Dr. Albert Sabin's Discovery of the Oral Polio Vaccine
Dr. Albert Sabin's Research | Oral Polio Vaccine Discovery | "Sabin Sunday" | Sabin Education Center
Born in Poland in 1906, Albert Sabin, MD, and his family left in 1921 to escape anti-Semitism. He came to Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Ohio, in 1939.
Dr. Albert Sabin's Research
Dr. Sabin's research, documented in some 350 scientific papers, would include work on pneumonia, encephalitis, toxoplasmosis, viruses, sandfly fever, dengue and cancer. But his passion was poliomyelitis, and this was where he turned his attention after World War II.
Dr. Sabin first thought the polio virus gained entrance through the respiratory tract, then found evidence that entry was through the digestive system. His studies of incidence showed that, contrary to many diseases, acute polio was rare in urban populations with poor sanitation conditions (as existed in many parts of China).
Return to Top
Follow-up studies showed children in such places had protective antibodies in their blood, though they exhibited no sign of ever having had polio.
Dr. Sabin reasoned such immune children had either contracted the viral infection as infants (when they had partial immunity transferred from their mothers) or been infected by an attenuated or weakened strain of the virus, which had produced immunity without acute symptoms.
Dr. Sabin Discovers the Oral Polio Vaccine
Dr. Sabin scoured the world looking for weak strains of polio virus, found three, and began to develop his oral, "live" vaccine, administered at first on a lump of sugar or in a teaspoonful of syrup.
In 1957 the World Health Organization (WHO) decided Dr. Sabin's vaccine deserved world-wide testing. He was invited to administer the vaccine to large groups of children in parts of Russia, Holland, Mexico, Chile, Sweden and Japan.
But at home in the United States, Dr. Sabin had a hard time convincing the Poliomyelitis Foundation and the U.S. Public Health Service his method was any better than Jonas Salk's "killed" vaccine method.
An advantage of Dr. Sabin's oral vaccine, especially in less developed countries, is ease of administration: no shots. But two other pluses are even more important.
First, the live vaccine gives both intestinal and bodily immunity; the killed vaccine gives only bodily immunity and allows the immune person to still serve as a carrier or transmitter.
Second, the Sabin vaccine produces lifelong immunity without the need for a booster shot or vaccination.
Return to Top
Oral Polio Tests Conducted on "Sabin Sunday"
By the time the US Public Health Service approved testing, some 80 million people outside the U.S. had taken the vaccine. The first US test was held on "Sabin Sunday," April 24, 1960.
Polio is Rare Today
Polio is now virtually unknown in the US and rare in other parts of the world. Calculations show that, in hospital costs in the US alone, enough money is saved each year to more than pay for all the research ever done on polio.
Each year in the US the effects of the Sabin vaccine prevent about 25,000 people from getting polio; prevent about 2,000 people from dying, and prevent about 2,500 people from being completely disabled.
Education Center Named for Sabin
In 1999, Cincinnati Children's named its state-of-the art eduation and conference center after Dr. Albert Sabin.
Return to Top
