--Wiping out Polio: How the US Snuffed out a Killer
| Sunday, 21st of October 2012 |
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- WIPING OUT POLIO: HOW THE U.S. SNUFFED OUT A KILLER
by Jason Beaubien, National Public Radio
Best viewed at http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/10/10/162670836/wiping-out-polio-how-the-u-s-snuffed-out-a-killer
October 15, 2012
Sixty years ago, polio was one of the most feared diseases in the U.S.
As the weather warmed up each year, panic over polio intensified. Late summer was dubbed "polio season." Public swimming pools were shut down. Movie theaters urged patrons not to sit too close together to avoid spreading the disease. Insurance companies started selling polio insurance for newborns.
The fear was well grounded. By the 1950s, polio had become one of the most serious communicable diseases among children in the United States.
In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 children were infected with the virus; thousands were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. Hospitals set up special units with iron lung machines to keep polio victims alive. Rich kids as well as poor were left paralyzed.
Then in 1955, the U.S. began widespread vaccinations. By 1979, the virus had been completely eliminated across the country.
Now polio is on the verge of being eliminated from the world. The virus remains endemic in only two parts of the globe: northern Nigeria and the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Throughout this week, we'll be reporting on the fight to eradicate the last few pockets of polio. We kick off with a look back at how the U.S. and the rest of the world wiped out the virus for good.
Enlarge Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania
During the peak of the polio epidemic in the U.S., some hospital wards even had large, room-like iron lungs where multiple children lived.
The first major polio epidemic in the United States hit Vermont in 1894 with 132 cases. A larger outbreak struck New York City in 1916, with more than 27,000 cases and 6,000 deaths. As the number of polio cases grew, the paralytic disease changed the way Americans looked at public health and disability.
Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted polio 12 years before he became president. Roosevelt concealed the extent to which he suffered from polio, but he acknowledged having it. His presidency put polio front and center on the national stage. In 1938, Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and spearheaded the March of Dimes for polio research. In 1946, President Harry Truman declared polio a threat to the United States and called on Americans to do everything possible to combat it.
"The fight against infantile paralysis cannot be a local war," Truman declared in a speech broadcast from the White House. "It must be nationwide. It must be total war in every city, town and village throughout the land. For only with a united front can we ever hope to win any war."
"Polio was a fear of parents throughout this country," says Dr. John L. Sever, recalling his childhood in Chicago. He later helped launch the Rotary International's global drive against polio.
Newsreel: 'Junior' Gets Vaccinated
A 1950s newsreel shows widespread vaccinations under way with the Salk vaccine.
Early attempts to develop a vaccine ran into numerous hurdles. A vaccine tested on 10,000 children by two researchers at New York University provided no immunity and left nine children dead. Other vaccine trials used "volunteers" at mental institutions.
At the University of Pittsburgh, Jonas Salk launched what was then the largest human trial in history, injecting nearly 2 million American kids with a potential vaccine. When it was announced that his vaccine worked, Salk was hailed as a humanitarian hero.
Famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow asked Salk who owned the patent to his vaccine. The scientist replied: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
The battle of science against disease, however, wasn't as smooth and simple as movie house newsreels from the time depicted it. At one point, a botched batch of vaccine paralyzed and even killed some of the recipients.
Salk's main rival in the vaccine race, Albert Sabin at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, couldn't gain political support in the U.S. for what he viewed as his superior vaccine. So at the height of the Cold War, he tested it in the Soviet Union instead.
Both Salk's and Sabin's vaccines are still used today. But Sabin's version, which requires just two drops in a child's mouth, proved much easier to use in mass immunization campaigns.
Sever says this oral vaccine was key to wiping out polio in the developing world: "After all, if you could count to two, you could be an immunizer."
The U.S. recorded its last case of polio in 1979, among isolated Amish communities in several states. Then the effort to eradicate polio globally began in earnest. The Western Hemisphere reported its last case, in Peru, in 1991.
Stamping Out The Last Pockets Of Polio
The world is getting tantalizingly close to eradicating the polio virus. Although 11 countries reported cases of polio in 2011, the virus has turned up in only four countries so far this year.
Source: The Global Polio Eradication Initiative
Credit: Nelson Hsu
In 1988, the World Health Organization set a new goal: eliminate polio. Since then, international institutions have poured billions of dollars into the eradication effort. They're getting very close to their target: So far this year, there have been fewer than 200 polio cases globally.
But the intensive immunization efforts against polio right now can't let up at all, warns Joel Breman at the National Institutes of Health.
