On April 12, 1955, Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was licensed in the US the same day “researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective”.  It was hailed as “an historic victory over a dread disease…ushering in a new medical age”.  Between 1948 and 1955 several Polio (known officially as poliomyelitis) epidemics had occurred and people were fearful of the “disease”. [1, 4]

US physician Jonas Salk tested his experimental killed-virus vaccine on himself and his family in 1953. Then on “April 26, 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used, for the first time, the now-standard double-blind method.” [2, 3]

Within days of Salk’s “inactivated” polio vaccine rolled out, cases began emerging across America of children who had become paralyzed in the limb that were injected with the new technology vaccine which had known live virus issues, and who’s mass produced formulations had not been tested in humans – The Cutter Incident.  Later forumulation problems also with Wyeth manufacturing (now Pfizer) but CDC covered this up.  [7] The polio case definition was then adjusted!

“The practice among doctors before 1954 was to diagnose all patients who experience even short-term paralysis (24 hours) with ‘polio'”. In 1955, the year the Salk vaccine was released, “the diagnostic criteria became more stringent”  that being “[i]f there was no residual paralysis 60 days after onset, the disease was not considered to be paralytic polio”, thus providing an immediate sharp decline in polio cases, even without a vaccine! [Page 230-33] Many things can cause transient paralysis.

According to the CDC “paralysis” dropped from 15,000 in the 1950’s to 100 cases in the 60’s. Since 1979, no cases of polio caused by wild poliovirus have originated in the U.S., but on July 21, 2022 a case was reported.

In 1961 the Salk vaccine was recalled due to live virus and presence of cancer causing SV40 monkey virus, and was replace with Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine, which also contained SV40. [6]

Prior to 1890 poliomyelitis was known through out history by hundreds of other names. By changing a disease name or case definition you can create or eliminate a disease or epidemic with the stroke of a pen. [5]