The Polio Vaccine Through The Eyes Of Its Creator

Polio an American story is a scholarly readable and informative book which covers the lives of many American eminent scientists who struggled a lot to eradicate polio. This book mainly focuses on the mid twentieth century where the people are very eager to find a vaccine to eradicate polio .This book also covers the entire topics from appearance of polio symptoms to post polio syndrome which shows the valuable thesis done by David M. Oshinsky.

Poliomyelitis was a highly infectious disease that spread through many Americans in the early 20th century. As a matter of fact, over 3,000 Americans died of the disease each year. Families were overwhelmingly desperate for doctors to find a cure. When one suffered from polio, they generally experienced painful symptoms which included not only fatigue and muscle weakness, but even death. Therefore, when the polio vaccine was introduced by scientist Jonas Salk in 1953, it greatly contributed to Americans in numerous positive ways. Environmentally, the vaccine saved countless young American lives affected by the disease thus decreasing American mortality rates. Socially, the polio vaccine convenienced families who were either directly afflicted

He knew that Polio caused paralysis, and invaded the nervous system. As a result, he wanted to end the greatest epidemic in America at that time. As he began researching, the president of the March of Dimes Foundation, Basal O’Connor, wanted to help Salk create the Polio vaccination. His goal was to fund Salk to find a cure against Paralytic Poliomyelitis, or Polio. Jonas devoted the next 8 years of his life working to develop the vaccine. He finally was able to create the vaccine, using formaldehyde, or a chemical compound. Salk used the killed Polio virus to immunize without being infected, or becoming infected after the injection. Soon after the vaccine was created, they began to test it on monkeys; and then they tested it on children who already had Polio at the Watson Institute. After that trial was done, the testing spread to volunteers who wanted the vaccine; this included Jonas, his wife, and his family. By 1954, national testing began on children between the ages of 6-9. On April 12, 1955, they were able to conclude that the vaccine was safe and effective. Salk became known as a miracle worker, although he remained selfless. Jonas wanted no major payment, or recognition for the creation of the vaccine. In fact, he credited that the vaccine creation was accomplished due to the help of John Enders, a Harvard researcher. Enders was the man

First and foremost, I thoroughly enjoyed Guerrini's "Polio and Primates" and found it to be both informative and engaging. I did not realize prior to the reading that the path to the polio vaccine was a rushed and flawed one. I wonder how much the misinformation spread across the scientific and non-scientific communities alike as a result of Flexner's research truly "delayed the understanding of polio's complex clinic and epidemiological features" (p. 119). The reading also left me curious as to how the trajectory of polio research would have changed if President Roosevelt had never contracted it during his presidency, since his prominence ultimately led research on the virus to become a national priority. The subsequent public pressure to develop a vaccine further rushed its development with the promise to

When the Polio outbreak was thriving in 1953, Jonas Salk wasn’t just lying around. He was tiredly working on the improvement of the Polio vaccine (Fact Check). The previous vaccine was unreliable and unaffective. It led some patients to be infected with Polio and die

In February 1952, Jonas Salk at University of Pittsburgh announced that he’d developed the world’s first polio vaccine, but he couldn’t begin offering it to the children until he’d tested it on a large scale to prove it was safe and effective. And doing that would require culturing cells on an enormous, industrial scale, which no one had done before (Rebecca Skloot).

With a substantial amount of preventive healthcare advancements behind them, the American medical community turned its attention to the deadly polio virus plaguing America. From 1937 to 1952, known cases of Americans contracting polio skyrocketed from ten thousand to a staggering figure of roughly fifty-seven thousand cases. Of those cases within that time period, approximately one thousand five hundred deaths as a result of polio were recorded. In the year 1953, The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis provided the scientist Dr. Jonas Salk with the tools necessary to research, and develop a working vaccine to combat the devastating polio disease. After much trial and error, Dr. Salk was finally able to create what he felt was a successful polio vaccination, and proceeded to conduct a field test. After resounding success, manufacturing instructions for the Salk vaccine were sent to a series of scientific laboratories for immediate production and administration to American children. The disaster that occurred next will forever be known through American medical history as the Cutter Incident (named so after one of the labs that administered the polio vaccine). This medical crisis sent shockwaves throughout America and the medical community, and numerous lawsuits were filed against Cutter Laboratories, resulting in fewer and fewer labs willing to accept contract work in developing vaccines.