"We've seen what can happen when there's any break in the chain," Breman says. "In 2003 and 2004, northern Nigeria stopped vaccinating, even though they had endemic transmission. And boom! Twenty-one other countries that claimed and had proven to have eliminated polio became reinfected all over."
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What wiped out Polio? Hard work, selfless sacrifice, and science. What didn't? Prayer.
When I was a child in Indiana, public swimming pools and movie theaters would often be closed in summer to prevent us from catching the disease. Still, several members of my elementary school got polio, and all of them were paralyzed to one extent or another. Fear of catching it was something we lived with every summer. Then in the early '50s my little brother's class was asked to be part of the test group for the Salk vaccine. When it was successful, it seemed to us as if a dreadful enemy had been vanquished. As it had. Young parents nowadays weren't even born when we all feared polio, but they should never be careless about immunizations for their children.
Salk's sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit.
From the story:
Famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow asked Salk who owned the patent to his vaccine. The scientist replied: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
I'd like to see that same visionary integrity today. Sadly, I'm not holding my breath.
I lost a brother to polio. He contracted the disease in 1955, when I was a baby, and underwent many surgeries, and had a productive life until complications from the disease took him when he was 43. Polio was a life long disease, and I'm glad it will soon be gone,
Jonas Salk is a hero of mine. Action not for reward, but for right.
My best friend's father caught polio when he was 4 years old and spent a lot of his childhood in polio wards similar to those shown in the pictures. He says the furnace kicking out at night will sometimes cause him to wake up out of his sleep because it sounds like an iron lung turning off after a child had died. He still has physical damage from polio, but it obviously left him with mental scars well.
I am lucky that my generation didn't have to ever fear polio. It's easy to ignore the benefits of vaccinations if you haven't had to see the result of such terrible diseases first-hand.
Polio has been the primary focus of Rotary International for years now. Rotarians have traveled the world over, at their own expense, administering hundreds of millions of Polio vaccine to children paid for by Rotary International.
The past few years, with the tremendous financial support of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation doing a "matching" grant passing $300 million the end of polio on this planet is nearing an end. The areas where it is still endemic are the two most dangerous areas on the earth. And yet, RI & it's members are committed to seeing this dreaded disease snuffed out of existence.
There should be an international humanitarian treaty to allow safe passage to these areas in a final push to eradicate Polio. It should Not be a problem, everyone wins when this disease is wiped out forever.
Parents: PLEASE vaccinate your children!
Without the kindness of one person who lacked greed and had (high) morals, we might still be fighting this scary disease in this country. Some information is just to important to the world to charge a big fee for. The poor and the rich both benefit.
I remember when I told my grandmother about how some of her grandchildren were not vaccinating their own children against polio and other diseases. Luckily, her anger got through to a few of them to actually get them their shots.
Possibly my chief distinction to date was to be one of “what was then the largest human trial in history, injecting nearly 2 million American kids with a potential vaccine.” Junction City, Oregon - 1954. The “Booster” delivered somewhat later did hurt, but I was a kid, and like much else, that past and is just a memory. Just recently read on a site that wants history on the “Polio Pioneers” it seems the trials were in NY, NJ, KS, OK, and OR. During a hitch it the army in the late 60’s, I must have eaten over a dozen sugar cubes containing a dose of the Sabin vaccine. Showing your shot record didn’t matter, every outfit required you to be dosed when you showed-up.
Polio was a big deal. My mother, often enough fretted over the memory of being forbidden by her father (and that is the only complaint I recall she ever voiced about him) to go swimming during the depression for fear of contagion. The March of Dimes was perhaps the most prominent public medical fund raising organization in the 50s. Kids went door with a card having little half pockets to hold dimes.
But, in some countries, people think it is a Western plot to make them sick, and
refuse the vaccine. In these areas a reservoir of the virus will be maintained
ready to re-infect the World if we let our guard down. Education is also
required.
An obvious omission in this first story on polio is that of Rotary International. For 25 years, Rotary has made it a mission to work tirelessly toward the eradication of polio world-wide, contributing billions of dollars (from all sources of donors) and countless volunteer hours toward this goal. I hope NPR will include Rotary in it's reports this week. A commitment of this type deserves to be acknowledged. While Rotarians never perform their good works in order to gain recognition, they are a big part of the story. Learn more her: http://www.rotary.org/en/servi...
I vividly remember receiving the polio vaccine from our pediatrician - it *hurt* and was very itchy. She put a small white bandage over the site, on which she'd drawn a smiling cat, to keep me from scratching it. Welp, I must be getting old, sitting here reminiscing about the days of yore ...
