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The world risks forgetting one of humanity’s greatest triumphs as polio nears global eradication − 70 years after Jonas Salk developed the vaccine in a Pittsburgh lab
It was like a horror movie. The invisible polio virus would strike, leaving young children on crutches, in wheelchairs or in a dreaded “iron lung” ventilator. Each summer, the fear was so great that public pools and movie theaters closed. Parents canceled birthday parties, afraid their child might be the next victim. A U.S. president paralyzed by polio called for Americans to send dimes to the White House to support the nonprofit National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his lawyer, Basil O’Connor. Celebrities from Lucille Ball to Elvis were enlisted to promote this “March of Dimes,” and mothers went door to door raising funds to conquer this dreaded disease.
Some of those funds went to 33-year-old scientist Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh, where they worked in a lab between a morgue and a darkroom to develop the world’s first successful polio vaccine.
To prove it worked, the experimental vaccine was tested on Pittsburgh schoolchildren and then 1.8 million children from around the country as part of the largest medical field trial in history. On April 12, 1955, when the Salk polio vaccine was declared “safe and effective,” church bells rang out, kids were let out of school, and headlines around the world celebrated the victory over polio.
When asked whether he was going to patent the vaccine, Salk told journalist Edward R. Murrow it belonged to the people and would be like “patenting the sun.”
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