The Polio Crusade

The Polio Crusade

Alan ColburnDepartment of Science Education

California State University, Long Beach

Living with the Threat of Infantile Paralysis

Words on the Sign

INFANTILEPARALYSIS

POLIOMYELITIS

INFANTILE PARALYSIS IS VERY PREVALENT IN THIS PART OF THE CITY.

ON SOME STREETS MANY CHILDREN ARE ILL. THIS IS ONE OF THE STREETS.

KEEP OFF THIS STREET.

Polio

FDR is Stricken with Polio (1921)

For the first time a “famous” adult acquires the disease.

Warm Springs

The March of Dimes

Jonas Salk

Killed vs. Live Virus Vaccines

Jonas Salk Alfred Sabin

Testing the Salk Vaccine

July 2, 1952: 43 children at the D. T. Watson Home for Crippled Children are injected with the killed virus vaccine. Salk also injects himself and his children.

Testing continues at the Polk State School for the Retarded and Feeble Minded.

In 1953 the March of Dimes announces they will fund the largest experiment the world had ever seen. Hundreds of thousands of school children will be injected with the Salk vaccine or a placebo. Hundreds of thousands more will receive no injections but act as “observed controls.”

You are about to find out what happened . . .