AUSTIN, Texas — In the early 1950’s, it was hard to avoid seeing the heartbreaking pictures in magazines and newspapers of children stricken with polio, a virus that struck fear in parents everywhere.
Photos from back then showed children lying immobile inside so-called “iron lungs,” which were huge machines that helped them to breathe.
In 1952, during the worst polio outbreak in U.S. history, 57,000 people were infected, 21,000 paralyzed and 3,000 dead, most of them children.
At the height of the outbreak, Dr. Jonas Salk believed he discovered the formula that would offer protection for the most vulnerable. To test the effectiveness, volunteers inoculated nearly two million children, some with the real vaccine and others with a placebo.
The results were made public in 1955: the vaccine was effective. Widespread distribution of the “miracle drug” was launched nationwide, as kids were lined up in schools and clinics to get their polio shots. To assure people that the vaccine was safe, publicity pictures showed singer Elvis Presley getting one of the first shots.
But getting millions of kids immunized took time. There were critical shortages of the vaccine and public frustration. The government saw vaccine production and distribution as the responsibility of private pharmaceutical companies.
And there was a disastrous error that temporarily stopped the program. One of the six companies licensed to make the vaccine accidentally failed to kill the live polio virus before it was distributed. Instead, hundreds were injected with the virus. Many got sick, and some died.
The incident led to a search for a different kind of vaccine. And then in 1961, Dr. Albert Sabin developed an oral vaccine. Across the U.S., people lined up to swallow a simple sugar cube that had been injected with a weakened live polio virus. It worked.
Today, the Salk and Sabin vaccines are credited with leading to the virtual eradication of polio worldwide.