(Really enjoyed watching other events on that newsreel, too - over half a century later!)
You don't sound a day over 29, just like my mom.
In my early years we lived in fear of polio. My mother was very careful about where we went and what we did. We never went swimming or to a beach as she was convinced that was the most popular place to contract polio. If anyone we knew contracted it, my mom always traced it back to where that person had been. I clearly remember getting my vaccine at our doctor's office with the rest of my siblings and some of my cousins.
It was a great day! We had lived through an epidemic which I didn't really think of at the time - it was just something terrible you didn't want to get.
I hope at some point in your series you mention the incredible work of Rotary in the nearing eradication of Polio (we are "this close"). It has been the focus of The Rotary Foundation since 1985. Rotary Clubs and Rotarians around the world have facilitated and conducted thousands of National Immunization Days. And, of late, we have had the wonderful support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Rotary has been an effective catalyst in the distribution/logistic issues associated with mass immunizations. And due to our peaceful image and significant presence in the world (we are 33,000 clubs strong in over 200 countries) we have been able to get into extremely isolated areas. If you want to help us in our efforts...join a Rotary Club or go to www.Rotary.org.
One wonders if Dr. Salk could do this today with all of the pseudo-celebrities weighing in on the "risks". Friends and family members contracted this disease and were forever changed. I wonder if we, as a society, have lost sight of just how devastating epidemics can be. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but it doesn't hurt to have the bejesus scared out of you just to remind you to respect the little things we can't see.
I can remember distant memories of a community health center in Brooklyn, NY, as a kid about 4 or 5 years old, getting "vaccinated". That was a time when it was more important for the safety of the whole community that we had such centers. It is so hard for me to imagine how our present healthcare system would react to such a disease. Considering how some on the Right are so opposed to healthcare for all, such a disease now could really be terrifying now...
In 1953 at the age of 8 I suffered from paralytic polio. It nearly killed me but instead left me paralyzed from the right hip down. I am now 68 and still wear a full leg brace to walk. Strangely, I find practically no other polio survivors like me in my daily encounters. Where have they all gone? Despite the physical challenges that come with a scarcely functional right leg, I have persevered and live a normal life socially and professionally. Polio victims are survivors in every sense of the word. We learned early on NEVER to give up, and it has served us well.
I was there (and I had a classmate that was carried out by two designated 'big-guy' faculty at every fire drill)
The solution was:
--universal federal support of the research to find the cure (starting with a Democrat in the White House, thank you)
--universal application of the antidote
--universal federal government involvement and payment for the program for every school kid with NO BUREAUCRATS in the mix
(to pay the insurance companies 'their' percentage)
(to have a nice cushy payroll job trying to exclude the' ineligible')
(no questions about citizenship)
problem solved ! !
One day I heard on the radio about polio and I started to wonder just what causes polio?
I looked it up and found that it was caused by sewage being dumped into our rivers and streams. This is why it happens in the summer and why mostly children contract polio but not exclusively. Sewage before septic tanks and city sewage. People in towns dumped sewage into local streams and rivers and it still happens today. But the cause is sewage, the treatment was a shot to prevent the illness. The shot along with proper sewage control is the common cure.
Many doctors and scientists today believe that President Franklin Roosevelt did not have polio but rather Guillain–Barré syndrome.
Nice article, but no mention of Henrietta Lacks. That's pretty disrespectful, but you gon' learn today. Lol!
"HeLa cells were used by Jonas Salk to test the first polio vaccine in the 1950s"
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
of this disease is difficult emotionally and physically,sometimes impossible. My prayer is that the last pockets of political and financial resistance are breached.
I contracted polio as a young child,age 6 mos.I'm from the "class" of 1951.I went undiagnosed for 10 mos. because I caught it "out" of season,in February. I have come to find out that everyone is exposed to the virus,only the genetically predisposed are affected. The overcoming
I hope all the autism hype does not bring polio back to the U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...
"Polio: An American Story" is a fascinating recount of the fight against Polio.
What happened to all of the children in iron lungs?
Have we bothered to cure ANYTHING since polio? Just wondering. I always think of the old Chris Rock stand up skit "...the money's in the medicine!".
In the novel 'Jurassic Park' it's revealed that InGen decided to clone dinosaurs instead of curing AIDS because of the heavy regulatory environment. If you regulate Biotech and Big Pharma too heavily, they'll invent something that *is* profitable.
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