Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Polio has been in the news a lot
Speaker 1: over the past several weeks after a report in July
Speaker 1: of an unvaccinated person in Rockland County, New York, contracting polio.
Speaker 1: After that, polio is detected in wastewater in New York
Speaker 1: City and also three counties north of New York. Polio
Speaker 1: had been eradicated in the US, and there has been
Speaker 1: similar reporting in other places where it was previously eradicated
Speaker 1: over this summer as well. So we are bringing out
Speaker 1: our episode on polio and the development of the vaccines
Speaker 1: that came close to eradicating it, and a lot of
Speaker 1: points in this episode land very differently two plus years
Speaker 1: into the COVID nineteen pandemic, Like shuttering businesses and quarantining
Speaker 1: people is something a lot of us have lived through
Speaker 1: in recent memory, not something we would associate with the renaissance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we do not need anybody to call previous host
Speaker 1: Sarah and Dablina sweet Summer children. Honestly, most of us
Speaker 1: were so uh. This episode was by previous host Sarah
Speaker 1: and Deblina. Originally came out on November one, eleven. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff You Missed in History Class A production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chalk Reboarding and Debilina. This year,
Speaker 1: during Halloween, I put on a really fun, campy movie.
Speaker 1: I know you like campy movies. This was a Boris
Speaker 1: Karloff movie, but it wasn't one of his more famous
Speaker 1: repertory and it like Frankenstein or The Mummy or something.
Speaker 1: It was called The Ape and it was Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was pretty wild movie. I'm not gonna lie. It was
Speaker 1: about a mad scientist in a small town, but not
Speaker 1: your typical mad scientists who's, you know, like rolling his
Speaker 1: fingers and looking evil. He was a kindly sort of fellow.
Speaker 1: He had a heart and he was trying to cure
Speaker 1: something called paralysis. In the movie, my Netflix Q told
Speaker 1: me though it was polio and I gotta love Netflix.
Speaker 1: I gotta love Netflix, very informative um. But the doctor
Speaker 1: Boris Karloff was trying to cure this paralysis and he
Speaker 1: was going to do so by obtaining a serum, and
Speaker 1: of course, because it's a campy horror movie, it goes
Speaker 1: to the point where he dawns an ape suit and
Speaker 1: goes about murdering people trying to obtain their spinal fluid.
Speaker 1: But I also noticed though that the movie came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty and as silly as it was, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was enjoyable, I recommend it. But as silly as
Speaker 1: it was, it was playing off of a very real
Speaker 1: fear at the time. And that was of course the
Speaker 1: paralysis in the movie Polio as we know it, because
Speaker 1: since polio first started striking in epidemic proportions in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, it had only grown worse and wor
Speaker 1: u and worst, people didn't know how to stop it,
Speaker 1: they didn't know how it spread, and worst of all,
Speaker 1: it was something that usually struck kids in the severest form,
Speaker 1: killing them or paralyzing them for life of an extremely
Speaker 1: disturbing disease. Yeah. In the United States, for instance, polio
Speaker 1: epidemics would sweep across the country each summer, striking rural
Speaker 1: and urban areas, poor and wealthy neighborhoods. Teens and adults
Speaker 1: could get it to um and it was usually actually
Speaker 1: worse for them to stop the spread. Modern cities would
Speaker 1: revert to Renaissance like plague practices, no travel, no trade,
Speaker 1: and they would sometimes put quarantines on the homes. The
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Museum of American History has a New York Times
Speaker 1: clipping from nineteen sixteen about a man who was unable
Speaker 1: to find a physician for his sick child, and so
Speaker 1: he drove around and around until the boy died, and
Speaker 1: even then he couldn't find anyone to take the body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just the fear of catching polio. The
Speaker 1: after effects of the epidemic were also extremely haunting. Kids
Speaker 1: and wheelchairs and leg braces, patients in the dreaded iron
Speaker 1: lung We're going to talk about that a little more later.
