Polio is a highly dangerous virus that took many human lives at the beginning of the twentieth century and later in the 1950s. It can cause not only fever, sore throat, headache, and nausea, but sometimes paralyzes parts of a human body and may even cause death via disabling parts of the breathing system (“What is polio?”, 2017). At the beginning of the twentieth century and later in the 1950s, the number of cases of polio was very high, and there was panic among society.
Fearful of the implications of the disease, many scientists became interested in inventing the polio vaccine. There were a few crucial figures in the history of vaccine development, but Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin are the most famous researchers since they managed to invent vaccines that are widely used nowadays (Plotkin, 2014). The two scientists worked on a cure for polio with different approaches, and both vaccines helped society in fighting the illness. Thanks to their inventions, nowadays, most people reside in areas where there is no wild poliovirus.
Although Sabinaimed to develop a better vaccine, there is still a debate about which way is more beneficial for people. The U.S. prefers Dr. Salk’s vaccine and Sabin’s cure being used in most of the other countries in the world. Sometimes Sabin’s attenuated virus can cause paralysis “after spontaneous reversion to neurovirulence,” so some may say that such a vaccine is unsafe and, therefore, worse (Patel, Zipursky, Orenstein, Garon, & Zaffran, 2015, p. 751). However, I believe that since both vaccines have saved and will continue to save so many lives, it is irrelevant to think of the best one.
References
Patel, M., Zipursky, S., Orenstein, W., Garon, J., & Zaffran, M. (2015). Polio endgame: The global introduction of inactivated polio vaccine. Expert Review of Vaccines, 14(5), 749–762.
Plotkin, S. (2014). History of vaccination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(34), 12283–12287.
What is Polio? (2017). Web.