Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine and gets most of the credit for defeating the disease. But he was one of dozens of teams around the US working on the problem in the 1950s. Salk's vaccine contained polio virus that had been inactivated (killed) and was introduced by injection. Not long afterward, Albert Sabin came up with an oral vaccine that used live but weakened polio virus that worked through the intestines, where wild polio would strike first. So how do you get the vaccine to millions of Americans in a hurry? In the 1950s, we had disposable syringes, but they weren't common and we certainly didn't have millions of them. Regular syringes were painful and had to be sterilized after each use. Putting the oral vaccine in a sugar cube and giving them to everyone was a huge undertaking, but it did the job.
My school lined up all the students and took us to the auditorium two or three times a year to be vaccinated for something or other. We always hoped it would be the sugar cube, of course. Three sugar cubes laced with polio vaccine over time would give you lifetime immunity, and that meant something when we all knew older students who limped or had one shorter leg from polio. We didn't know the ones who didn't make it.
Phil Edwards takes us through the process of developing the vaccine, and the massive logistical problems of getting it distributed to enough people to defeat the disease. There is a 110-second skippable ad at 3:55. -via Laughing Squid
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I suspect we are going to see a resurgence of polio. Along with several other diseases we once had under control. Remember, 94% of Native Americans, North, South and Central, were killed by diseases brought in by Europeans. Small pox, typhoid, influenza, and more. Remember the plagues of centuries past and the Spanish Flu that ravaged the world at the end of WWI.
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My mother kept a box of sugar cubes to offer when she served coffee to company. She was really upset to find me getting into them. I don't even know if you can get them anymore.
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I remember the sugar cube. It is one of my earliest memories. I was 4 or 5. The American people supported the 17 year development of the polio vaccine through the March of Dimes, not the government
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We didn't get the cute little paper cups, though. Just big platters of sugar cubes, piled five rows high. It was tempting to take more than one.
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