The discovery of a chemical made by Canada was used to treat and cure Polio through a joint effort between USA and Canada. Canada developed a more effective oral vaccine after The United States drug trial caused severe backlashes. A graph published by Dr. Christopher J. Rutty visually depicts polio incidents till 1962 portrays the rates after each vaccine, like the Salk and Sabin vaccine made by United States and Canada respectively (Rutty). The graph shows a major decrease in Polio incidents after Canada created the Sabin vaccine in order to counteract the severe polio backlash caused by USA’s drug that was accidentally inactivated and caused polio instead of curing it. The graph is a major indicator that Canadian doctors working on the vaccine were extremely diligent and smart when working on the creation of the Sabin vaccine (the Canadian oral vaccine). The graph also signifies the speed at which Canada was able to release an effective cure for the backlash of the Salk vaccine (USA’s version of the polio vaccine) indicating, Canada was a growing nation in the 1970s in medicine. The creation of the Sabin vaccine led to copious numbers of Polio organizations in Canada doing worldwide care after a national vaccine was found. Canada’s role in the treatment of polio had resonating effects worldwide as a result. Canadian female doctor Vera Peters

Dr. Jonas Salk was born October 28th, 1914 in New York City. He went to school at the New York University School of Medicine. Salk earned his medical degree at this university, and then chose to do medical research instead of a practicing physician. In 1948, he started a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to figure out the different kinds of polio. Salk protested for mandatory vaccination. At the start of the 20th century, nurses and physicians made house to house trips to spot all infected people. Dr. Jonas Salk tested many different vaccines on monkeys, in the end, Salk effectively vaccinated 1,000 monkeys with his new vaccine. On April 12, 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr declared Dr. Salk’s vaccine safe and effective.

The discovery of the polio vaccine was an important medical and scientific breakthrough because it saved many lives since the 1950s. In the summer of 1916 the great polio epidemic struck the United states. By the 1950s hundreds of thousands of people had been struck by the poliomyelitis. The highest number of cases occurred in 1953 with over 50,000 people infected with the virus.

Polio or poliomyelitis is a viral infection that normally affects kids below the age of 5years old. This childhood killer disease has been around for my centuries. Polio was first discovered my Jacob Heine in 1840 and later identified by Karl Landsteiner as poliomyelitis caused by polio virus from the enteric family of viruses. The polio virus is acquired through oral-fecal transmission. The Latin name simply means grey matter, and it is meaning inflation. There is a more serious form that can spread to the brain called polio encephalitis. The world over have cerebrated for the almost eradication of polio through improved sanitation, advancement in access to clean drinking water and aggressive vaccination campaign. There are challenges in recent years because the polio virus has re-emerged in places like Syria, Cameroun, Pakistan and Nigeria among others. In a CNN cable television report the cases of polio in Syria in particular is alarming, there are 100s of new polio cases due to failure of the health system because of a raging civil, sectarian war. The case of Pakistan and Nigeria are of religious extremism where they belief the vaccines are causing harm to their children. These are challenges faced with the eradication of this deadly childhood disease to name a few. The problem is not limited to only these countries, even in the United States of America are some Christian extremist who belief this vaccines makes their children sick. The world health organization (WHO),

The eradication of polio is not too far off in the future, since wild polio last reported case was back in 2012 there is hope that the world may see the end of the days of polio all together. The first step in the eradication is to eliminate Sabin derived polio virus due to its prolonged replication period that could potentially reestablish endemic and pandemic transmission. This will be accomplished with a world effort, everywhere needs to be on board to make this plan effective. Inactive polio vaccination would have to be added to the already oral polio vaccination, once this is done the goal is to take the trivalent polio vaccine and replace it with bivalent polio vaccine. Three principles need to be followed when withdrawing all oral polio

“A 1916 Polio epidemic in the United States killed 6,000 people and paralyzed 27,000 more” (“Polio Vaccine”). This lead to the creation of the polio vaccine that has helped to prevent polio for a very long time. The IPV and OPV vaccines played a huge role in all of this. Jonas Salk, who created the IPV vaccine and Albert Sabin, who created the OPV vaccine saved millions of people all around the world from polio (Petersen, Jennifer B). The IPV and OPV polio vaccine helped eliminate polio from the United States and helped prevent polio in other parts of the world (“Polio Vaccine”).

Dr. Jonas Salk has created a vaccine that he inoculated on himself and his family members to see if the vaccine worked or not. The vaccine was then given to over 2 million schoolchildren between ages 6 and 9 for a large-scale field trial in 1954. The vaccine protected some children against disease from all three poliovirus types, including the most common epidemic type, Type 1. The experiment conducted by Salk for studies of his vaccine shows a decrease in paralytic cases of Type 1 varied from 80 to 75 per cent. He didn’t patent his polio vaccine because he wanted everyone to get it. He started the polio vaccines and now with vaccines, polio can be prevented and cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988 and more than 10 million people are

The possibility of the eradication of polio worldwide is an imminent and exciting prospect as the "goal" year quickly approaches. In 1988, the World Health Assembly, which governs the World Health Organization, set the goal of eliminating polio from the world by the year 2010. Many organizations have joined the effort along with the World Health Organization: the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, Rotary International, Global Health Network, the US Agency for International Development, National Immunization Day, and the International Broadcasting Bureau. Together, these "worldwide polio partners" have implemented a strategy to completely rid the world of this disease. It is a difficult