The first mass polio shots: Pittsburgh, 23 February 1954

The first mass inoculations with Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine were given on 23 February 1954, to children at Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, where Salk worked at the University of Pittsburgh.

They were not the vaccine’s very first doses. Salk had already injected himself and his family in May 1953. Nor were they the famous national trial, which began in late April 1954. Pittsburgh was Salk’s home-town proving ground, and its children were among the first of the “polio pioneers”.

How big was the trial?

About 1.8 million children were enrolled in the national field trial, funded by the March of Dimes and evaluated by Thomas Francis Jr. of the University of Michigan. Only 420,000 received the vaccine; 200,000 got a placebo injection and 1.2 million were simply observed for comparison. On 12 April 1955, Francis announced that the vaccine was 80–90% effective against paralytic polio, and it was licensed that day.

What went wrong after the rollout?

Some of the vaccine contained live virus. Within two weeks of the national rollout, cases of polio appeared in vaccinated children, and all the first cases traced to vaccine made by one firm, Cutter Laboratories. A review of the episode puts the toll at at least 220,000 people infected, including contacts of vaccinated children, 164 severely paralysed and 10 dead. A jury later found Cutter not negligent but still liable, a verdict that shaped vaccine makers’ legal exposure for decades.

Production standards were tightened, and vaccination resumed. U.S. polio cases fell from 14,647 in 1955 to 5,894 in 1956. Polio was eradicated in the United States about 25 years after the Arsenal shots.