Party Like It's 1955: Freedom from Fear for Parents the Day a Successful Polio Vaccine was Announced April 12, 11955

 It is April 12, 1955--a Tuesday, exactly ten years to the day after the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who had served for over twelve years in the White House, but who also had spent most of his life crippled by polio.

On this day, in 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr.--a fifty-four year old virologist and epidemiologist from the University of Michigan who had been the first person in the United States to isolate a strain of the influenza virus back in 1940 which led to the development of the yearly flu vaccine--stands at a podium in a large auditorium before an assembled crowd of upwards of five-hundred reporters and scientists from around the world.

One of Dr. Francis’ former students--Jonas Salk who is originally from New York City and the New York University School of Medicine--but who has been working at the University of Pittsburgh on research and development has made a major breakthrough in the development of a vaccine against the dreaded childhood disease of polio.  Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., Salk’s mentor, is about to tell the world all about Salk’s vaccine and in the blink of an eye his announcement will change biomedical history, for the better, forever.  

Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. at microscope

By 1955 poliomyelitis, simply called the polio virus by most, had been a scourge of humanity for thousands of years.  It is highly infectious and spreads easily from human to human.  Many people recover with mild symptoms, but for some, especially those who contract polio during early childhood, the virus can cause permanent paralysis and even death.

Polio was first recognized as a distinct disease in the 18th century and the virus that causes polio had been known since 1909 when it was first isolated by Austrian Immunologist Karl Landsteiner.  The virus spreads orally, most commonly through droplets of saliva, and  throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, polio outbreaks particularly in urban areas throughout the United States and Europe were all too common.  Polio was a parent’s worst nightmare, as children, particularly those of school age, were most apt to be infected with the virus.  Up until 1955 polio outbreaks routinely terrorized cities around the world and caused parents to keep their kids home from school and away from public places whenever polio outbreaks were reported on by the media.

In the decade leading up to the announcement of a successful vaccine against the disease, polio had killed more children in America than any other illness.  The final field tests to approve use of the vaccine developed by Jonas Salk were the most extensive and elaborate in history and involved over 20,000 physicians and hundreds of thousands of volunteers.  In addition to government and academic funding over one hundred million Americans, or one third of our nation’s population, donated either their time or money to the March of Dimes, the leading organization in the 1950’s working on eradicating polio as a childhood disease in the world.

Many cases of polio were mild, but many were not, and hospital wards were all too often filled with children suffering from the disease who in many unfortunate instances would remain paralyzed for the rest of their lives.  But on April 12, 1955 all of that changed in an instant.

That day at exactly 10:20 in the morning, while standing in front of 150 news reporters at the University of Michigan’s Rickham Auditorium in addition to sixteen TV cameras which was a probably a record for the number of TV cameras in one place for 1955, and with over 50,000 physicians watching via live closed circuit broadcast on screens in movie theaters across the United States, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. made the fateful announcement about the breakthrough his protege Jonas Salk had made.

An article from 2005 in The New England Journal of Medicine written by Dr. Howard Markel says about that momentous day in 1955 that, “It is hardly hyperbole to note that the speech by Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. was eagerly awaited by most of the world.  Few diseases were capable of arousing more fear than poliomyelitis.”

Eli Lilly, a major pharmaceutical company which today goes simply by the name of Lilly, had invested a quarter of a million dollars to broadcast Dr. Francis’ announcement on all the major radio stations across the United States live to the American public.  The announcement was broadcast over loudspeakers in department stores, offices, factories government buildings and even schools.   It is believed that one-hundred million Americans heard the voice of Dr. Francis as he read the announcement live on the radio.

Dr. Francis told the world that morning that his protege, forty year old Dr. Jonas Salk of New York City working out of the University of Pittsburgh, had successfully developed a vaccine against the dreaded virus poliomyelitis.  After more than a year of testing and trials Dr. Francis triumphantly announced that Salk’s vaccine against polio was, “Over ninety percent effective in all cases.”  Dr. Francis went on to tell the public that, “The child who was vaccinated was three times less likely to contract polio than the child who was not vaccinated and even those children who did contract polio after being vaccinated had a full recovery rate of ninety-five percent.”

