Emphasis on research and writing. Over the semester, weve examined various disasters. First of all the psychological and physical problems at jamestown, disaster sermons in responses to fires, hurricanes and epidemics in colonial america, famine suffered by the donner party, the potato family, disaster of tourism, the impact of the triangle shirt waste factory and disaster art that emerged from the 1930s dust bowl. Today were discussing polio an american story. You all received questions that i posted and im enterintereste this topic because i teach a seminar in the 1950s. Looking at polio reveals so many different issues that affected that decade. Before starting, though, i just want to mention one thing in light of what we were talking about in terms of dust bowl art, i was reading the new york review of books and there is a review of a novel that Woodie Guthrie wrote. It doesnt get a very good review. But obviously he gets some attention. Youll be pleased to know that the introduction was by a historian named Douglas Brinkly and johnny depp. I think theyre trying to sell copies by having a superstar on the cover. I divided the discussion today into four major themes. We cant cover all of the books, but i thought the most interesting were looking at medical research, scientists, and their various personalities, which are interesting, and also the ethical issues. With that, lets start the way we always do and that is first of all who is david . A professor at the university of texas in austin and a distinguished scholar and resident at nyu. Fairly reputable. I saw that he won the cartwright prize from Columbia University Medical Center in 2010 and that was for his research. He had some creditability. Were you going to add Something Else . He won the Pulitzer Prize award. What did you think of his writing, his scholarship, his research . Were you impressed . I was impressed by the thoroughness of his research how i think he kind of went above and beyond researching the relationships between the scientists and between, you know, the politician and is the scientists and the foundation. I think there was a lot he sort of like went pretty much as far as he could. It was a lot like what when we talked to robert taro, it took him seven years to write his book. It felt the same way. Right. Very much in depth. And a really a nice variety in terms of people he interviewed, caroline. I found it very readable, when we had to read the whole book, i found myself getting into it and i thought it was easy to read and interesting. I think he did a good job of making it accessible and not so academic. I think this is one of the great examples of how history is really stories. And its a very, very well told story. He did a good job describing the historical point of it as well as the scientific point. But also the kind of politics of each point, not only a political aspect, but the politics of science which was an interesting way for us to read. Something really different. We havent done that before. So what do you think . Did he deserve the Pulitzer Prize . Shall we vote . [ laughter ] obviously a man of some repute and did a great job on this book. The first recorded outbreak of polio took place in vermont in 1894. 123 people will caught polio. There was another outbreak in 1907 and then a major outbreak in 1916 that begin in pig town in brooklyn, new york, and that spread across the northeast and some 6 though people died from that outbreak. He has an interesting comment or thoughts to make about why these epidemics sudden broke out, why it is in the late 19th and early 20th century, suddenly we see these so many more people affected by this disease. And what does he say . How does he time the germ theory of disease with his comments about the outbreak of those polio epidemics. He describes it as the age of cleanliness. So america became so preoccupied with sanitation and cleaning up the cities, and the youth werent as exposed to microorganisms that carried disease and bacteria, so they were more likely to be affected and not having a immune system to certain diseases. What does that mean in terms of children not being exposed to the germs and bacteria . What happens . If you got polio as a young child, it was a lesser dose, you didnt have many effects from it. When youre really young, you have your mothers antibodies to withstand the impact of those diseases. And so that was all something that those sort of traditionally happened in america. Suddenly everybody is washing hands, cleaning clothes, better sanitation. I dont know if its an argument for not washing hands, i dont think so. But still, something that happened in this country to make people more susceptible to polio. So by the early 20th century, americans were in a panic about polio. And what was so frightening about that disease. What was different about polio that hadnt been true of decides before this. I think it was primarily children who got it. It was children all across the board, maybe even more so in rich and clean areas. And theres no cause or cure or no known cause or for like a disease like cholera, that would be with the poor. Polio hit everybody. And also initially it hit very, very Young Children. Hence, it was called infin tile payroll sis because it hit children between the ages of 1 and 3. Thats going to change. But nevertheless here it is affecting innocent children. What else was different about this disease . It accelerated very quickly. It was as if all of a sudden one morning, a child would wake up with a stiff neck or a fever and they could be losing feeling in their limbs and i think that was terrifies for a lot of parents. It was just like that. And no idea how the child had gotten the disease. Were you going to add Something Else . I was going to say along the same lines. They recently came out with the antibiotic of penicillin but that had no effect on polio because it was a viral infection. A viral infection was new to that age, like influenza. This is not bacterial. So penicillin did no good. Anything else that was unique about this disease . They said it could wipe out the entire family. There were