What is in Those Vaccines: Part VI?
At one time summer was a dreaded time. Summer was polio season and literally thousands of children would get sick each year. Many of them were so ill that their diaphragm would be paralyzed by the virus and they would placed in an "Iron Lung" machine. Many urban hospitals had "Iron Lung" wings filled with young patients with polio. Many of us know someone who was affected by the Polio viruses. I have a friend that has partial paralysis of one leg. In fact, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, was crippled by this nasty virus in 1921.
The disease poliomyelitis (polio= gray matter, myelitis= inflammation of the spinal cord) is caused by the 3 different polio virus types. It is spread via contaminated water (i.e. fecal oral route) and then infects the gray matter of the spinal cord. Many people didn't have any symptoms at all and as a result spread the disease to others. The ones that did get sick would have a fever, headache, sore throat, and a runny nose initially. If the virus got into the spinal cord then various other symptoms would occur. The person could experience muscle weakness, severe muscle pain, and crippling paralysis of various muscles. To get an idea of what it was like to live before the polio vaccine go to the PBS' Timeline of Polio History.
Fortunately, Dr. Salk and Sabin were able to develop vaccines to prevent this crippling disease of children. Dr. Salk in the 1950's found that if he grew up the viruses in monkey kidney cells, purified them, and then killed them he could protect children from getting polio. Dr. Sabin developed a live vaccine, at about same time, by growing up polio viruses until he got a strain of the virus that could not produce illness in people but could cause them to make antibodies against the wild-type viruses (wild-type viruses are viruses that can cause disease in humans). These vaccines saved literally millions of peoples lives over the past 4 decades.
Currently, cases of polio are only routinely reported in Southeast Asia
and in certain parts of Africa. The United States has 5-10 cases of poliomyelitis
a year due to adminstration of the live oral Sabin vaccine. The oral Sabin
vaccine is much cheaper to produce and to give to children however a very
small number of children can develop polio from this vaccine. Therefore,
the Centers for Disease Controls is now recommending only giving the Salk
vaccine (the killed vaccine). To see for yourself what the two vaccines
are composed of and the advantages and disadvantages of both click
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