Dr. Jonas Salk’s genius in creating the polio vaccine lay in the fact that administering it to children, even newborns, had almost no risk whatsoever since Salk’s vaccine, unlike other vaccines that used live viruses in weakened states to inoculate recipients against a disease, Salk’s vaccine used a dead polio virus to trick the body into essentially producing the antibodies necessary to fight off the illness.

Upon hearing the news on April 12, 1955 that Dr. Jonas Salk, in conjunction with funding from the March of Dimes, had developed a successful vaccine against the scourge of polio, the entire world went into ecstatic rapture and celebrated with joy the likes of which had not been seen in nearly a decade since the allied victory in the Second World War, especially in the United States where relieved parents partied like it was 1955 and the beginning of a whole new world that was now safe for their children.

The success of Salk’s vaccine against polio was declared a major victory for all of the United States of America and for all Americans..  Jonas Salk and his family (he had tested early versions of the vaccine on his own children!) became world famous immediately after the announcement.  Salk was awarded a special medal by President Eisenhower in the White House rose garden that contained an inscription, “For Jonas Salk a benefactor of all mankind.”

Dr. Jonas Salk TIME's Man of the Year 1955

A week after the announcement of a successful vaccine against polio British born American journalist Alistair Cooke (who would go on to gain even more fame later in the century as the host of PBS Masterpiece Theater for over two decades) published an article, that was picked up by wire services around the world where he correctly stated, “Nothing short of the overthrow of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union could bring such rejoicing to the hearths and homes of America as the historic announcement last Tuesday that the 166 year war against paralytic poliomyelitis is almost certainly at an end.”

When Americans heard that a successful vaccine against polio had finally been developed schools were promptly closed that day and church bells rang out in town squares from coast to coast.  Almost all work ceased for the rest of the afternoon on Tuesday April 12, 1955 as young and old alike all across America took to the streets by the thousands, hugging one another, praying, weeping for joy and drinking toasts to the defeat of polio thanks to Jonas Salk’s vaccine.

In fact, the celebration and people’s understanding of vaccination in general got so out of control, so overjoyous, that President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to issue a statement that tempered some of the joy, and reminded people, the the fight to eradicate polio was still going to be long and arduous despite the seeming success of Salk’s vaccine.

Eisenhower’s statement cautioned that, “No vaccination program can prevent all cases of the disease against which it is directed.  Let us not forget that Dr. Francis reported that the polio vaccine as used in the 1954 field trial was found to be 90 percent effective--not 100 percent effective--in the field trials last year.”

The President’s statement went on, “Although the manufacturers are now moving towards full scale production and distribution of this vaccine…we must be patient while our limited supply of the vaccine is used first to help those who need it most.”

After his statement to the public President Dwight Eisenhower passed the Polio Vaccination Assistance Act of 1955 which ensured that millions of infants across America would be first to receive the vaccine in an effort to eradicate the dreaded crippling illness among America’s children.

And despite the President’s well founded words of caution about the vaccine rollout, within only three years by 1957 over 100,000,000 doses of Salk’s polio vaccine had been administered in the United States and the vaccine was proving to be effective in all patients with known side effects either rare or almost entirely nonexistent.  

As a result of the efforts of Jonas Salk, Thomas Francis, President Eisenhower, the March of Dimes and hundreds of millions of ordinary Americans by the beginning of the 21st century polio has almost been completely eradicated worldwide as a disease.  Only a few hundred cases of polio predominantly in the most densely populated and impoverished urban areas of India, are reported across the world each year.

Thanks to a vaccine the lives of hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions of children, have been saved in the last seventy years and parents have been able to live in a world free from the once ever present fear of polio since that fateful day of April 12, 1955.