Monday After: Remembering the introduction in Stark County of the polio vaccine - Canton Repository

Posted: 17 May 2021 12:00 AM PDT

Gary Brown | Special to The Canton Repository

The cure for a disease that was crippling our children arrived in Stark County 66 years ago.

"April 12 Verdict on Vaccine Is Seen As Death Knell of Widespread Polio," a front-page headline in The Canton Repository reported on April 3, 1955, looking ahead to the upcoming day when a press conference was expected to confirm the effectiveness of the anti-polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas E. Salk of Pittsburgh. "Go-Ahead Signal Is Expected to All-Out Attack."

And, indeed, little more than a week later, an announcement said that results of testing on 400,000 children done in the summer of 1954 by Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. of the University of Michigan verified that the vaccine developed by his former student, Dr. Jonas E. Salk of Pittsburgh, was "80 to 90% effective in preventing paralytic polio."

"Dr. Francis' official report declared the vaccine had produced an 'extremely successful effect' among children with bulbar polio, the most dangerous type," the Repository reported following the press conference.

At the press conference, Dr. Salk "declared he is sure the vaccine is potentially almost 100 percent effective and can bring complete triumph over polio and its lieutenants of terror and tragedy."

"There is no doubt that children now can be vaccinated successfully to end the threat of polio and the anxiety it causes every year," reported Alton L. Blakeslee, Associated Press science reporter," in an article published at the top of the front page in the Repository on April 12, 1955. "The vaccine was found incredibly safe and with only .4 of 1% of children suffering minor reactions. So-called 'major reactions' were almost completely lacking."

The period of protection provided by the vaccine "appears reasonably good," said the Associated Press story, noting that announcements at the press conference estimated the effectiveness of the three-shot vaccine series as being "maintained with but moderate decline after five months."

"Dr. Salk urged that children this year be given only two shots of vaccine in order to step up the effectiveness of the vaccine," AP reported. "He said the shots should be spaced two to four weeks apart with the third one delayed for at least seven months afterward."

Shots begin in Stark County

More than 13,000 first- and second-grade pupils in public, parochial and private schools in Canton, Massillon, and Alliance — whose parents signed consent forms — were the first in Stark County to receive the Salk polio vaccine free of charge in Stark County.

Cost of the vaccine was being paid for by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which had purchased $9 million worth of doses long before the vaccine even proved effective. Leo Berger, Stark County chairman of the foundation locally, said the series of three shots would cost the foundation about $1 per child, paid for by funds raised during the local chapter 's annual March of Dimes campaign.

"That liquid may well be the most powerful friend ever created for children," reported the Repository in a secondary story to the Salk vaccine press conference reporting. "It will guard and protect against a crippler and a killer."

Canton children would begin getting their shots as early as April 20, 1955, and the initial "get-a-shot" campaign would continue through June.

Until then the city schools and Stark County Health Department would store vaccine in refrigerators loaned by the Canton Hardware Co.

Throughout Ohio, similar vaccine efforts were being undertaken, directed by state health officials.

"Dr. Ralph E. Dwork, state director of health, said machinery has been completed for the immediate distribution of the vaccine upon its arrival in Ohio," an Associated Press article reported. "There are 440,540 school children in Ohio eligible to receive the vaccine."

"Dr. Dwork said that the first shipment of vaccine would contain enough material to cover the first two inoculations," AP reported. "A subsequent shipment would supply the vaccine for the third shot."

What was the vaccine?

What exactly was this vaccine, which was being produced by a handful of pharmaceutical companies? And how did it work?

Another article in the Repository explained that the medical marvel was "a red liquid containing billions of dead viruses, of all three types, which can cause paralysis in humans."

"The killed viruses cannot cause sickness, but can stimulate the receiver to make antibodies."

Salk explained at the introduction of the vaccine that the first two shots stimulated the production of the antibodies in the bloodstream of a child, and those antibodies turned the immune system into a "cocked revolver" awaiting signs of virus needing to be killed.

"The booster shot given at least seven months later serves as a trigger to produce remarkably high amounts of antibodies," the article reported. "He said natural exposure to polio, if it occurs after the first two shots, also acts as a trigger to explode the antibody mechanism into action."

Medical experts urged that the vaccine go to the "most vulnerable," young children and pregnant women, with the aim to "hit polio hardest by inoculating those most susceptible."

"Adults have less need for it," the article explained. "By about age 18, most of us have been exposed already to one or more of the three dangerous types of virus and have become immune."

Some parents were hesitant

Still, in the spring and summer of 1955, some parents were hesitating in having their children inoculated.

The cause, at least in part, was called the "Cutter incident."

"In 1955, some batches of polio vaccine given to the public contained live polio virus, even though they had passed required safety testing," recalled a posting about "vaccine safety" at the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Over 250 cases of polio were attributed to vaccines produced by one company: Cutter Laboratories. This case, which came to be known as the Cutter Incident, resulted in many cases of paralysis. The vaccine was recalled as soon as cases of polio were detected.

"The cutter incident was a defining moment in the history of vaccine manufacturing and government oversight of vaccines, and led to the creation of a better system of regulating vaccines. After the government improved this process and increased oversight, polio vaccinations resumed in the fall of 1955."

At that same time, another polio vaccine — developed by Russian-born Dr. Albert Sabin of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine — was on the horizon.

"Around the same time that Salk began his work on a killed-virus vaccine, Sabin began work on an attenuated live-virus vaccine," explained an article published online at the Science History Institute's website sciencehistory.org. "Sabin felt that an oral vaccine would be superior to an injection, as it would be easier to administer. He began to grow and test many virus strains in animals and tissue cultures and eventually found three mutant strains of the virus that appeared to stimulate antibody production without causing paralysis. Sabin then tested these strains on humans: his subjects included himself and his family, research associates, and prisoners from the nearby Chillicothe Penitentiary."

Late in the 1950s, the Science History Institute noted, Sabin contracted with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to produce his live-virus vaccine in its British facilities.

"Sabin's live-virus, oral polio vaccine (administered in drops or on a sugar cube) soon replaced Salk's killed virus, injectable vaccine in many parts of the world. In 1994 the WHO (World Health Organization) declared that naturally occurring poliovirus had been eradicated from the Western Hemisphere owing to repeated mass immunization campaigns with the Sabin vaccine in Central and South America."

Live Versus Killed

The Institute's information went on to say that Sabin "staunchly defended his live-virus vaccine" during his lifetime, "refusing to believe any evidence that it could cause paralytic poliomyelitis.

"Salk, for his part, believed that killed-virus vaccine produced equivalent protection in individuals and in communities without any risk for causing paralysis," the Institute said. "Despite Sabin's belief, the risk for paralysis from the live-virus vaccine does exist, although it is slight.

"In 1999 a federal advisory panel recommended that the United States return to Salk's vaccine because it cannot accidentally cause polio. On the basis of a decade of additional evidence, this recommendation was reconfirmed in 2009."

The "inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV)," or the killed-virus vaccine, remains the only anti-polio vaccine in use in the United States since the turn of the 21st century.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com.

On Twitter: @gbrownREP

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