families that lost all of their children. This is something that you can imagine being a parent and having a very, very young child succumb to this horrible, horrible disease. So nobody knew what caused it. Nobody knew how to cure it. And initially what was the response, if you if a child got polio or if you feared polio in your community, how did people react . What did they do initially . What did they do they were quarantined and they shut down public spaces where children would gather like swimming pools and movie theaters. Rightly understood. It was contagious. It spread from person to person. They understood this was a contagious disease. I can tell you stories of friends of mine at least who remember in childhood when they couldnt go to the local public swimming pool, movie theaters were closed, where literally you were forced to stay out of any situation that involved a lot of people, particularly areas were children gathered. He shows the sorry state of medical research in the early 19th century. People almost distrusted medical research. And of course no one could conceive of the federal government supporting medical research. We didnt have the National Institute of health, we didnt have the centers for disease control. This was something medical research, if it happened, was something that had to be funded by individuals or by foundations. But it really wasnt generating that kind of response. And for many doctors, this was true in the mid to late 19th century. If you really wanted a good medical education, you went abroad. If you wanted to engage any kind of research, you went to europe. All that changed in 1902 when what happened . What major donor changed all of that . Rockefeller. Right. He had millions. What is he going to do with his money . And indeed he was convinced to give this money to found a research institute, not a hospital, not a medical school, but a research institute. And this of course is the Rockefeller Institute which is in new york city. In fact, if you go to new york city, you can see this beautiful, beautiful these beautiful grounds and this building. Its right on the east river i think in the high 50s or low 60s. This was something new. This was very exciting. And the director of the man who was appointed director of this institute was a man who held this position for 40 years. And what did you get . Did you get any sense of his personality, the man who headed this institute . He rather had how about removing the rather. Headstrong. Polio was his domain. If you were going to research polio, you had to do it his way. And he was an incredible autocrat. But he ran this institute with an iron fist in a way. This was his thing. This institute took on many, many diseases. Polio is one of the many diseases studied at the Rockefeller Institute. Now, of course the major event that really put polio in sort of on the map, when it gained a lot more attention was of course a personal tragedy and that was Franklin Delano roosevelt coming down with polio. Here is a 39yearold, hes not an infant, from a very welltodo family, a very robust man, and suddenly he succumbed to polio at his family summer home. Now, how is it explained how someone like roosevelt got polio . What had happened in his past or recently to him to explain this . He says that he was extremely vulnerable because as a child he didnt have many illnesses and as he was growing up he became very active. He was traveling the world. And he also became exhausted and stressed with the amount of work that he had. And that led to, like, being his immune system going down and being, of course, around a bunch of other people who he could have contracted the disease from. Anybody know anything about roosevelts childhood . He was very wealthy so he was separated from the mainstream American Population which meant that he wasnt he didnt contract common childhood diseases which would have raised his immune system. So once he went out in the real world, he was much more susceptible. Yes, his mother, sarah, was an extremely controlling individual and she basically oversaw his childhood. She made sure he was totally protected from everything and everybody. She was quite something. But, anyway, that was just exactly what was not good for a child. Not having the normal exposure to diseases that most children did. As you said, very this was, you know, a sort of unique childhood in this very, very privileged, privileged upbringing. Anything else about roosevelt that would help explain he was exhausted, okay, where had he been right before he went to the island . The boy scouts convention. Yes, he was at a boy scout meeting just days before. Met a bunch of young boys and thats probably where he contracted polio. What else . Wasnt he battling some sex scandal he had been in washington, d. C. , and he had been for three days under tremendous pressure going through these congressional investigations and questioning. So, again, getting absolutely exhausted. Were you going to add Something Else . It was regarding homosexuals. Pressure, tension, et cetera. And i dont know if he fell off the sailboat or went swimming, but he went into this really cold water, i dont know if any of you have tried to swim in northern maine, its frigid. He fell into the water and he stayed in his bathing suit. He got chilled and this, again, interfered with his immune system and lowering his resistance. We have this energetic, robust, 39yearold man woke up and was paralyzed. And from that point forward, of course, Franklin Roosevelt never walked alone. He always wore metal braces. He usually was he was assisted by somebody, if he ever managed to walk to a podium to give a speech. Typically he was sitting. That was usually whenever you see a picture of him, typically he was sitting down and his mother felt the best path for roosevelt to follow would be to come home to hyde park, she would take care of him, and he could leave this lovely quiet life. But his wife convinced him otherwise. She thought the best thing was to reenter public life, to really try to get back to some kind of normal life if at all possible. And fortunately, that is what he