On April 12, 1955, virologists announced that they’d developed a safe and potent vaccine against polio, the deadly, paralyzing disease that then tormented thousands of individuals in the U.S. Setting off a series of concentrated vaccination campaigns in the country and abroad, the announcement sowed the seeds for a polio-free future.
Today, 68 years after the arrival of the vaccine, the disease teeters on the verge of disappearance. In the U.S., cases of wild, community-circulating polio were wiped out in the 1970s, and since then, they've been banished from almost all corners of the world.
So, in honor of its April announcement, here's what you'll want to know about the history of the polio vaccine.
Though the virus that causes polio has circulated throughout human history, it wasn’t until the 1900s that the poliovirus prompted seasonal spates of infections. The first of these outbreaks to occur in the U.S. took ...
