SABIN, ALBERT B. 1906-

VIROLOGIST WHO DEVELOPED THE UNTIMATE POLIO VACCINE

A Better Vaccine

Albert Sabin developed an orally administered attenuated-virus vaccine against polio that by the early 1960s had completely replaced the dead-virus vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas E. Salk. Sabin's vaccine provided nearly lifetime immunity and furnished the means to eradicate polio ultimately, yet his work did not attract the publicity that Salk's did. This was because Sabin did much of his research in the Soviet Union during the cold war.

Preparation

Polish-born Sabin worked at odd jobs to put himself through undergraduate and medical school. He developed his interest in virology as an intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where he succeeded in isolating a strain of the pneumonia virus. In 1935 he took a position at the Rockefeller Institute and began investigating the polio virus. His early research at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, supported by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, established the relationship between the paralytic form of polio and indulgence in heavy exercise.

Live-Virus Experimentation

Sabin served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, developing a vaccine against dengue fever and vaccinating sixty-five thousand American soldiers on Okinawa against encephalitis. After the war he resumed his research at the University of Cincinnati, where he cultivated the three types of polio in monkey kidney tissues, weakened the virus by allowing it to infect a series of research animals, and then recultivated the strains. He had learned how to make a solution of the virus for oral doses and began administering his vaccine to small numbers of prisoner-volunteers in 1952. When he was denied permission to begin mass innoculations in the United States, he accepted the invitation of the Soviet Union to vaccinate the millions of unprotected children there in 1957 and 1958.

Success

Sabin announced the results of his campaign at the June 1959 meeting of the International Scientific Congress on Live Virus Vaccines. In 1961 the U.S. Public Health Service licensed the Sabin vaccine for use in the United States.