Vaccines Almost Eradicated Polio. Now A Disease Like It Is Back.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has confirmed 62 nationwide cases of the polio-esque neurological disorder acute flaccid myelitis (AFM). Three patients are being treated in the Children’s Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the system where Jonas Salk first developed the polio vaccine.



Child suffers from polio.

Acute Flaccid Myelitis

AFM is an infectious disease, though the cause of the majority of cases remains unknown. Some develop AFM after a viral infection like poliovirus or West Nile Virus, many of which are preventable through vaccination. 90% of AFM cases have occurred in children, with the average patient being only four years old. The illness begins with weakness in the arms and legs and loss of muscle tone, and can escalate to full scale paralysis and even death.

Fortunately, no deaths have been recorded as of yet. However, the CDC estimates there may be an additional 65 cases nationwide, making this year a record-setter in the spread of this enigmatic illness.

AFM infects the grey matter of the spine, which is composed of the bodies of motor and sensory neurons that control movement and reflexes. Additional symptoms of the disease include facial drooping, difficulty swallowing, and slurred speech.

Déjà Vu

Although there is no reason to fear an epidemic as of yet, the behavior of AFM has an uncanny resemblance to the polio epidemic of the early twentieth century.

The first major polio epidemic in the US occurred in Vermont back in 1894, and by way of public parks and pools, the virus spread like wildfire. By the early 1900s, thousands were falling ill and being placed under quarantine and into the infamous “iron lung,” a booming metal sarcophagus which helped move air in and out of the lungs when one’s muscles could no longer do so.



Iron Lung.

Like AFM, polio largely affected children (who have weaker immunity and, as any parent knows, insist on putting their dirty hands in their mouths). Polio flared up in the summers when children were out and about, similar to the outbreaks of AFM in the past several years.

And, like AFM, polio remained an unelucidated virus for much of its existence, until the 1950s, when the labors of Salk and many other scientists finally paid off.

The Path to Vaccine

1952 saw an epidemic of polio: 58,000 new cases were diagnosed, and as many as 3,000 had died. However, it was also a year of promise, as Salk’s team at the University of Pittsburgh saw breakthrough results in monkey trials of their recently developed vaccine.





Dr Jones Edward Salk, creator of Salk polio vaccine, 1959-05-28.

Yet cures aren’t built in a day, or a year, for that matter.

While the exigence for the vaccine had been around for decades, what really got the ball rolling on the pursuit was that future-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt fell ill with the disease. Striving to ease the suffering of fellow patients, Roosevelt made his estate available as a treatment facility, and helped to found the March of the Dimes in 1938, which raised millions to help fund the search for a cure.

Some of these funds made their way to Jonas Salk, a former flu-vaccine developer who had become the head of a laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh in 1947. For the next seven years, he and his team worked 16-hour days, seven days a week on the vaccine.

Salk's team used the “killed virus” technique that he had tried with the flu, hoping to produce a vaccine that contained enough dead virus particles for the body to develop an immune response. In order to make sufficient virus particles (since a dead virus would not replicate in the body), Salk’s team had to painstakingly culture and harvest large quantities of polio virus in the lab.

After the vaccine was found to be effective at preventing polio in monkeys, Salk went on to conduct preliminary trials on children with polio, as well as on himself and his own children.

When, in 1953, Salk announced that the vaccine was indeed safe, the March of the Dimes promptly a sponsored a large, nationwide trial on two million school children. A year later, the vaccine was officially found to be both safe and effective. Salk decided not to patent his find in order to make the vaccine available and affordable, forsaking something like seven billion dollars.

In the years that followed, Albert Sabin, another researcher, perfected an oral vaccine that used live, attenuated (inactive) virus, which was cheaper and easier to develop and deliver. Polio has since been eradicated everywhere except Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Vaccination saved us from polio, and very well could reduce the risk of developing AFM.

Both live and dead vaccines are thoroughly tested and carry no risk of autism. Such fraudulent allegations may be allowing for the spread of previously-eradicated viruses, some of which may be the culprits behind AFM.

Following in his Footsteps

Today, in the same city where Salk cured one of the most deadly viruses in history, three children have fallen ill with the eerily similar AFM.

On the same streets and in the same buildings where Salk once labored, researchers and physicians are pouring their hearts and souls into uncovering the molecular workings behind many infectious and chronic diseases, like AFM.

We can only hope that this new, polio-like illness does not reach the same grave heights as had its predecessors. Thanks to vaccines and biomedical research, we have come a long way since the days of polio.

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