did. Its amazing how many people in this country never realized that roosevelt was handicap, that he had had polio and that he could not walk. Ive had students do oral histories of people who lived in the 1930s and 40s and theyre like, no, he wasnt paralyzed. They really did not know. And so roosevelt was determined not to make a big deal of this, not to become this sympathetic character and also there was a stigma about being handicapped. Youre not robust, youre not in a sense a whole person. He really didnt want people to know and he did a great job of really hiding this fact. Well, he returned to a normal life. He partnered with a young man named Basil Oconnor. They started a new york law firm. And roosevelt heard about this kind of decreped spa called warm springs, georgia. There are all of these minerals in the water and its warm in wonderful. Did you ever see the movie called warm springs. I saw it. It was a good movie. Roosevelt traveled there and he got in the wonderful and this was wonderful. It was soothing and exactly what he needed. Much to his mothers display, he spent twothirds of his inheritance buying this property. Because what he realized is that this is exactly what he needed and also realized that other Polio Victims needed the same. And so out of this he formed the Warm Springs Foundation and its base was in warm springs, georgia. He built his own cottage and every summer he would spend weeks there just enjoying these wonderful warm mineral waterers. In 1928, life changed again for roosevelt. Al smith, the governor of new york, the catholic who ran for president in 1928 against Herbert Hoover asked roosevelt to be his Vice President ial candidate. And so after much soul searching, roosevelt agreed. They didnt win that. It was a cataclysmic outcome. Herbert hoover won. But roosevelt became governor of new york and served two terms as governor of new york. In 1932, of course, the Democratic Party decided roosevelt would be the perfect candidate to run against Herbert Hoover. The heart of the depression, americans were really suffering, roosevelt ran an incredible campaign. His Campaign Song was happy days are here again. And of course he won the presidency and took office in 1933. Now, many a number of scholars have looked at roosevelt and his character and feel that polio had an incredible impact on who he was as a person. What have did you get out of the book in terms of how, you know what polio did for roosevelt as a man, as a person . Did it have a positive impact, a negative impact . I think someone said there was a stigma against polio. He realized if he could go in and be the change in the government who other people could do the same thing. The stigma didnt need to be there. I didnt agree with the fact that he hid it from everyone. But it proved that just because you have a physical handicap, doesnt mean you cant do wonderful things. Roosevelt before he had polio was pretty much called a lightweight. I wouldnt say he was a playboy, but he was not regarded as a man of great substance. Just this wealthy man who had had every privilege in life. But historians feel that polio had a huge impact on him. Here we are in the heart of the depression. Here is a man who has gone through this incredibly, you know, horrible situation of having to, you know, live through he did live through, fortunately, this horrible disease. And he emerged what would you emer imagine he had emerged with. Millions of americans are suffering economically. How might that affect roosevelt and who he was as a person . I think it made him more empathetic to people suffering. Hes able to empathize with feeling less than and inferior to people around you and i think it also kind of gave him this inner drive to succeed and to prove to people that polio was not going to define him and that just because he was physically handicapped, i didnt mean he was incapable of being a good president and an effective leader. I think both of those are important. The idea that he could overcome this and be it wasnt in a sense going to cause him to not do his best in any respect. He was going to become a great president , despite the disease and empathy. That was a huge issue. When he ran against Herbert Hoover, Herbert Hoover seemed like a man who had no connection with what people were suffering and here is a man who suffered physically and could identify with whatever problem somebody was suffering. All right. Obviously, roosevelt being in albany as governor of new york, occupying the white house, suddenly hes extremely busy and he has no time to Pay Attention to his foundation down in warm springs. So he appoints Basil Oconnor to take charge of it and they hire a Public Relations man. They hire someone to take charge of fundraising and create this incredible foundation. And the first fundraising events were what . It used roosevelt effectively . The Birthday Balls. Right. And what was the Birthday Ball . Big parties or fund raisers on his birthday, drive in a bunch of no dimes yet. Were still into the fancy balls. Drive in a lot of money for the foundation. Yeah, celebrate roosevelt, his birthday and you had these fancy balls at fancy hotels. And they were all across the country which was quite amazing to think about. It was all across the country. But theres a problem actually, there were a couple of problems with those balls that became apparent within a few years. Why might people begin to think that maybe these Birthday Balls arent a very good idea . I think people took issue as using him as a figure head since he was the president and it seemed like he should remain neutral because he was in an important political office. What was his Political Party . Democrat. Hes a democrat. This no republican wants to go a Birthday Ball for Franklin Roosevelt, right . What message does this deliver, these Birthday Balls . What if youre in the heart of the depression, whats how might you react . Well, the way i look at it, not very inviting towards the lower class. To say the least. Definitely some class differences there. Very, very strong issues, exactly. These Birthday Balls are for the elite, people who can