Would a Vaccine Against Polio Be Possible Today?

 

Would a Vaccine Against Polio Be Possible Today?

1950s Jonas Salk & Albert Sabine vs Antivaxxers & Rightwing Politicians Today

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was crippled by polio but survived. Although polio is a disease associated mostly with children, FDR was 39 at the time. Polio was a plague of the first half of the 20th century. By the post-WWII era, a terrifying destroyer of mostly children’s lives – the paralytic infection of the polio virus – was reaching staggering numbers. For so many children afflicted by the disease, their paralysis forced many to endure time in a device that forced young muscles to support breathing – the iron lung pictured above – with many of those who survived then forced into a lifetime in leg braces or wheelchairs.

“By the early 1950s, 25,000 to 50,000 people were becoming infected each year, and 3,000 died from polio in 1952. Parents and children lived in fear that they would be next. The public had been clamoring for some kind of relief as the media reported word of possible vaccines in development. Government as well as corporate and private money flowed into research institutes, led by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (which later became the March of Dimes, for its annual fund-raising campaigns).

“At the same time, the two New Yorkers, Salk and Sabin, now living in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, respectively, raced against the clock, and each other, to cure the dreaded disease.” The Smithsonian Magazine (Gilbert King, April 3, 2012). Two different approaches explored in the early and mid-1950s, cut corners and engaged in widespread testing that would probably not be permitted today, but then it was a “pedal to the metal” race for a solution. Like COVID?

At a minimum, anti-vaxxers would probably have hurled their bodies against both the testing and the ultimate deployment of an anti-polio vaccine. We would have rightwing political rantings – a la Florida Governor Ron DeSantis virulent attack on the use of anti-COVID vaccines (even though he was inoculated) – and court challenges against a polio vaccine by antivax extremists. Polio has been virtually eliminated as of today… and perhaps that would never had happen if we were facing the same crisis today.

Salk’s methodology, developed at the University of Pittsburgh, focused on an injection of dead polio virus into the bloodstream. Working at the University of Cincinnati, Sabine’s orally administered “live virus” vaccine was predicated on polio’s sequential infection of the victim’s intestinal tract as a precursor to a subsequent attack on the central nervous system. “Jonas Salk (1914–1995) became a national hero when he allayed the fear of the dreaded disease with his polio vaccine, approved in 1955. Although it was the first polio vaccine, it was not to be the last; Albert Bruce Sabin (1906–1993) introduced an oral vaccine in the United States in the 1960s that replaced Salk’s. Although the disease was finally brought under control because of these vaccines, the science behind them fired debate that continues to this day.” Science History Institute.

“Over the years, polio was found to be a highly contagious disease that spread, not in movie theaters or swimming pools, but from contact with water or food contaminated from the stool of an infected person, and yet polio panic was a source of anxiety among Americans surpassed only by fear of atomic attack. Although Jonas Salk is credited with ending the scourge of polio because his killed-virus vaccine was first to market, Albert Sabin’s sweet-tasting and inexpensive oral vaccine continues to prevent the spread of poliomyelitis in nearly every corner of the world.” Smithsonian. Although hardly as widespread as COVID, people in the 1950s were terrified of the rising numbers of polio cases. However, to get to this point, testing of the Salk prototype vaccine was necessary.

Here's where the controversy kicks in. Salk was very sure that his vaccine would work. He and his fellow workers actually used themselves and their own children as test subjects, but that was way too limited of a test. OK, not likely to be allowed today. The long serial testing required by the FDA today would probably never have permitted what happened next. Several public schools in Pittsburgh offered their students test subjects, all in the panic to stop rapidly spreading polio.

First, about 7,500 children (labeled “Polio Pioneers”) with parental consent (which was almost all supportive of the test) –– became the backbone to validate whether the Salk vaccine would prove effective. Such a test would probably not be allowed today, particularly because children were involved, even as mRNA COVID vaccines were sped through the testing process in 2019/20. Second, Salk faced the ethical quandary that for the test to have validity, half the test subjects would, of necessity, have to be given a placebo to validate the comparison.

Echoes of protests were heard all over the United States. But then, the whole world changed: “On April 12, 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., who monitored the Salk trials, called a press conference at the University of Michigan. The conference was broadcast to to 54,000 physicians who gathered in movie theaters; millions of Americans tuned in by radio. After Francis declared Salk’s vaccine to be ‘safe and effective,’ church bells rang out and tearful families embraced. The polio panic would soon be over, as pharmaceutical companies rushed to create hundreds of millions of doses of the new vaccine.

“Sabin’s Europeans trials were also deemed highly successful, and in 1957, his oral vaccine was tested in the United States. In 1963, it became the standard vaccine, and the one used in the effort to eradicate polio around the world. There has always been, with Sabin’s vaccine, a slight chance that the polio virus could mutate back into a dangerous virus—a risk the United States deemed unacceptable. A federal advisory panel recommended Salk’s killed-virus vaccine for use in Americans.” Smithsonian. Given the tenor of American politics today, I suspect that if this happened today, polio would probably still be with us.

I’m Peter Dekom, and wouldn’t it be nice to live in a country where politicians, judges and extremists do not control medical research, treatment and prevention… the way it used to be?