Speaker 1: And in the early stages of the disease, the patient
Speaker 1: would often be separated from his or her family for
Speaker 1: about two weeks, followed by very limited contact, you know,
Speaker 1: just an hour or so every now and then. And
Speaker 1: these extended periods of separation made adjusting to life after
Speaker 1: polio with all its consequences, a lot harder. But today
Speaker 1: people if people have any understanding of polio, it usually
Speaker 1: relates to FDR President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who contracted the
Speaker 1: disease as an adult in ninety one. Unless you're living
Speaker 1: in one of the four countries where wild polio virus
Speaker 1: is still present. The fear just isn't there anymore. You
Speaker 1: couldn't put out a movie anymore about this um paralysis.
Speaker 1: It needs to be some other sort of scary, contagious
Speaker 1: virus because there's no longer any reason for somebody to
Speaker 1: contract polio. So we're going to talk about the two
Speaker 1: very different vaccines that have almost eliminated polio, the men
Speaker 1: who created them, and the mass inoculations of the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and the sixties that took place. But first we're
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit about what polio actually is.
Speaker 1: It's paralytic poliomyelitis and is sometimes called infantile paralysis, and
Speaker 1: it's caused by a virus, the poliovirus, which was discovered
Speaker 1: in nineteen o eight by Karl's Landsteiner and Irwin Popper.
Speaker 1: And today we know that the virus takes a fecal
Speaker 1: oral route, meaning that contaminated fecal matter gets into the
Speaker 1: mouth through the hands, or through food, or even through
Speaker 1: droplets from an infected person's cough or sneeze, and once
Speaker 1: the virus is in the mouth, it starts multiplying in
Speaker 1: the gastro intestinal track and lymph nodes. From there it
Speaker 1: spreads to the bloodstream. But here's the thing, that's where
Speaker 1: it stops. For most people, which I didn't know before about.
Speaker 1: People who contract polio don't experience severe symptoms. They might
Speaker 1: feel like they have the flu, or maybe not notice
Speaker 1: anything at all. These people become resistant to whichever strain
Speaker 1: of polio they've contracted exactly. But if the poliovirus keeps going,
Speaker 1: it attacks the central nervous system, destroying the motor cells
Speaker 1: of the spinal cord and brainstem. And this usually ends
Speaker 1: up affecting the limb muscles, so thus pollios association with
Speaker 1: paralyzed legs. But it can also hit the facial muscles,
Speaker 1: or the back and abdominal muscles, causing twisted spines. And
Speaker 1: in the worst cases, it strikes muscles in the respiratory area,
Speaker 1: which in the early days usually meant a death sentence.
Speaker 1: The development of the iron lung in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: helped keep these people alive. Interestingly, if you could get
Speaker 1: through the the acute phase the first couple of weeks
Speaker 1: um in an iron lung, your muscles could usually develop
Speaker 1: enough strength or tone to start being able to breathe
Speaker 1: on your own again, But it took a while to
Speaker 1: get to that point. Even though the poliovirus wasn't discovered
Speaker 1: until nineteen o eight, it's believed to have existed long
Speaker 1: before that. The mummy of a nineteenth dynasty pharaoh, for example,
Speaker 1: who lived between thirteen forty two and eleven ninety seven
Speaker 1: b C. Even shows deformities that are characteristic of polio.
Speaker 1: But still, polio must not have been widespread for many,
Speaker 1: many centuries. It didn't begin appearing in medical texts until
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, and it wasn't until eighteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: that the first epidemic occurred in Oslo. And I think
Speaker 1: that's so interesting that there's this long dormant period essentially, Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean not dormant. People are still getting polio, so
Speaker 1: we believe, but not anywhere like the kind of polio
Speaker 1: they were getting in the twentieth century. The first US
Speaker 1: epidemic didn't happen until eighteen ninety four in Vermont, and
Speaker 1: by that point doctors around the world were starting to
Speaker 1: piece together the fact that you could get polio and
Speaker 1: not have any symptoms or be resistant and not know
Speaker 1: that you had ever had polio, um you know better
Speaker 1: understanding the virus and the disease. But by the nineteen teens,
Speaker 1: epidemics were Polio epidemics were becoming a regular summer occurrence.
Speaker 1: New York City's first epidemic, for instance, happened in nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: It affected nine thousand people and killed two thousand forty three.