afford them. Theyre celebrating, people are getting dressed up and yet theres the depression and there is this democratic president. Within a short period of time they created the foundation for the the National Foundation for infantile paralysis. This is when celebrities began to be drawn to this cause, including a man named eddie canter. He was a major radio personality and he was the one who coined the phrase march of dimes. They used to have newsreels before movies were shown, and there was called march of times. So he took that phrase and made it march of times. A new approach to fundraising emerged. How did this foundation really transform Charitable Giving . It made it so that it wasnt the wealthy who could contribute to fundraising. It made it so everyone could contribute, like a baby. If you were poor, you could send in a couple of dimes. It involved the whole country. Yeah, everybody. This is the march of dimes. Literally march of dimes. And thats exactly what happened. Send in your dimes. Send in your contributions. We dont need a thousand dollar check. They were inundated. Literally, piles and piles of dimes came in from people who found this really, really appealing. They could do their part and there were radio announcements about the importance of the march of dimes, there were collections taken in movie theaters. People were now going to the movies. I cant figure that one out. Apparently they said that a foundation raised 40 of its contributions in movie theaters. People attending the movies would there would be a collection and they would put their dimes or their quarters or whatever in these buckets. I dont know if any of you go if you go to a broadway show in november in new york city they always have this its not for the march of dimes now. Its for aids research. The actors stand out and they hold these pails and they ask you to contribute. Same kind of thing that was going on back then still goes on today but for a different purpose. So what did this do, this type of fundraising, what did it do for people in america . How would you feel about this kind of fundraising . I think it brought together the nation. It wasnt just a few people contributing to a cause, it was a whole nation kind of coming together and fighting against polio. And also got out the idea of polio. People didnt know. There were no televisions. Right. Didnt have the ability to see newscasts and stuff like that. It got out the whole notion that polio was there and it was killing a lot killing a lot of people in the united states. Draw everybody together. Everybody is invested in this fundraising event. This is your disease. This is what you contribute to. Megan . Reached a class of people who had never been asked to fund raise before. It made them feel like they were part of something bigger than for american nationalism which led to pride. Incredible pride and doing your part and helping. And actually this is going to give away you already know how old i am. In Elementary School, we got a little piece of cardboard with round slots in it where you put your dimes. We were all we all had to fill in this cardboard this piece of cardboard with our dimes. I would use my allowance because you would to be the first in your class to fill this in and hand it into the foundation in some way. So this was a huge deal and this was certainly a different way to raise money. And there were the annual Fashion Shows. Again, while theres this you know, this outreach to the people of america, there were events that had a class issue about them. And these Fashion Shows were amazing. They would draw all of the hollywood starlets, grace kelly, background murals, Harry Winston would donate his jewelry for them. So this was incredibly effective. And then finally theres one more aspect of the fundraising that was so important which had to do with the mothers of america. What was that . What was that fundraising . Everyone for one night left their porch lights on and the mothers would go around and collect change for them and it allowed you to focus on all of your effort on one time. Everyone knew one night, were going to go out and collect money. This was all across america. This was mothers volunteering. This is a great volunteer army of mothers. You would volunteer. All you had this didnt take much time. It was a onenight deal. Particular hour. Lots of publicity, posters, radio. And you would canvass your assigned neighborhood and collect money and people would turn on a light if they wanted to give. If you lived in an Apartment Building you put out a pair of shoes which meant please come in, were happy to give money. Vesting more people into this single cause. Nothing like this has happened before. This is a new approach to Charitable Giving. Okay, i just wanted to mention briefly, since this happened close to davidson, the outbreak in North Carolina in 1944, and i think one of the things that deserves mentioning about that outbreak was that the foundation reacted so quickly. There was an outbreak of polio. The foundation moved in with nurses, with doctors, they took over a summer camp. They built a temporary hospital which i think showed the incredible resources, the effectiveness that this foundation had certainly in the 1940s and early 50s. And there were very few people who died. This response really was effective. Okay. Major change in 1945. Roosevelt died in april of 1945. So that caused a huge change. Movie theaters stopped collecting for polio. Now they decided that the money they collected would go to the united way which is a community allencompassing umbrella philanthropistic organization and yet people polio cases were on the rise. They were not decreasing. There was no effective polio vaccine to offset this. So onto the scientists and to the medical research. Wondering if you found some of the behavior of these scientists as shocking as i did. Are we dealing with Young Children or grown men . I know. The writer does quite a job of getting into the heart of this. Theres this effort by many researchers to find an effective virus excuse me, an effective vaccine virus to offset this horrible disease. And yet