Virologist Dr. Jonas Salk, the first scientist to create a vaccine for polio, died in 1995.

Also known as infantile paralysis, polio is a highly contagious disease that can cause muscle pain and paralysis, permanent disability and death. During polio epidemics in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, frightened families fled cities in mass numbers hoping to escape contact with the devastating disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control, an average of 15,822 polio cases were reported in the United States each year between 1951 and 1955, when mass inoculations with Dr. Jonas Salk’s vaccine began. By 1981, after a successful vaccination program, the wild virus had been eliminated from the U.S. population. In the years before Salk’s vaccine was developed, researchers had been working overtime, searching for a way to prevent the disease as more and more children contracted it. When Dr. Salk announced the success of his polio vaccine in 1955, he was hailed as a hero by the public. His refusal to patent the vaccine, a decision that made it easier for the vaccine to be widely disseminated, increased the public’s opinion of him. The March of Dimes helped to focus media attention on Salk, in an effort to raise awareness of and funding for its vaccine programs. Unfortunately, the unusual amount of publicity focused on Salk offended many of his colleagues. As is usual in the scientific community, Salk’s breakthrough would not have been possible without the prior work of other scientists, as well as the work of many people in his lab. Yet none of these scientists were credited by the media or by Salk for their part in the development of the vaccine. Because of resentment from his colleagues, Salk, whose vaccine saved countless children from contracting polio, was denied a Nobel Prize for his work and was refused membership in the National Academy of Sciences. When he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla, California, in 1963, Salk joked, “I couldn’t possibly have become a member of this institute if I hadn’t founded it myself.” At the time of his death on this day in 1995, Salk was working to develop an AIDS vaccine.

Science NetLinks
In the Science Update Anthrax Antibodies (6–12), scientist George Georgiou describes efforts to make a better vaccine against another infectious agent, anthrax.

Germs and the Body (3–5) explores germs such as viruses and bacteria, where they exist and how they can affect the body.

In Physical Health (K–2), students learn how germs are spread, the diseases they can cause and how hand washing can help prevent the spread of germs.

Xpeditions
Geography can offer an important context for understanding the spread of infectious diseases such as polio, flu or AIDS. Geographic Diffusion of Disease: The Flu Pandemic of 1918–19 (9–12) focuses on the spatial diffusion of the influenza (flu) pandemic of 1918–19.

ReadWriteThink
Catching the Bug for Reading Through Interactive Read-Alouds (K–2) uses an interactive read-aloud of Miss Bindergarten Stays Home From Kindergarten by Joseph Slate to help students learn about reading strategies and the prevention of the spread of germs in their classroom.