Speaker 1: So the race to find a cure for this or
Speaker 1: create a vaccine to prevent it was definitely on. But
Speaker 1: before we go on to discuss the attempts to create
Speaker 1: a vaccine for polio, I think it will help to
Speaker 1: know exactly what a vaccine is, I mean, just in
Speaker 1: case anybody doesn't, and then better understand how people understood
Speaker 1: vaccines in the twenty century, what they were going into
Speaker 1: it with. Okay, So first, here's a scenario for you.
Speaker 1: You had Type one polio before and you didn't get sick.
Speaker 1: It would mean that your body had successfully produced antibodies
Speaker 1: to fight it off. When you encounter the virus a
Speaker 1: second time, your body would know what to do with that. Again.
Speaker 1: A vaccine, of course, essentially attempts to mimic this response,
Speaker 1: tricking the immune system into producing antibodies to fight off
Speaker 1: a virus that's not actually the full strength real deal.
Speaker 1: It's something similar but not as dangerous, or it's weakened,
Speaker 1: or it's in a very small quantities, but it's enough
Speaker 1: to teach your body what to do so that it's
Speaker 1: ready when the real thing comes along, exactly. So humans
Speaker 1: have been likely attempting self vaccination for thousands of years,
Speaker 1: but immunization, as we understand it, really kicked off in
Speaker 1: with Edward Jenner and he inoculated a young English boy
Speaker 1: against smallpox using cow pox, which was not as scary,
Speaker 1: not as deadly as smallpox, but still produced a similar
Speaker 1: response with antibody. So the next big leap happened in
Speaker 1: eighty five when Louis Pasteur used a syringe to vaccinate
Speaker 1: a boy who had been bitten by a mad dog
Speaker 1: against rabies. The boy would have definitely gotten sick, you
Speaker 1: would have died from rabies um and the syringe proved
Speaker 1: to be a way more reliable delivery method than the
Speaker 1: earlier technique of using things like lances and pus from
Speaker 1: pox and you know, kind of kind of gross but
Speaker 1: also kind of unreliable methods. Uh. From their large scale
Speaker 1: immunization started by World War One with dip theoria, and
Speaker 1: it really became something that people were used to, at
Speaker 1: least with a few specific diseases. But even though medical
Speaker 1: researchers knew that a vaccine was also feasible for polio,
Speaker 1: there were some advancements to be made, namely a better
Speaker 1: understanding of the virus and how to grow it in
Speaker 1: large enough quantities for a vaccine. In one Australian researchers
Speaker 1: realized that polio came in different types, and that just
Speaker 1: because you had resistance to one, it didn't mean that
Speaker 1: you couldn't catch another. So this meant that any vaccine
Speaker 1: would need to cover all types. That was why that
Speaker 1: example you Deblina you gave earlier specifically was like if
Speaker 1: you got polio type one, because if you had type
Speaker 1: two and you encountered type one, then you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a resistance. Another big advancement happened in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one when dr Albert Sabin and Robert Ward showed that
Speaker 1: poliovirus wasn't just a disease of the nervous system, even
Speaker 1: though that was what people understood it as since that's
Speaker 1: what it attacked, they realized that it entered through the
Speaker 1: mouth and it first affected the digestive system, So that
Speaker 1: suggested that a vaccine could possibly stop the virus while
Speaker 1: it was still in the bloodstream, before it even got
Speaker 1: to the nervous system and started causing so much damage.
Speaker 1: Then in ninety nine, researchers at Johns Hopkins confirmed that
Speaker 1: the one suggestion that polio came in different types was true.
Speaker 1: There are three main varieties one, two, and three, and
Speaker 1: again any vaccine had to work on all of them
Speaker 1: to really work. And in nineteen forty nine Dr John Enders,
Speaker 1: Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robin showed that the virus could
Speaker 1: grow on other types of tissue than nervous tissue, like
Speaker 1: embryonic skin or muscle tissue. So before this, cultivating the
Speaker 1: virus meant that you had to use live monkeys to
Speaker 1: grow it, which is something that was expensive and not
Speaker 1: available to a small lab having huge amounts monkeys growing
Speaker 1: polio virus. So these three guys ended up winning the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize in nineteen fifty four for their work, and
Speaker 1: that finding was really crucial in developing a vaccine because
Speaker 1: you've got to make large amounts of a vaccine if
Speaker 1: it's going to do anything. So in the worst decades
Speaker 1: of polio paranoia and fear, there were obviously these big
Speaker 1: jumps in our understanding of the virus, but there were
Speaker 1: also some setbacks. In nineteen Dr Maurice Brody and Dr
Speaker 1: John Colemer each conducted separate human trials for their own
Speaker 1: versions of a polio vaccine. The results were completely disastrous.