three things had to be discovered about polio before any researcher could engage in an effective effective research. What were those three things . They were how many strains or types of the virus there were, how it entered the body and got to the Central Nervous system and how to develop a safe supply of the virus for each strain. The first thing being how many strains there were. And so they had to start typing all the polio strains they found. And what did they discover, fortunately . There were only three strains. Rather than hundreds. Today we have trouble with influenza because the strains change every year. There were only three polio strains. Typical point of origin, what had people long believed about how polio entered the body . Some people thought it entered through the nose. Right. Who knew that was correct. And because he was just this larger than life personality and such an autocrat, its like nobody dared challenge him. But researchers began to study this and discovered, what . It comes through the mouth. The point of entry is through the digestive tract and can attack the muscles. And the third one being how to replicate the virus in a test tube. The man who discovered this was a man named john enders who went onto win the he and two assistants went onto win the noble prize for medicine in 1954. All right. So we have the foundation beginning to feel a real sense of you are generurgency. When you start getting people so involved in this disease, you know, pretty soon youre going to expect results. So the two major scientists involved in this research, of course theyre not the only ones, theyre really the two on whom the writer concentrates his book, the first one being jonas sulk. And who was jonas sulk . What do you remember reading about him . Anything . Anything . Josh . He was an immigrant and he came from humble backgrounds and he his parents were immigrants, right . Right. Second generation. And he, like, had meager beginnings and eventually through a series of kind of apprenticeships managed to become a star in the field of medical research. What was his education being a poor immigrant, jewish. City college of new york. He went to a special high school and city college of new york which is practically free and then to nyu who admitted jews. So he graduated. He married. He worked at mt. Sinai hospital and then went to the university of michigan. While at the university of michigan, he was working on trying to find a vaccine to deal with polio. The School Received a lot of grants but sulk he had a fallingout with his mentor because sulk actually while he was doing this research at this school, he became a consultant to a drug company. And of course theres a direct conflict of interest in doing that. And his mentor was really astonished that he did this and also even at this young age, sulk wanted recognition. He really wanted to be sure everybody knew that how important he was and how important the research he was going. So in 1947 he left the university of michigan and went to the university of pittsburgh. Now, nobody had really thought much of the university of pittsburgh and its involvement in research or Medical Center. But the school was trying to change and it really saw sulk as somebody who could put this medical school on the map. Off he went to this sort of place that certainly didnt have the prestige as the Rockefeller Institute. Well, thats one side of the race. The other side, of course, is albert saban. Who is albert saban . Similar story, different story . Hes also a russian immigrant and he was jewish. They had a similar background. And he was more established as a scientist in his later years. Yeah, he was born in poland, but eastern europe. And he was indeed an immigrant and came to this one when he was 15 years old. Got a decent education, began to really be interested in polio when he was fairly young and with the Rockefeller Institute, he was one of the privileged scientists to be there. After being there only six years, again, he did the unthinkable, just the way sulk had done. He left and went where . University of cincinnati. Its like, what . But he saw opportunities there and, you know, where he could really do the kind of work he wanted. So in looking another these two scientists, what did you what sense did you get what role do you think the foundation played in funding these men and in creating a situation that sort of exacerbated the tension between the two men . What did you think of the foundation and the role it played . Yes . Giving money to both of them to research. Throughout the book, i kind of felt like sulk, he was kind of always determined to get some fame from finding this vaccine. So he was determined to he was going while saban, on the other hand, he was more trying to work with other researchers more than sulk was. So you would call saban more of a peer researcher. Both men got money. But who got more money . Sulk got more money because of his personal relationship with oconnor. They became close friends. And the foundation was able to influence the direction the research took by emphasizing the live viruses. It was interesting in the role of this foundation, early on, you had basil first of all, sulk was chosen to attend this meeting in denmark where all of those who were studying polio gathered. Sulk was chosen by the foundation. Hand chosen to attend this meeting. On the return trip, as they were traveling home via ship, he met oconnor and they became fast friends. They developed a very, very positive relationship. So they hit it off. And so, you know, many scientists would have said at this point, sulk was becoming the celebrity scientist, that he seemed to be sort of typical handpicked the man who the foundation felt would be the best to develop the vaccine. He began to get publicity. He becomes not just a scientist, but someone the public seemed to know about him. Sulk called him the kitchen chemist. Was there either one that you liked better in looking at these two incredible scientists . Or is it get rid of both of them. I felt like sulk was portrayed as the underdog. When he gained celebrity with the American