{"id":92312,"date":"2021-03-17T08:49:59","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T06:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=92312"},"modified":"2021-04-21T14:19:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T11:19:25","slug":"his-sugar-cube-vaccine-beat-polio-then-he-took-a-shot-at-middle-east-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/his-sugar-cube-vaccine-beat-polio-then-he-took-a-shot-at-middle-east-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"His Sugar Cube Vaccine Beat Polio. Then He Took a Shot at Middle East Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonas Salk is rightfully credited with developing the first safe and effective polio vaccine, yet his inoculation was not the one that ultimately brought about the near total eradication of the terrible infectious disease known as “poliomyelitis” or “infantile paralysis”.<\/p>\n

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Signed photo of Jonas Salk<\/a>, which the famous researcher donated to the National Library in 1958. From the National Library of Israel archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Superseding Jonas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Salk’s vaccine, administered by injection, was first approved and widely distributed in the United States in 1955.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, another Jewish medical researcher named Albert Sabin was busy developing a different type of polio vaccine \u2013 one which could be administered orally and provide significant benefits over Salk’s, including cheaper production costs and longer-lasting immunity from polio without the need for “boosters”.<\/p>\n

An oral vaccine, as opposed to an injected one, also meant that it would be much easier and more practical to use for massive inoculation drives, especially in poorer countries and regions where sterile syringes were not readily available.<\/p>\n

Sabin’s vaccine used a weakened “live” polio virus, as opposed to the “dead” virus used by Salk. This made it theoretically more risky, yet with the benefits far outweighing the risks, the Sabin vaccine largely replaced the Salk vaccine worldwide from the early 1960s.<\/p>\n

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A child receives an injection of the polio vaccine, ca. 1960.<\/a> From the Eddie Hirschbein Collection, Nadav Mann \/ Bitmuna; available via the National Library of Israel Digital Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Salk’s vaccine has remained in use and was certainly a critical breakthrough in terms of dramatically reducing the debilitating infectious disease’s prevalence, yet for most of the second half of the 20th century, the oral vaccine developed by Sabin is what facilitated the nearly complete global eradication of polio.<\/p>\n

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Neither of the men ever attempted to patent their discoveries, seeing it as their privilege and purpose in life to help save millions of people from polio and other ailments.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On the day his vaccine was declared safe and effective for use, Salk was asked who owned the patent. He famously retorted, “Well, the people, I would say\u2026 There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabin once quipped, “A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might be used to reduce suffering rests on the shelf.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From immigrant to global hero<\/strong><\/p>\n

Born in Bialystock in 1906, Albert Sabin moved with his family to the United States in 1921, fleeing the poverty and violent anti-Semitism of their native Poland. Shortly after receiving his medical degree ten years later, Sabin became specifically interested in studying polio.<\/p>\n

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Portrait of Albert B. Sabin.<\/a> Published in The Sentinel<\/em>, 31 March 1966. From the National Library of Israel Digital Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His research into polio and other ailments continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s. As a high-ranking officer in the US Army Medical Corps during World War II, Sabin traveled the globe studying viral diseases, even developing vaccines for some, including dengue fever and encephalitis.<\/p>\n

After the war, he settled back into civilian life and his research on polio. Determined to better understand the polio virus, Sabin and his colleagues performed autopsies on everyone who died of poliomyelitis within a 400 mile (650 km) radius of his home in Cincinnati. Sabin and his team discovered that the poliovirus was found in the intestinal tract \u2013 meaning that an oral vaccine could theoretically be developed for it.<\/p>\n

Ultimately one was.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cold War trials<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the Salk vaccine had already been widely administered in the United States by the time Sabin’s was ready for trial, he had to test it somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Like Salk, Sabin first tested his vaccine on himself, though he would need a much larger scale to prove the vaccine’s efficacy.<\/p>\n

For that, he reached out to a most unlikely partner: the Soviet Union, then in the midst of a bitter Cold War with the United States. Nonetheless, the dream of eradicating polio trumped geopolitical tensions.<\/p>\n

Massive trials on children in the Soviet Union (as well as other locations around the world including Cincinnati) proved the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. The fact that it could be administered via sugar cube made it even more appealing.<\/p>\n