Sacrifices for the Miracle: The Polio Vaccine Research and Children With Mental Retardation

The classic fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm are testaments to the enduring fascinations and fears that children have shared across the generations. The Grimm’s ‘‘Hansel and Gretel’’ and ‘‘Cinderella’’ and Anderson’s ‘‘Ugly Ducking’’ and ‘‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’’ continue to entertain children and to reassure them of the ultimate conquest of good over evil. There are other joys and anxieties of childhood, however, that are more generation-specific. For the children of the 1990s, for example, school violence and the horror of AIDS had an impact unimaginable to previous generations. The decade of the 1950s, on the contrary, is often portrayed as a period of idyllic childhood. What is forgotten in the nostalgic accounts of this period, however, is that along with Davey Crocket and coonskin caps, the children of the 1950s were taught to crouch under school desks in case of a Russian nuclear attack. Another nightmare for the children of that generation was polio. Polio, commonly called infantile paralysis because it most frequently affected children, reached epidemic proportions in the early 1950s. This viral disease paralyzed and killed thousands of children each year. Images of patients and the ‘‘iron lungs’’ used to enable them to breathe terrified both children and their parents. Although the means by which the disease was transmitted was uncertain, swimming pools were closed, public gatherings were avoided, and school cancellations were common during the worst outbreaks (Klein, 1972). Then, in early April 1955, newspaper headlines announced that a safe and effective polio vaccine had been developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. Before the end of that month, thousands of children were vaccinated against polio. By 1961, an oral vaccine for polio had been developed by Dr. Albert Sabin. In 1971, only one case of polio was documented in the United States (Chase, 1982).