Speaker 1: A lot of kids contracted polio, a few people died.
Speaker 1: But by World War Two there were again some new
Speaker 1: advancements and how vaccines were made, the introduction of um
Speaker 1: commercially made vaccines for soldiers, manufacturing guidelines, definitely more stringent
Speaker 1: rules about clinical testing. So it was setting the stage
Speaker 1: again for this big revolution we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that happened in the nineteen fifties. Finding polio also became
Speaker 1: an almost warlike matter for Fdr. In He said, quote
Speaker 1: the dread disease that we battle at home, like the
Speaker 1: enemy we oppose abroad, shows no concern, no pity for
Speaker 1: the young. It strikes with its most frequent and devastating
Speaker 1: force against children. And that is why much of the
Speaker 1: future strength of America depends upon the success that we
Speaker 1: achieve in combating this disease, But how are they going
Speaker 1: to combat it with polio? There were two main ways
Speaker 1: to go. They could use an inactive or killed virus
Speaker 1: as the basis for the vaccine, or they could use
Speaker 1: an attenuated or weakened virus as the basis for the vaccine.
Speaker 1: So ironically, both of these ended up working well. But
Speaker 1: there's one that got more of a glory, all right.
Speaker 1: So enter Dr Jonas Edwards Salk, who was born October
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen in New York City to Russian and Jewish immigrants.
Speaker 1: He was the first in his family to go to college,
Speaker 1: and he earned his m d. From New York University
Speaker 1: College of Medicine. But while he was studying there, Salk
Speaker 1: worked under a microbiologist named Thomas Francis Jr. Who was
Speaker 1: attempting to create a flu vaccine, which was later used
Speaker 1: successfully in World War Two. So Salk got this early
Speaker 1: exposure to making vaccines and trying to think about things
Speaker 1: like that, and in nineteen the University of Pittsburgh recruited
Speaker 1: him to work specifically on viruses and ultimately on the poliovirus,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen fifty two his research had paid off.
Speaker 1: He was ready to start testing a killed virus vaccine,
Speaker 1: so a virus that had been killed with formalde hide,
Speaker 1: but um it left enough of the structure intact to
Speaker 1: trigger a response like it would live polio. So first
Speaker 1: he tested it on kids who had already had polio
Speaker 1: and recovered, and they showed boosted antibodies. Then he tested
Speaker 1: it on institutionalized kids who were disabled or mentally handicapped,
Speaker 1: as well as on himself, his wife, and his own kids.
Speaker 1: And I mean that's a good point to note that
Speaker 1: all of this polio research, um, it can come across
Speaker 1: this kind of unethical today because of tests on institutionalized
Speaker 1: kids and tests on prisoners, tests on your own family,
Speaker 1: on on yourself, and also animal testing too. I think
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand monkeys were killed during the
Speaker 1: whole process of making these viruses or making the vaccinations rather.
Speaker 1: So UM, just you know, something to throw out there.
