- Person
- Albert Sabin
- Lived
- 1906–1993
- Field
- Virology
- From
- Polish-American
The story
By the early 1940s Albert Sabin was an established virologist at the Children's Hospital in Cincinnati, working on polio. From 1941 he also served as a civilian consultant to the Army's Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. When the United States entered the Second World War he wanted to do more. "Since the country is now at war I wish to do more than is permitted by the scope of my duties as civilian consultant," he wrote to the War Department.
He volunteered for active duty and from 1943 to 1945 served in the Army Medical Corps, first as a major and later as a lieutenant colonel. He was a member of the elite Neurotropic Virus Commission of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, part of the military's effort to reduce illness and death from causes other than combat.
Troops fighting in the tropics faced viral diseases carried by mosquitoes and sandflies that could sideline whole units. Sabin studied dengue fever, sandfly fever, Japanese B and St. Louis encephalitis, polio and other infections of the nervous system. His assignments took him to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific. He helped to develop vaccines against Japanese B and St. Louis encephalitis and dengue, along with other preventive measures. Biographical accounts credit him with a vaccination programme on Okinawa that protected more than 65,000 military personnel against Japanese encephalitis. He also identified several distinct types of sandfly fever and dengue viruses, work that later led to weakened live-virus vaccines.
For his service he was awarded the Legion of Merit and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1945. He continued as a civilian consultant to the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board from 1946 to 1969, and in 1946 he travelled to Japan to research Japanese encephalitis.
The war years broadened his skills in field virology and vaccine development. In 1946 he returned to Cincinnati to head paediatric research at the Children's Hospital, where he applied those lessons to the disease that defined his career, developing the live oral polio vaccine that would be given to hundreds of millions of children.
Why it matters
Sabin's wartime research protected soldiers from tropical viruses and sharpened the vaccine expertise he later used against polio.
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.
- 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 Sabin Wikipedia
- The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: Dr. Sabin's Military Service University of Cincinnati Libraries
- Sabin, Albert (1906-1993) Encyclopedia.com
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.