Polio (Infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis) epidemics were a concern during the summer months for children globally, with records of polio from the Egyptians and Greeks to the 1950s epidemics. In the summer of 1921, this epidemic became notorious when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic contender for the vice presidency, was struck down by polio at the age of 39. Two U.S. virologists, Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh and Albert B. Sabin of the University of Cincinnati emerged as the most prominent among dozens of American researchers on the quest for a polio vaccine.
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Salk's vaccine
By the 1950, Jonas Salk had tested both live, attenuated polio vaccines and formaldehyde killed polio vaccines in monkeys and by 1952, began testing on humans. The killed vaccine was found to be effective, with proper filtration of the biological culture. A problem with this vaccine was to be adequately protected; a child had to get three Salk shots, properly spaced, and a recommended booster shot once a year, which was expensive. This vaccine was the first polio vaccine to receive approval of the U.S. government, and was used until 1961 in America, when the Sabin vaccine was recommended to replace it.
Sabin's vaccine
Albert Sabin, a virologist who publicly disagreed with Salk and his killed vaccine, worked on creating a vaccine with live, attenuated vaccines. Despite Cold War tensions, in January, 1956 Mikhail Chumakov, the director of Moscow’s Polio Research Institute, his wife and colleague Marina Voroshilova, and Anatoli Smorodentsev, traveled to the U.S. in order to study the Salk vaccine and visited the laboratory of Albert Sabin. With the clearance of the FBI, Sabin flew to Leningrad in June, 1956. As a result of a cooperation of Sabin and Chumakov in Leningrad, Sabin was able to test his attenuated vaccine when funding in America was declined. While Sabin was working behind the Iron Curtain, the Sabin-Chumakov vaccine was determined to be safe and effective.
Cold war tensions
Cold War tensions caused Western scientists to refuse the reports from the Russians about the effectiveness of the Sabin vaccine. However, mass vaccinations of Sabin’s vaccine spread throughout Eastern Europe from 1960–1963. Just as some Soviet virologists did not trust the Western Salk vaccine, Americans had similar reservations about the Sabin vaccine from the Soviet side. However other Soviet virologists argued that the Salk vaccine could be considered safe, since the Americans tested it on their own people. They considered that the Sabin vaccine must be potentially dangerous because the Americans did not wish to test it on their own society.
Federal licensing
The documented achievement of the Sabin-Chumakov collaboration eventually trumped the ideological differences of the Cold War. Their oral live-virus vaccine became federally licensed in 1962, and used for over three decades to help eliminate polio globally, replacing the Salk vaccine. Using these vaccines, the threat of polio remains only a serious threat in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.