Speaker 1: And another random note, um testing it on his wife
Speaker 1: and kids. It wasn't this wife, but Sulk's second wife
Speaker 1: was Picasso's widow mistress sort of friend, sUAS Guillo, who
Speaker 1: is the mother of Paloma. A little bit of an
Speaker 1: unexpected connection there. I just I thought I had to
Speaker 1: mention it since I sit next to a photo of
Speaker 1: Picasso here in the studio. Actually yeah, I mean well,
Speaker 1: there's another connection, Deblina sitting next to Tesla. I know
Speaker 1: all of you on a podcast someday. I was about
Speaker 1: to say, I think people might like my better. But
Speaker 1: so no one got sick from these trials, and since
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two had also been polio's peak year in
Speaker 1: the United States, with fifty seven thousand, six hundred twenty
Speaker 1: eight cases, it was big news in nineteen fifty three
Speaker 1: when Salk published his findings in the Journal of the
Speaker 1: American Metal Coal Association. So by nineteen fifty four, Salk
Speaker 1: had large amounts of an injectable vaccine and was ready
Speaker 1: for large trials. The pilot program included fifteen thousand kids
Speaker 1: in Pittsburgh, but the main field trial was massive one
Speaker 1: point eight million kids in the US, Canada, and Finland
Speaker 1: in grades one through three at two hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: test sites. The whole thing is directed by Dr Francis
Speaker 1: Salk's mentor, and it featured a double blind process, which
Speaker 1: meant that six hundred and fifty thousand people received the
Speaker 1: vaccine seven hundred fifty thousand received a placebo and four
Speaker 1: hundred thirty thousand received neither. And it took three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand volunteers just to get out there and administer all
Speaker 1: of these vaccines, and the record taking Francis ran a
Speaker 1: tight ship. The record keeping was really immaculate, all sorts
Speaker 1: of follow ups on these people. But by April nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five it was official. Francis declared Salk's vaccine to
Speaker 1: be quote safe, effective, and potent in It became available
Speaker 1: commercially just a few years later, and cases in the
Speaker 1: US of polio dropped immediately, I mean eighty five to
Speaker 1: nine percent. There was one big step back though, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, a major scare when two hundred kids
Speaker 1: were affected by the vaccine. It ended up being traced
Speaker 1: back to one specific manufacturer. There was a not quite
Speaker 1: dead virus included in the vaccine, but ultimately, once it
Speaker 1: was determined it was from one specific place, people did
Speaker 1: go back to Salk's inactivated polio virus vaccine, the i
Speaker 1: p V, and the last US case of polio occurred
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine in an unvaccinated Amish population, and
Speaker 1: Salk essentially became one of the most famous medical heroes
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. I read something interesting. His fame
Speaker 1: almost alienated him from the medical community, just because he
Speaker 1: was so celebrated, and because other researchers felt like they
Speaker 1: didn't get any credit for things that they had contributed.
Speaker 1: So interestingly, Salt continued his research, I think on HIV
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, you know, continuing that viral research. But
Speaker 1: we do have a second vaccine to talk about. We
Speaker 1: said that there were two, and we said that one
Speaker 1: sort of got all the glory. But what about the
Speaker 1: vaccine made not from the killed virus but from the
Speaker 1: weekend virus. Well, if you grew up in the US
Speaker 1: and you were vaccinated before two thousand, you didn't get
Speaker 1: Salk's IPv. Instead, you got Albert Saban's oral poliovirus vaccine
Speaker 1: op V for short. And if you live outside of
Speaker 1: the US or outside of Europe, you almost certainly got
Speaker 1: the o p V. So why are there two and
Speaker 1: what are the benefits and the dangers of each kind? Well?
Speaker 1: Saban was a polished you who had immigrated to America
Speaker 1: as a child, and he had, as we mentioned, discovered
Speaker 1: in ninety one that the poliovirus was not just a
Speaker 1: disease of the nervous system but one of the intestinal track.
Speaker 1: So Saban had a problem with Salts idea for a
Speaker 1: vaccine um even though while if prepared correctly, Salts vaccine
Speaker 1: using the killed virus would definitely not give you polio
Speaker 1: because it had a dead virus in it, it also
Speaker 1: might not confer a lifetime of immunity. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: as strong. So Saban wanted to create something that was stronger,
Speaker 1: stronger vaccine using live poliovirus, although of course that means
Speaker 1: certain risks. So instead of just killing the virus and
Speaker 1: creating a vaccine from there, he experimented on nine thousand
Speaker 1: monkeys and one hundred gems. We did mention there were
Speaker 1: a lot of primates involved here. Before he found a
Speaker 1: strain of the virus that would reproduce in the intestinal
Speaker 1: tract but not in the central nervous system, making that
Speaker 1: Night and forty one discovery pretty important. So this meant
Speaker 1: that he could use a live, weaker strain of the
Speaker 1: virus and from that create a longer lasting vaccine. And
Speaker 1: there's kind of a strange perk about the Saban vaccine,
Speaker 1: and that when people who get it, go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Their feces contains a weak inversion of the virus which
Speaker 1: helps boost the immunity of the population as a whole,
Speaker 1: which made it pretty desirable in certain areas. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that a little bit more. Though. Saban had a
Speaker 1: problem though once he had finally perfected his O p
Speaker 1: V version of the polio vaccine, yes, he was ready
Speaker 1: to go forward with large scale tests right around the
Speaker 1: time that Sulks vaccine was being celebrated as a medical miracle.