Public, it switched. He kind of portrayed himself as the peoples scientist and then sabin as the scientistscientist. Right. Which man would you rather have dinner with . Thats a hard one, isnt it . What were the most negative characteristics of man. I feel like the worst part was neither of them was willing to recognize the success of the other. Sulk was successfully earlier and sabin was constantly attacking him and saying his vaccine wasnt going to work. As soon as sabin was successful and had the more widely spread, salk was attacking him saying his was better. And they made this public. This was not a private dispute. All of this seemed to be quite public, not just hidden in letters or Something Like that. Do you remember anything about kate . Salks drive to be known. He would take names off of papers. There was one paper he said he lost it and got it back and put his name at the beginning wasnt that incredible . His assistants wrote that paper. And then, yeah, he supposedly lost it, i found it, and his name was at the top. That is totally unacceptable. And sabin did a similar thing with i think it was cox. Theyre like, lets share samples and when they were both working on the live vaccine. And so i think it was cox sent over samples of what he had and never received anything back from sabin. I think they had that quality where they were just doing everything for themselves because they both of them thought that they could do it the best . They were both pretty impossible, i think. At the conclusion of the book, both of these men should have won a noble prize for medicine considering what each one of them developed, but, no, never happened. And they i think the writer hints that part of the reason was that they were so awful to one another. They really sabin always had the support of the Scientific Community. Salk had the support of the public. He got all of the public recognition. And Scientific Community made sure that salk never became a member of the National Foundation of science. Lets move on to an interesting issue, and that is the whole ethical issue surrounding the testing of the polio vaccine. What do you think about the testing of the vaccine on orphans, mentally challenged children, prisoners . How does that strike you . Is that ethical . Is that right to do . Do you think this was acceptable . I think its really inhumane. If youre talking about children, especially, theyre not they dont have the mental capacity to speak for themselves and to say, no, i dont want this to be tested on me. If youre using prisoners, you know, theyre obviously considered to be, like, secondclass citizens because theyre in a prison. So if something should happen to them, theyre not going to get an adequate level of care. They were basically considering these people to be disposable and saying, if something happens to them, well find more. Many of these children didnt have parents around. Nobody to really say yes or no and yet they were chosen to be the first recipients of the salk vaccine. Because jonah salk was moving in a positive direction, his killed virus vaccine seemed to be succeeding, but he had to try it on human beings. That was a big issue. Its one thing to try it on monkeys, but you have to try it on human beings. Everybody fears a lawsuit, this would never happen today in terms of using what, in a sense, was a population of people who had no say about what was happening to them. So did those tests, they proved positive and in 1954, salk knew he had to try his vaccine on Elementary School children and parents are involved in this decision. He had 1. 3 million children in Elementary School who got his vaccine. Now, before we get into some of the problems that happened, why would parents why would parents okay this when this vaccine had only been tested on a very, very select, small group of people . Well, they said that they said that the killed virus couldnt cause polio and so i think for a lot of people, they were like, oh, well, if its not a live virus and they inject it into my kid, if it doesnt work, its not going to hurt them. And i think thats the point they played up. They said, it cant really hurt, but it can only help. And so i think that was incentive for a lot of people to participate. Parents felt a personal guilt if their parents were to contract polio. It was a desperation, what can we do to avoid our kids getting sick. Everybody knew what polio did. Theyve seen the pictures of children in iron lungs, with braces on their legs. So there was real this continued fear was enormous in this country. So here is a possible prevention of your child ever getting polio. And the foundation did what . The foundation for infantile paralysis. What was it stance on testing this virus . Did it caution people . Oconnor said its a privilege. Youre children are among the privileged. There was a man who was a huge radio personality and he had been this shows you the nasty stuff going on among scientists. But he had actually been fed some information by another scientist who said this is this vaccine has not been properly tested. They should not be using it. And so walter went on the radio and said, parents, watch out. This is probably not a good thing. And salk said, hes looking for publicity. He didnt know what hes talking about. And it was interesting too, this wasnt in response so much to the testing on children, but dr. Spock who was the child care expert of this time was also a telling parents to calm down. That perhaps the foundation was exaggerating the threat of this disease and overselling the problem. But they moved ahead and tested the vaccine on these children. And they had some placebos. They did this very, very carefully, supposedly. And it took a year for them to finally get the results after they gave these children the vaccine. And the results were of course positive. Great, a great moment in american medical history, the vaccine worked. And so the foundation knew that it had to make a huge deal of this. Finally they had the answer. And so they held this event at the university of michigan in ann arbor on october 12th, 1955. People gathered, the press was