American virologist Jonas Salk (1914–95) developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine. From 1949 to 1951, Salk and others completed a massive project to type more than 100 strains of wild poliovirus. Salk's team developed improved virus typing methods that were used to establish unequivocally that there are only three immunological types of poliovirus. Despite the conventional wisdom that only an attenuated living virus vaccine would prove effective, Salk and his team utilized the Enders–Weller–Robbins method to grow poliovirus, and then developed a formalin-inactivated trivalent polio vaccine; this was tested in monkeys and then in human pilot trials from 1952 to 1954. The Salk vaccine was field tested in 1954 in a huge clinical trial funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, using funds provided by the ‘March of Dimes.’ This trial established the safety and effectiveness of the Salk vaccine, but subsequent large-scale manufacturing problems caused a series of adverse outcomes that jeopardized the immunization campaign. Later, litigation related to this ultimately resulted in the development of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
Bazeley, Percival; Bennett, Byron; Bodian, David; Carter, Jimmy; Cutter incident; Eisenhower, Dwight D.; Enders, John; Francis, Thomas Jr.; Gottsdanker, Anne; Horstman, Dorothy Millicent; Landsteiner, Karl; Lewis, L. James; Liability without fault; March of Dimes; Morgan, Isabel M.; Murrow, Edward R.; National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis; National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program; O'Connor, D. Basil; Paul, John; Poliomyelitis; Popper, Erwin; Robbins, Frederick Chapman; Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Sabin, Albert; Salk, Jonas; Trask, James Dowling; Weller, Thomas Huckle; Younger, Julius S