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A lasting public health victory: Polio vaccine at 50 years

The polio vaccine's anniversary is a reminder of both the enormous threat posed by disease and the power of a concerted response in confronting it.

Editorial. May 16, 2005.

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The recent observance of the 50th anniversary of the development of polio vaccine paid appropriate tribute to one of medicine's greatest triumphs.

Only a small number of physicians practicing in the United States have seen a patient with polio. But the memory of the disease -- often called infantile paralysis at the time -- was an ominous specter for the generations of Americans who grew up in the first half of the 20th century.

Children of that era saw their playmates stricken. Some patients died; many more had paralysis of varying degrees of severity. Concerned, sometimes-terrified parents strove to protect their children through various levels of isolation or confinement. Community swimming pools were considered particularly dangerous, as were gatherings of large crowds of people. The disease seemed to peak in the summer but the method of transmission was unknown. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt was perhaps the most famous patient; he contracted polio in 1921 and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life.)

Polio outbreaks were sporadic and unpredictable, reaching a peak in 1952 when nearly 58,000 cases were reported.

Scientific advances in the late 1940s and early 1950s made possible a more intensive and effective search for a vaccine, culminating in the April 12, 1955, announcement by Jonas Salk, MD, that a polio vaccine had been successfully tested and was ready for public use. Five years later, the oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin, MD, became available, and the eradication of polio became a reality. In 1960, there were only 2,525 cases in the United States; today polio is found only in a few areas of Africa.