- Person
- Albert Sabin
- Lived
- 1906–1993
- Field
- Virology
- From
- Polish-American
The story
By the mid-1950s two very different polio vaccines were competing. Jonas Salk's injected vaccine, made from killed virus, was declared a success in April 1955. Albert Sabin, working at the Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, believed a live but weakened virus taken by mouth would work better, because it would build immunity in the intestine where the virus multiplies and so stop it spreading.
Then came the Cutter incident. Two faulty lots of the injected vaccine made by Cutter Laboratories in California contained live virus, and 192 cases of paralytic polio followed among vaccinated children and their contacts, 11 of them fatal. With that memory fresh, and with high commercial stakes, the United States government would not allow large field trials of Sabin's live vaccine. Sabin had tested it on himself, his daughters and prison volunteers in Ohio, but he needed evidence from millions of people.
Rather than let the work stall, he looked abroad, including to America's great Cold War rival. From 1956 to 1960 he worked with scientists in the Soviet Union, providing his weakened strains together with instructions and personal guidance on how to manufacture the vaccine to stop their outbreaks. Soviet researchers led by Mikhail Chumakov and Marina Voroshilova organised the first industrial production and mass use of oral polio vaccine from Sabin's strains.
The scale was enormous. According to a 2022 profile in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, about 77 million children in the Soviet Union received the vaccine during 1959–1961. Between 1955 and 1961 more than 90 million people in the Soviet Union, parts of Eastern Europe, Singapore, Mexico and the Netherlands were given it, and the Soviet Union also sent millions of doses to places with epidemics, such as Japan.
The campaigns showed that the vaccine was safe and highly effective, and they gave American regulators the evidence they needed. In 1961 the US Public Health Service licensed Sabin's strains of types 1 and 2, and type 3 followed in 1962. During the 1960s the oral vaccine replaced the injected one as the vaccine of choice in the United States, and it came into use around the world.
Sabin remained a firm believer that science should rise above politics. In 1967 he travelled to Cuba to discuss with Fidel Castro the possibility of cooperation between the two countries' national academies of sciences, even though they had no formal diplomatic ties.
Why it matters
Sabin's decision to put children's health above Cold War politics produced the evidence that led to the vaccine's licensing in the United States and its use by children all over the world.
About Albert Sabin
Białystok-born virologist whose cheap, oral polio vaccine, given on a sugar cube and never patented, became the backbone of the global drive to eradicate polio.
More about Albert Sabin
- Albert Sabin trained the scientist who unmasked RSVAlbert Sabin's Cincinnati laboratory trained Robert Chanock, his favourite “scientific son”, who later showed that RSV causes severe respiratory disease in young children.
- Albert Sabin gave his oral polio vaccine free of chargeAlbert Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine, cheap and easy to give on a sugar cube, and gave it free of charge without profiting from its sale.
- Albert Sabin showed polio begins in the gutBy studying the bodies of polio victims, Albert Sabin showed that the virus multiplies first in the intestine, an insight that shaped the oral vaccine he later created.
- A polio vaccine you could take on a sugar cubeAlbert Sabin's live oral polio vaccine was cheap, could be given as drops on a sugar cube, and protected the gut as well as the blood, so it stopped the virus spreading.
- Albert Sabin tested his polio vaccine on himself firstBefore asking anyone else to take his live oral polio vaccine, Albert Sabin swallowed it himself, and his family and colleagues were among the very first recipients.
- Albert Sabin fought tropical viruses for the US ArmyIn the Second World War Albert Sabin served on the Army's Neurotropic Virus Commission, studying dengue and sandfly fever and developing early vaccines and preventive measures.
- Sabin Sundays brought free polio drops to a whole cityOn Sunday, April 24, 1960, Cincinnati began handing out Albert Sabin's oral polio vaccine for free, and about 180,000 local children were soon vaccinated.
- Sabin's vaccine became the backbone of polio eradicationWhen the global drive to eradicate polio began in 1988, about 350,000 children a year were still paralysed. Albert Sabin's oral vaccine became the campaign's main tool.
Sources
- Albert Bruce Sabin: The Man Who Made the Oral Polio Vaccine Emerging Infectious Diseases (CDC)
- Albert Sabin Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.