses into the environment."
~ Darrell Salk, M.D. (Jonas Salk's son)
~ Darrell Salk, M.D. (Jonas Salk's son)