Polio pioneers: The 1.6 million US children who participated in the first field trial of Jonas Salk’s vaccine

In the early 1950s, polio terrorised American families, especially during summer outbreaks that surged to around 58,000 cases and carried a mortality rate near 5%, with paralysis affecting up to 25% of those infected. This is the story of how it was eradicated.

Amid this backdrop, 1954 saw the launch of an ambitious, first-of-its-kind trial: the Salk vaccine was tested on over 1.6 million schoolchildren. Dubbed “Polio Pioneers,” the children were enrolled en masse by their parents, driven by dread of the disease, past failures in finding a breakthrough, and hope for a cure.

Jonas Salk’s approach to the project in the late 1940s marked a significant shift in methodology. He adopted randomised, placebo-controlled trials—a debated but ultimately sound strategy—to generate high-quality data on a large scale.

Launched by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, the trial involved millions across 44 states and proved that the vaccine was safe and around 90% effective against paralytic polio.

Following its approval in April 1955, the rapid rollout led to over 85% vaccination coverage among U.S. children by 1961, with cases plummeting from 58,000 to under 5,800 by 1960. The U.S. virtually eliminated polio by the late 1970s.

However, despite this remarkable success, unvaccinated pockets remained. A polio resurgence in 2022–2023 in Rockland County, New York shocked many and coincided with RFK Jr.’s abhorrent views about the polio vaccine—views that are completely at odds with medical consensus and modern research. He called the first vaccine success “mythology” and suggested that its introduction may have triggered a wave of cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.”

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By 1965, the oral, live-virus vaccine (OPV) developed by Albert Sabin had usurped Salk’s methods, but that did not halt his reputation as the person who drove this parent/children campaign across the States and told the world that science was to be believed.

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