Polio vaccine trial announcement-this day in history

Polio vaccine:

“Safe, effective, and potent.” Here’s the first press release on polio vaccine evaluation results.

The following written content by School of Public Health, University of Michigan

With these words on April 12, 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., director of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine Evaluation Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, announced to the world that the Salk polio vaccine was up to 90% effective in preventing paralytic polio.

Dr. Francis made the announcement to a crowd of scientists and reporters at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium, concluding his two-year national field trials of the poliomyelitis vaccine developed by his former student, Jonas Salk. Francis was chair of the School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology where Salk did postgraduate training.

Over 1,800,000 children participated in the field trials, which were unprecedented in magnitude.

The First Press Release on Polio Vaccine Evaluation Results

The University of Michigan Information and News Service 
3564 Administration Building, Normandy 3-1511, ext. 2623 
April 12, 1955 

POLIO VACCINE EVALUATION RESULTS — FOR RELEASE AT 10:20 E.S.T.

ANN ARBOR: The vaccine works. It is safe, effective, and potent.

Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., UM Director of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine Evaluation Center, told an anxious world of parents that the Salk vaccine has been proved to be up to 80-90 percent effective in preventing paralytic polio.

At a meeting of over 500 scientists and physicians and before the penetrating eyes of cameras and powerful spotlights, Dr. Francis spoke on the effectiveness of the Salk vaccine. The meeting was held at the Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor under the joint sponsorship of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the University of Michigan.

Dr. Francis declared the vaccine had produced “an extremely successful effect” among bulbar-patients in the areas where vaccine and an inert substance had been tried interchangeably.

Financed by nearly one million dollars worth of dimes which have been donated to the National Foundation, the Francis Report may slow down what has become a double-time march of disease to a snail’s pace.

In strong statistical language the historic trial of a vaccine and its subsequent analysis was revealed. Over 113 pages in length, the Report at long last called a halt to speculations and finally re-enforced laboratory findings with concrete field evidence. There can be no doubt now that children can be inoculated successfully against polio.

There can be no doubt that humanity can pull itself up from its own bootstraps and protect its children from the insidious invasion of ultramicroscopic disease.

For one thing what was feared turned out to be unfounded — the vaccine proved incredibly safe. Reactions were nearly negligible. Only 0.4 percent of the vaccinated children suffered minor reactions. An even smaller percent (0.004-0.006) suffered so-called “major reactions.” Read more from University of Michigan.

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