Polio vaccine: Information from Answers.com::
Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected Amid this U.S. polio epidemic, millions of dollars were invested in finding
http://www.answers.com/topic/polio-vaccineHOME |
Source: http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080630/APC0101/806300502/1979/APC0404
1955: Polio epidemic creates summer of fear
Play brings Fox Cities' strife back to life
APPLETON — Outagamie County's "summer of fear" unfolded stealthily. A few cases of polio in early June 1955 drew little notice, and 12 a month later was about par for the time.
But the number of afflicted doubled the weekend of July 23-24, and by Aug. 2 the toll had grown to 89.
Panicked officials closed pools and playgrounds. Neenah sprayed for mosquitoes. Kaukauna's mayor ordered more frequent garbage pickup. Still, by the end of August, the virus had sickened 221 people, most of them children. It crippled many and killed others, and for reasons still unexplained, it hit Outagamie County harder that summer than any place else in the country.
"It was a long summer," says Dave Stringham, who was 8 in 1955 when he lived on Drew Street in Appleton.
"We had to stay in the yard except when we went to help our mom at the grocery store, and even that was limited."
"Quarantine," part of a museum theater production this summer at The History Museum at the Castle in Appleton, recalls the terror, suspicion, and ultimately, cautious hope of that summer. The brief play dramatizes a mother's tormented choice between inoculating her son against the killer with a new vaccine or leaving his health to fate.
CNN.com - Polio vaccine marks 50th anniversary - Apr 12, 2005::
It's hard for younger Americans to grasp the fear that polio engendered during the Thousands of cases were reported in Massachusetts the summer of 1955,
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/04/12/polio.vaccine/index.htmlHOME |
"Having seen it performed a number of times, and hearing the conversation it creates, it really does elicit a very emotional response from people who lived through it," said Matt Carpenter, museum deputy director and curator of collections. "We hear it quite frequently, how frightening and how significant that summer was in people's lives."
Development of vaccine::
Apr 12, 2005 On April 12, 1955 Salk's polio vaccine was deemed to be "safe, American children before the beginning of the dangerous summer months.47
http://www.umw.edu/hisa/resources/Student Projects/McCreedy/students.umw.edu/_lmccr9sd/poliovaccine/development.htmlHOME |
The Indianapolis Literary Club 2002-2003: 125th Anniversary Year::
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTMLBurney’s first challenges were the polio epidemic and the threat of the Asian Flu. polio vaccine on April 12, 1955, the tenth anniversary of Franklin D.
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Gail Genereau of Appleton was 4. Jonas Salk's vaccine had just been declared effective that spring, and supplies were scarce. Her parents took her 10-year-old brother in for the shot, but it wasn't available to children younger than 5. Genereau was infected a month before her fifth birthday.
Her 3-year-old sister, Gloria, got polio at the same time. Gloria recovered, but Genereau spent months in an iron lung — a type of medical ventilator — and later, years at a time in the hospital.
"My dad was a dairy farmer. They refused to pick up my dad's milk. He did custom combining for people, and they would leave the check in the mailbox at the end of the driveway," Genereau said. "As soon as I came down with polio, people were afraid to invite the rest of the family into their house. It was like we were shunned. People would go out of their way not to walk near us."
Suspicions about water
One of the epidemic's great puzzles is why it struck Outagamie County with such a vengeance. The infection rate was 128.48 per 100,000, compared with 37.55 per 100,000 in Boston, Mass., the nation's second-hardest hit area.
A Shot in the Dark NOVEMBER 11, 1996 NEW YORK By Pat Wechsler When ::
Caption: A Nation gears up for War: Jonas Salk (left) triumphantly presents his polio vaccine in 1955. A few months later, schoolchildren across the country
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1955 LIFE Magazine Issues For Sale at 2Neat Magazines::
Safeguards for the polio shots. Lessons in creative thinking at MIT are helped by .. Adirondack vacationists go to church by boat for summer services,
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Students at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh studied the epidemic and found infection rates also were disproportionately high in Neenah and Menasha. Of Winnebago County's 110 cases, 73 percent were in Neenah-Menasha. According to Post-Crescent reports from the time, Brown County had 205 cases.
