Polio vaccination in the 1950s provides clues as to how the coronavirus vaccine will be deployed.

Having produced a documentary on field trials of the polio vaccine, we believe it is worth considering the lessons learned in that chapter of the medical history as the competition to develop the COVID-19 vaccine progresses.

Sabin and soak

Today, many competing efforts are underway to create coronavirus vaccines, each adopting different methods to produce the universally required antibody production. Similarly, in the 1950s there were different approaches to making polio vaccines.

The general medical legitimacy led by Dr. Albert Sabin believed that only live viral vaccines, including stimulating antibodies with weakened poliovirus, could work. The theory is based on a study by Dr. Edward Jenner, who determined that milk exposed to the pus of cowpox-infected cows in the 1700s did not catch smallpox. Smallpox was a deadly pandemic of the era, and this discovery led to a vaccine that would eradicate the disease.

Meanwhile, University of Pittsburgh-based doctor and scientist Jonas Salk believed that the killed virus, which completely lost its infectious nature, still tricked the body into producing protective antibodies against poliovirus.

The National Infantile Paralysis Foundation, a non-profit organization, funded and oversaw the quest for polio vaccines. Founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s former legal partner, Basil O Connor, he raised funds for the study and treatment of polio. As part of this fundraiser, Americans were asked to send dimes to the White House, what became known as the Dime March.

O’Connor bet on Salk instead of Sabin.

Clinical trial

By 1953, Soak and his team had shown that the vaccine worked. First in the laboratory monkeys, then in the home for children with disabilities in DT Watson, children who developed polio, and then a small group of healthy children in Pittsburgh. One Largest field test in medical history It continued immediately.

It began on April 23, 1954. Approximately 650,000 children received the soak polio vaccine or placebo and the other 1.2 million children did not receive the injection but were monitored as an untreated control group.

Soak’s mentor, Thomas Francis, a virologist at the University of Michigan, independently monitored the study. After months of in-depth data analysis, Francis revealed the results on April 12, 1955 — just ten years after FDR’s death, almost a year after the trial began.

Manufacturing error

When asked who owns a patent for his vaccine, Jonas Salk famously replied that it belongs to people and patenting it is like “patenting the sun.” I did.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed his belief that all children should be vaccinated without showing how they should be vaccinated. Eisenhower called on Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Obetta Calpe Hobby to work with surgeon General Leonard Sher to discuss the details.

The Democratic Party of Parliament has proposed a plan to make polio vaccine free for everyone, which Hobby said.Backdoor to social medicine.. “

Hobby also argued that private companies should pay attention to the production of soak vaccines and allow six of them to produce them. However, she admitted that the government lacked plans to meet the huge demand for vaccination.

A black market has occurred. Price adjustments have raised the dose of vaccine, which was supposed to be $ 2, to $ 20. As a result, wealthy people have gained special access to publicly funded vaccines.

Practical approaches have changed with the emergence of reports that children vaccinated with Soruku are hospitalized for polio symptoms. In the beginning, the chief surgeon, Scheele, responded to skepticism. He suggested that those children may have been infected prior to vaccination.

However, when the six vaccinated children died, the vaccination was discontinued until more information on their safety was collected. Overall, 10 children who were vaccinated early after being infected with polio died, and about 200 experienced some degree of paralysis.

The government quickly decided that cases of a child getting sick or dying could be traced back to one of the six companies, Cutter Labs. It did not follow Soak’s detailed protocol to produce the vaccine and failed to kill the virus. As a result, the children were mistakenly injected with the live virus.

Vaccinations resumed in mid-June, tightening government regulations and straining the public. In July, Hobby resigned for personal reasons.

After that, Eisenhower 1955 Polio Vaccination Assistance ActSpent $ 30 million to pay for the vaccine. This is enough to fund a wider public distribution. Within a year, 30 million American children were vaccinated, reducing the number of polio cases by almost half.

Listen to the lessons learned

By 1962, there were less than 1,000 cases of polio in the United States, and by 1979 the United States was declared a polio-free country.

A few years after the development of the vaccine, Jonas Salk said he was very happy to meet people who didn’t even know what polio was. But at last year’s event Ups and downs of coronavirus vaccine researchThe history of polio’s defeat proves to be worth remembering.

Nine companies developing coronavirus vaccines We have recently joined forces to jointly promise not to rush to the market until clearly defined standards for safety and efficacy are met and unless we go to the market.

However, if the modern Cutter incident reoccurs with the coronavirus vaccine, the public’s already shaken belief in the vaccine will easily break further, hindering efforts to promptly vaccinate COVID-19 for as many people as possible. There is a possibility.

To end this pandemic, you need more than government approval for one or more effective coronavirus vaccines. Coordinating a wide range of vaccination campaigns also requires logistics, economic and political navigation in a fair approach to the distribution of these new vaccines and the willingness of the vaccinated population.

In addition, this final push requires an often uncertain partnership between the government and the private sector. This is a charity, as it is today with significant donations from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other charities.

Carl Carrlander is a senior lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh. Randy P. Yule was a prestigious service professor at the University of Pittsburgh Pharmacy.

this paper Published with permission to talk.