there, edward r. Murrow was there, this was a huge, huge event with this incredible news. And a man named Thomas Francis stood up. He was representing the foundation and he gave this rambling 98minute talk on the glories of this discovery and salk spoke. The today show revealed the news the next morning, but some things went wrong. Shortly thereafter within a day or two and also within a few days. What were the negatives after that great this is really salks moment of glory. He was thrilled. The foundation was thrilled. And then poof, things happened. What went wrong . What went wrong with this . There were a couple outbreaks of polio brought about from the cutter laboratories. Well get into that in a minute. We have some negative results like, oh, my gosh, this vaccine caused polio. This is supposed to be a dead virus, okay . This is not supposed to not cause polio. You have the outbreak of a few cases. What else happened that was upsetting to salk . He got up there and gave a talk and it was this he alone had been the only one who had done anything on this research. And yet he had had several assistants who played a huge role in this discovery and they were sitting there. You dont do this in the science world. Youve seen articles and they have ten authors who were engaged in the research. There was salk taking credit for the discovery. And his assistants couldnt believe it. And so that was an incredibly disappointing moment. And then what else do you remember what salk said that elizabeth . He totally undercut the effectiveness of the results where they had said that the vaccine was 70 or 80 effective and he was saying how he had still been working on his next vaccine that was going to be 100 effective. So i think he managed to sort of anger the Science Community saying undermining his own results and then also sort of angering the American People who kind of felt betrayed by him why hadnt he waited to send out another vaccine instead of trying this less effective one and waiting a year to do the more effective. Exactly. Its like, wait, this vaccine was supposed to be foolproof. It was supposed to work. And then you have salk almost immediately saying, actually, the vaccine i just developed is better than the one we used. Hes like, wait a minute, my child just had this vaccine. That certainly was a disc disconcerting moment. Its been a success. Youve had hundreds of thousands of children vaccinated in this country and now you have millions more waiting to get the vaccine. What happened . What was the problem that affected the distribution of the vaccine . Was there a distribution . The government and the foundation really hadnt explored how theyre going to produce so much of the vaccine to supply the enough for the American Population who needed it. There was a public outcry because they were worried they werent going to be able to have their children vaccinated and it was turned on the foundation and the government. You should have handled this already. Nobody had a plan. Nobody thought about, you got the vaccine, how are you going to make sure everybody gets it, assuming its successful. People were upset. They invested their money and emotions into this foundation and what its trying to achieve and suddenly theyre confronted with the fact that theres not any kind of distribution plan. And the head of hew just fumbled around. What was the problem with the government distributing the vaccine . Doesnt that seem like a natural way to go for the government to take charge and step in . Why not the government . Is that reminiscent of socialized medicine. Were going to be like canada. This is not the role of the federal government. In fact the Drug Companies were dead set against this. It was like, this is something for private companies to take charge of, the government should not step in. So this created enormous problems but it also made the American Public really angry. And then of course physicians stepped in and said, actually, you shouldnt be giving these vaccines in Elementary School. These should be done in a Doctors Office so the doctors could make money. It created a horribly complicated situation in which there obviously had been no plan for distribution. And ultimately he resigned. It was a bad situation. Of course there was the cutter lab disaster which was what . What was the cutter lab disaster . Go ahead. Manufactured the vaccine improperly and it caused a lot of people to get sick. We had several Companies Developing the vaccine, all right, and one lab in berkeley, california, cutter lab, had developed the vaccine but what went wrong . They discovered that 400,000 vaccines done by cutter lab . Somehow a live virus got into the bottles. And Cutter Laboratory was the only one who used these bottles to give out the vaccines. Somehow or some way, a live virus got in there and infected a bunch of people. This was a part of the problem was with testing. And how much testing had been done on the these vaccines . Next to none. One day, at this point. The rush to get this out, the rush to have this done, they tested these vaccines only one day. They sort of ignored the ones that didnt pass muster. Thats okay. Well use them anyway. But before this they had taken four weeks to test this vaccine. Again, this was a rush and had to be done right away. Now, oconnor was furious. And what he did interestingly, he blamed those who were working for the live virus vaccine. He thought there was some kind of plot that somebody had come into this lab or something and tried to undermine the situation. It was really, really quite incredible. All right. Well, now that salk salks vaccine was under question, americans began to turn toward sabin and his live virus vaccine. Again, using a different approach to solving this problem of polio. But again, saban needed to test his vaccine. And where did he do it . Where was he able to test his vaccine . In the soviet union. Okay . Polio was becoming a huge problem in the soviet union. They invited both salk and sabin to come to their country. The soviet government decided to use sabins live virus vaccine to test on or not to test but to use on 10 million