Polio Vaccines
Currently there are two polio vaccines that are in use
throughout the world to fight against polio. Jonas Salk, the man
who invented the first, started his work on a vaccine in 1955.
The vaccine worked in two steps: first a dose of killed polio
virus is injected, and then an oral polio vaccine must be taken
which contains a live but much weakened form of the virus. This
vaccine was first tested in 1957 on humans, and was later
liscensed in 1962.
Then came along another vaccine that was developed by Sabin.
This live-virus vaccine quickly became to more popular route of
the two for 4 main reasons: - Due to it's live state it
has the ability to spread and to infect other individuals who
have not been vaccinated. This sounds bad, but in the spread, it
allows the remote body to build up some immunity to the virus.
- Due to the fact that the oral vaccine performs its magic in
the gut, it works on immunity there in the central system which
in turn reduces the spread of the virus on the outside. If the
polio
vaccine is injected directly into the bloodstream it will
immunize the inividual, however it does not not reduce his or
her ability to spread the virus.
- Everything is a matter of
money these days, especially when it comes to healthcare.
Sabin's "live" vaccine was cheaper than than Salk's "dead"
vaccine.
- The last reason for the increased popularity of
Sabin's vaccine is that the oral vaccine is alot easier to
widely administer to the general population than the injected
vaccine. This means that patients are more likely to complete
the series of vaccinations that are required to attain full
immunity.
Sabin's vaccine is the standard treatment for polio to date. The
dead virus was able to bring Polio to terms, however it was the
live-virus vaccine that was able to completely eliminate the
wild spread of the polio virus in the United States.