Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

Sharing a positive example of research brings to mind the poliovirus vaccine.  When I was a small child I remember my parents’ fear of polio after a little girl I played with contracted the disease.  Polio was one of the most frightening public concerns of the early 1900s to the 1950s and it was most often associated with children although adults could become infected with the virus.  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012) “Polio is a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease caused by a virus that spreads from person to person invading the brain and spinal cord and causing paralysis” (para. 1).                                                                                      

I can remember the school being filled with children and parents and a very long line as the vaccine was being distributed to the public.  There was the debate about the cube of sugar or the injection and my parents choose the injection for me—so, I received the killed Salk vaccine instead of the Sabin oral vaccine and I started to cry because I didn’t want the shot.  Both, vaccines are still being used throughout the world and polio has been all but eliminated in the United States.                                                                                                                                                        

Salk as a researcher realized since vaccines existed for diseases such as smallpox and understanding that a vaccine must be specially made for the polio virus that “the principles are the same: if your body is exposed to a very weak or small amount of the disease virus, it will produce antibodies, chemicals to resist and kill the virus” (Public Broadcasting System [PBS], 1998).  So, Salk began investigating the poliovirus.  Juskewitch, Tapia, and Windebank (2010, August) “The introduction of the Salk polio vaccine represents one of the most important events in translational science” (p. 5).  There were some serious consequences that resulted from the rapid “bench to bed translation” which was largely as an outcome of the widespread fear and hysteria associated with polio. (p.1).  The medical advance of the polio vaccine was life-altering for children of that time period.  More so than other inoculations the benefits of the polio vaccine were readily apparent as the transmission of the poliovirus had a very short incubation period between the “infection period and disease” (p. 5).  Scientific research continues today to be beneficial to society as new vaccinations are being developed, tested and provided to the public.  

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012). What is polio? Retrieved from http://www.cd.gov/polio/about/

Public Broadcasting System. (1998). People and discoveries: Salk produces polio vaccine 1952. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm52sa.html

Juskewitch, J. E., Tapia, C. J., & Windebank, A. J. (2010, August).  Lessons from the Salk polio vaccine: Methods for and risks of rapid translation. National Institutes of Health.        Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2928990/