By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
The 58,000 U.S. polio cases in 1952 were comparable to the number of casualties in Vietnam.
Every year.
But then 50 years ago, at 10 a.m. on April 12, came the miraculous Salk vaccine to end paralytic polio in the United States.
The University of Michigan, where Jonas Salk worked before his breakthrough at the University of Pittsburgh, celebrated Thomas Francis Jr., M.D., announcing a "safe, effective, and potent" vaccine that would end one of the most virulent of childhood diseases.
Barbara Groner and Lauren Woodhouse of Dowagiac represented Rotary International at U of M Monday night and Tuesday while Barbara's husband, Dave, was at Pitt with Peter Salk, son of the head of the microbiology department charged by the March of Dimes to cure polio.
The March of Dimes grew out of the National Foundational for Infantile Paralysis, founded in 1938 by perhaps America's most notable polio victim, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were spokespersons for the March of Dimes, appearing on movie screens at local theaters with fund appeals.
Before the vaccine there were iron lungs, invented in 1928.
The steel tank was fitted with vacuum cleaner hoses. Current was alternated and "they blew and sucked, convinced they could operate (an 8-year-old girl's lungs) and allow her to live in that tank," Dave Groner told Dowagiac Rotary Club Thursday noon at Elks Lodge 889.
Polio didn't occur in the winter because the virus can't survive long in cold temperatures.
Nevertheless, an outbreak in February 1945 in Marquette created the need for 14 iron lungs. The Straits of Mackinac were not frozen, the Mackinac Bridge didn't yet exist and there was no way to deliver them.
Carpenters sawed wooden barrels in half and made bellows with rubber, operated by hand in 20-minute shifts to keep the afflicted youngsters alive. One of the improvised devices survives in an Ann Arbor museum.
Sunshine Sanitarium in Grand Rapids had 125 iron lungs operating at full capacity from 1945 to 1970.
Groner recalled that the recently deceased Pope John Paul II partnered with a Rotary International president - two men with decidedly different religious backgrounds - and used their influence to halt seven civil wars so children on each side in places like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka could be immunized.
Groner tweeted a whistle.
When Rotary set about 20 years ago in 1985 to eradicate polio, "We had 1,000 cases per day," Groner said. "In 2004, we had four cases per day. In 1985, it was 123 countries. Today, it's six. Thirty-one thousand Rotary Clubs in 166 countries have donated, by the end of July, over $650 million to the cause of buying vaccine for children.
Groner related the story of Tenley Albright. A polio victim at age 6, she became the first American figure skater to win both a skating world championship (in 1953) and an Olympic gold medal (in 1956).
In 1942, at the U of M, the Defense Department awarded the microbiology department a grant to find a cure for influenza. Salk worked there for five years, but as second in command, "he wanted to be in charge," Groner related. The University of Pittsburgh offered Salk the opportunity he craved.
From 1947 to 1955, the March of Dimes spent $28 million on research and testing "guinea pigs" to cure polio. In 1954 dollars, $28 million represented 15 cents for every man, woman and child living in the United States. Fifteen cents could buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee.
The Food and Drug Administration was brought in on Monday, April 11, 1942, at 6 p.m., and listened to their findings for 2 1/2 hours. The vote was unanimous to use the Salk vaccine worldwide. Four drug companies stood by for the letter of approval that would unleash manufacture within 12 hours.
Two hundred reporters, including Edward R. Murrow, were stationed on the third floor of Michigan's alumni building in the morning, awaiting the embargo of the momentous news to be lifted. "There was fear there would be a panic of parents wanting the vaccine immediately," Groner said.
Reporters hired students to keep phone lines open. There was a mad scramble for news releases.
Genetic DNA may determine a person's physical characteristics, but their "social DNA" is more long-lasting. "Abraham Lincoln has no living relatives. His DNA is gone from the earth. But his social DNA lives in every one of us. What he did for the United States and the world with his thinking, his ideas, how he carried through on things, lives today in the way we approach things," Barbara said.
With an estimated 300,000 polio survivors in the United States, Massachusetts has the highest incidence of polio victims per population of any state. The Smithsonian Institute opened a year-long display in the American History Museum, called, "Polio – Where Has it Gone?"