"My guess is that there were old, leaky septic systems and ineffective treatment of drinking water for public use," UW-Oshkosh biology Professor Teri Shors said.
Polio is spread through feces. The pattern of infection seems to flow from Neenah and Menasha north, like the Fox River, Shors said. "The Neenah water source had a history of contamination issues according to the DNR."
Genereau's family farm was on the Fox River in the Town of Rockland.
"My mother always thought it was the river," she said. The mystery fed the fear and suspicion that summer. "You just didn't know where it would strike. It could strike anywhere."
Stringham and his brother, Karl, would tease one of the younger neighbor boys by dangling their feet on his side of their property line.
"He was very upset because you weren't supposed to 'spread germs,'" Stringham said. "The whole thing was very frightening, generally."
The P-C photographed the Stringham brothers on their side of the driveway Aug. 6, 1955, talking to the tormented youngster's older brother, on the other.
The angst subsided only briefly with the joyous news that Salk had invented a vaccine to stop the spread. Just two weeks after it was pronounced safe, cases of polio began appearing among children who had been inoculated in California.
One of the five laboratories licensed to produce the vaccine had inadvertently introduced live bacteria into the medicine. More than 200 children contracted polio from the vaccine. Eleven died.
"Those mothers were told it couldn't happen," the anxious mother in "Quarantine" says.
Ultimately, she chooses the vaccine, as did most parents. Outagamie County reported only 22 polio cases in 1956. The United States hasn't seen a homegrown case of polio in almost 30 years.
Lessons for today
Even so, "Quarantine" has modern relevance.
"These aren't just little vignettes of days gone by," Carpenter said. "As a parent of a 4-year-old, we've gone through the sort of routine immunizations. I read in Time magazine and in Parent magazine the cautions about immunizations, the concerns about mercury and whether immunizations our children are getting cause autism are all very real to me as the parent of a young child.
"Just as parents then didn't know what the right answer was, parents today are doing the same thing, and in the end it's an individual choice they have to make with the best information they can get. Parents today may feel isolated when they are making these decisions, but parents were making them 50 years ago, too."
Susan Squires: 920-993-1000, ext. 368, or ssquires@postcrescent.com
First off, this location is NE Wisconsin.
Most certainly, septage and insufficient drinking water chlorination was an issue:
Genereau's family farm was on the Fox River in the Town of Rockland.
Sewage treatment in Appleton (central metro area in this county) was probably basic at this time (primary settling stage). Septic fields in rural housing was also very basic in design (two-stage tank and drainfield).
The Fox River had severe pollution problems from wastewater discharge from Appleton.
http://www.appleton.org/departments/utilities/wastewater/history
However, this doesn't answer the question of why Outagamie County had such a severe polio outbreak. The article has only half of the big picture.
Polio is number five on my list.
First off, this location is NE Wisconsin.
Most certainly, septage and insufficient drinking water chlorination was an issue:
Genereau's family farm was on the Fox River in the Town of Rockland.
Sewage treatment in Appleton (central metro area in this county) was probably basic at this time (primary settling stage). Septic fields in rural housing was also very basic in design (two-stage tank and drainfield).
The Fox River had severe pollution problems from wastewater discharge from Appleton.
http://www.appleton.org/departments/utilities/wastewater/history
However, this doesn't answer the question of why Outagamie County had such a severe polio outbreak. The article has only half of the big picture.
Polio is number five on my list.
The bolded comment has been on my mind since you said this.
Just curious, what are the other 4 and what list?
Humans:
Influenza
Plague
Cholera
Norovirus
Polio
Flavivirus (yellow fever, dengue, West Nile)
Hantavirus
MRSA
Animals:
Influenza
NDV
BlueTongue
Infectious mechanics thereof.
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