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The Development of a Polio Vaccine |
Paralytic poliomyelitis was recognised over 3000 years ago in ancient Egypt.
It is an infection that damages the nervous system and is caused by a virus.
Polio epidemics were common until the 1950's and about 1% of the people infected suffered
paralysis or even death. Many victims were only able to survive with the aid of large iron
lungs and wards full of these devices, like the ones in the picture below, were a common feature of
hospital life.
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The numbers of victims hobbling on crutches, wearing metal leg callipers, confined to wheel
chairs or spending the rest of their lives lying in massive iron lungs accumulated from year
to year and were a common sight. Before the development of an effective vaccine, polio was perhaps
the most feared disease in the western world.
President Franklin Roosevelt, himself a polio sufferer, declared a War on Polio and an
intensified research effort, using monkeys, rats and mice, resulted in the development of the
Sabin and Salk polio vaccines in the 1950's. Because of the development of these vaccines using
animal experiments polio is now virtually unknown in the USA and Europe and the vaccines are estimated
to have already prevented over two million cases of polio.
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Unfortunately the developing world still suffers from the curse of polio epidemics but the World
Health Organisation (WHO) is aiming to eradicate polio by the year 2000.
Professor Sabin recently said
" My own experience of more than 60 years
in biomedical research amply demonstrate that without the use of animals and human beings, it would
have been impossible to acquire the important knowledge needed to prevent much suffering and premature
death not only amongst humans but also amongst animals."
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