soviet children. And thats exactly what they did. Using the power of the soviet government, they tested it on 10 million children. And it was basically a success. So this was, again, a huge breakthrough. Weve only got a few more minutes, so let me quickly summarize and end this discussion. By 1956 the number of polio cases were really declining in this country. It was the vaccines were working. There were still some real debate about salk versus sabin. Nobody had quite made a decision that would happen in a couple of years. But salk decided now that he needed a new project. Okay . He had done his research on polio and what was his new project . Anybody get that far in the book . Yeah, but what did he want . What did he need to do yeah, he did start studying aids. He wanted to open up a new lab and create yeah. He wanted his own research institute. He went to the university of pittsburgh where he had been and he tried to convince them that this would be a good thing. They demanded they would have some kind of control over this. Salk wanted total control. And so he left the university of pittsburgh and he went to la jolla, california. I dont know if youve ever been to la jolla, but its this jewel of a city. You know, small city right on the pacific ocean. He got the city to contribute land. I mean, on this bluff overlooking the ocean. You couldnt ask for a nicer location. He got the foundation to provide some seed money like 15 million. He hired the most preeminent architect in this country lois khan to do the design for this institute. And so he now has his, in a sense, he has exactly what he wanted. Obviously expenses were high. The foundation began to withdraw its support from salk. It moved onto other things and oconnor died. But salk himself had divorced his first wife. He then married the former picassos former mistress. He began to dance in these elegant clothes, et cetera, and he had his good life in california. He did engage in aids research, but by then he was a very, very different person. So some of this rivalry continued. And of course there are all kinds of other issues we havent even had time to discuss, but i just wanted to mention briefly that the polio remains a problem in this world, but one that has been substantially reduced. First of all, in this country there are some 400,000 survivors of polio. I know two people who work at davidson who have had polio. Some people are starting to really suffer from whats called polio syndrome which is a result of their muscles gradually weakening. So polio, you know, even though they survived polio, they are now having some theres some kind of impact that has remained. But he also says the polio survivors tend to be typea overachievers. Perhaps like a roosevelt. So that, of course, is a good thing. Interestingly, polio is still on the news and actually there was a news News Coverage of this last week on npr. Because a reporter was talking about how polio is on the verge of being wiped off this urt. That polio will probably no longer be with us in a few years. Last year there were only 223 cases worldwide in 3 countries. Afghanistan, pakistan, and nigeria. The World Health Organization and the bill and Melinda Gates organization are working on this in a major way providing huge amounts of money to eradicate this forever. Their goal is 2018 there will be no polio in this in the world. The only bad thing is that you may remember a few weeks ago there were polio there were nine polio workers, women who were working in pakistan who were gunned down and killed. Just a horrible, horrible, horrible situation. But the other thing i wanted to mention is that good things can happen from a history book beside all you learn. But i did read that bill gates read this book when it first came out and he loved it and he was so inspired that he decided that his foundation would, indeed, take on polio as a major focus for his vast amounts of money. And so that sort of prompted him to try to move toward eradicating polio worldwide. So were almost there today. And i always get people ask me about the march of dimes today. I still get mail from the march of dimes. And what it works on now, obviously not polio, but birth defects primarily in premature babies. Theyre still doing good things but raising money for Something Different from polio. So thats it. For our disease of the day. And thursday, you all should have read the essays for peer editing and mark them up significantly and we will have Group Interaction with peer editing on thursday. Okay . Okay. Thank you. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Mark burns explores public opinion, the rise of radio, and the debate over entering world war ii. He outlines the arguments and uses radio clips to demonstrate the role they played in shaping american views and foreign policy. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv on cspan3 exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this Labor Day Weekend, saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war historians kevin levine and hillary green discuss whether to remove or contextualize confederate monuments. Then sunday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on american artifactartifacts preview photos of the native americans from the museum which includes more than a half million images. On 8 00 p. M. On the presidency, a look at president ial retreats including abraham lincolns summer cottage, and stories of the kennedys, clintons, and obamas in marthas vineyard. And monday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, august marked the 75th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. And American History tv look back at the events that led to the bombings and their legacy. With president trumans grandson. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv. This Labor Day Weekend on cspan3. On lectures in history, Chapman University history professor Jennifer Keene looks at myths about americas involvement in world war i including the misconceptions the u. S. Was not involved in europe prior to entering the war or that
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