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It is hard to imagine, today, just how terrifying an illness polio was. It struck quickly and with devastating results, including death and paralysis. By the 1950s, there was an average of 40,000 cases a year. In 1952, that number peaked at 57,879 cases.
Jonas Salk, who had first worked in epidemiology battling the flu virus, turned his attention to polio in the late 1940s. Working out of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Salk worked eight years before developing the first polio vaccine. The result was an immediate and dramatic reduction in the number of polio cases in America.
Though he could have made a fortune from his discovery, Salk refused to patent the vaccine, so that it could be utilized worldwide at minimal cost.
Salk was not alone in the pursuit of a polio vaccine. Researchers across the country had made key discoveries along the way. It was Salk, though, who beat the others to the punch, using killed polio virus and delivering it via injection. Several years after the Salk Vaccine, Albert B. Sabin developed a "live" vaccine that could be taken orally. Between the two vaccines, polio has been virtually eliminated in Western nations and greatly reduced worldwide.
While Salk will forever be remembered for his polio vaccine, he spent his entire life in an effort to eradicate disease, spending the final years of his life attempting to develop an AIDS vaccine.
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