Speaker 1: So he couldn't find enough people state side who were
Speaker 1: willing to participate, because why I take a risk participating
Speaker 1: in a trial if there's already a good cure out there, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a prevention exactly. So Saban went to the
Speaker 1: Belgian Congo and in the middle of the Cold War,
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union, and the government gave him a
Speaker 1: medal for this. I mean, that's how badly they wanted
Speaker 1: to handle polio, how bad polio was around the world,
Speaker 1: that they would let this American guy, a a Polish
Speaker 1: jew immigrant come into the Soviet Union and do this
Speaker 1: wide scale medical task. But by the early sixties, Saban's
Speaker 1: vaccine had caught on in the United States too. It
Speaker 1: was cheaper, it was easier to produce UM. One big
Speaker 1: perk is that it didn't require a shot because it
Speaker 1: was an oral vaccine, so that makes it easier to
Speaker 1: administer too. And it became completely vital for world eradication efforts,
Speaker 1: which really took off in the nineteen seventies. And today
Speaker 1: polio is endemic only in Nigeria, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Speaker 1: Of the three types of viruses, polio virus two is
Speaker 1: probably eradicated. The last case to the last known case
Speaker 1: was in India, and polio virus three is probably also
Speaker 1: close to eradication. Yeah, And in two thousand, the US
Speaker 1: switched back to IPv after it was determined that you
Speaker 1: were it wasn't worth the risk anymore having that live
Speaker 1: virus in o p V because your risk of contracting
Speaker 1: polio in North America wild polio was just pretty much nothing. UM.
Speaker 1: You were only likely to to maybe pick it up
Speaker 1: if you went to one of those countries where it
Speaker 1: was still endemics. So the US switch back to IPv,
Speaker 1: but there's still a big hurdle in eliminating polio in
Speaker 1: some of those remaining countries, and that's fear and suspicion,
Speaker 1: just not knowing exactly what U what people are coming
Speaker 1: in to do when they're administering these O pv s. Yes.
Speaker 1: For example, in two thousand three, the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: launched a huge campaign to vaccinate fifteen million and kids
Speaker 1: in Nigeria, but leaders they're spread word that vaccines had
Speaker 1: been mixed with anti fertility drugs and the HIV virus.
Speaker 1: So the World Health Organization has started from the bottom
Speaker 1: up instead meeting with local leaders and winning their approval
Speaker 1: first before going in and doing this in order to
Speaker 1: to try to knock it out in Nigeria. One sort
Speaker 1: of final note on the story and the men involved,
Speaker 1: Salk and Saban both chose not to patent their vaccines.
Speaker 1: I mean, they could have probably made huge amounts of
Speaker 1: money off of this, but they considered the vaccine their
Speaker 1: gift to humanity. Um. I was really I enjoyed researching
Speaker 1: this and learning a little bit more about polio. I
Speaker 1: hadn't known much about Saban at all, which is surprising
Speaker 1: now that that I realized what a huge contribution he
Speaker 1: had to to eradicating polio in most of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty interesting too, And I think, um,
Speaker 1: even in this day and age, it's important for people
Speaker 1: to kind of understand what they're dealing with when they're
Speaker 1: dealing with different vaccines because there's so much misinformation out
Speaker 1: there and debate about vaccines today. UM, I think it
Speaker 1: just helps. The more you know, the better. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
Speaker 1: is out of the archive, if you heard an email
Speaker 1: address or a Facebook U r L or something similar
Speaker 1: over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Speaker 1: Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address
Speaker 1: no longer works, and you can find us all over
Speaker 1: social media at missed in History and you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.