[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 42 (Tuesday, April 12, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S3479]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 IN HONOR OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SUCCESSFUL SALK POLIO VACCINE 
                                 TRIALS

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to 
commemorate an historic event that changed the world. Fifty years ago 
today, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., director of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine 
Evaluation Center and founding chair of the Department of Epidemiology 
at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, announced that 
the Salk polio vaccine was ``safe, effective, and potent.''
  That announcement marked the culmination of the most comprehensive 
field trials ever conducted, unprecedented in scope and magnitude. In 
the early 1950s, Dr. Jonas Salk, a postdoctoral student of Dr. Francis 
at the University of Michigan, developed a promising vaccine against 
poliomyelitis in his laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. 
Salk returned to the University of Michigan to work with his longtime 
mentor, Dr. Francis, who led the year-long field trials demonstrating 
that ``the vaccine works.'' More than 300,000 individuals participated 
in the work of the trials, including 20,000 physicians and public 
health officers, 40,000 registered nurses, 14,000 school principals, 
and 200,000 volunteers. More than 100 statisticians and epidemiologists 
tabulated data from the approximately 1.8 million children across the 
United States, Canada, and Finland who were involved in the trial. 
These brave children, who stepped forward to receive a shot not knowing 
if it would be the real vaccine or a placebo or whether it would be 
safe or harmful, are now affectionately known as polio pioneers.
  While we rarely consider the possibility of contracting polio today, 
let me remind you that for generations polio was one of the most feared 
childhood diseases. Poliomyelitis, a neuromuscular disease also known 
as infantile paralysis, is caused by the polio virus. The virus invades 
nerve cells in the spinal cord, resulting in weakness or paralysis of 
the limbs and muscles. Prior to the successful work of Drs. Salk and 
Thomas, no one knew how to prevent polio, and there was no cure for the 
disease. Hot weather in late summer was ``polio season,'' bringing on a 
rash of new cases of paralytic polio each year. In 1916, a devastating 
epidemic struck New York, killing 9,000 people and leaving 27,000 
disabled. For the next 40 years, not a summer passed without an 
epidemic occurring somewhere in the U.S. In the 1940s and 1950s, the 
number of cases reported in the U.S. ranged from 40,000 to 60,000 each 
year. The warmer months of the year were termed ``nightmare summers of 
quarantine and contagion.'' President Roosevelt, who suffered 
personally from the effects of polio, founded the National Foundation 
for Infantile Paralysis, now called the March of Dimes, and called upon 
millions of private citizens to donate dimes to fund the foundation's 
work to fight polio. Today, polio has been nearly eradicated.
  Fifty years ago this morning, before more than 500 scientists, 
physicians, and reporters at Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Dr. 
Francis told an anxious world of parents that the Salk vaccine had been 
proven to be effective in preventing polio. Please join me in honoring 
the success of Drs. Francis and Salk in combating this devastating 
disease.

                          ____________________