- Person
- Albert Sabin
- Lived
- 1906–1993
- Field
- Virology
- From
- Polish-American
The story
Developing a live polio vaccine meant weakening all three types of poliovirus enough that they could no longer paralyse, while keeping them strong enough to train the immune system. Sabin had shown in 1939 that the virus multiplies in the intestine, and he believed a weakened virus swallowed by mouth could build immunity there and stop the disease spreading. A key advance came in 1949, when John Enders, Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins showed that poliovirus could be grown in cultures of non-nerve tissue, making vaccine work easier and cheaper.
At the Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, Sabin spent years selecting weakened strains, testing them on 10,000 monkeys and 160 chimpanzees. A live vaccine raised understandable fears. Two attempts at a polio vaccine in the 1930s had ended in disaster, and any strain that regained its strength could paralyse the people it was meant to protect.
When the moment came to try the vaccine in people, Sabin started with himself. The first human recipients of his live oral vaccine were Sabin, his family, including his daughters, and colleagues. Only after that did trials move to young adult volunteers at the federal reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio, beginning in late 1954.
Taking the risk first was a statement of confidence and of responsibility. It also produced early evidence that the weakened strains were safe and generated immunity, data Sabin needed as he fought for years to have his vaccine accepted. After the 1955 Cutter incident, when faulty batches of the injected vaccine caused paralysis, the US government would not allow large field trials of his live vaccine, so he took his strains to the Soviet Union, where about 77 million children were vaccinated in 1959–1961.
Those campaigns proved the vaccine safe and effective, and Sabin's strains were licensed in the United States in 1961 and 1962. During the 1960s his oral vaccine became the country's vaccine of choice, and it went on to become the mainstay of the World Health Organization's worldwide eradication campaign. The vaccine that Sabin first swallowed himself was eventually given to hundreds of millions of children.
Why it matters
Sabin's willingness to test the vaccine on himself and his family helped launch the trials that led to a vaccine later given to hundreds of millions of children.
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 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 crossed the Iron Curtain to test his polio vaccineAt the height of the Cold War, Albert Sabin shared his vaccine strains with Soviet scientists, and about 77 million Soviet children were vaccinated in 1959–1961.
- 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.