Conquering Polio | Beyond the Microscope | 2

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0:56Imagine it's late in the day in December 1949. You're the director of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and you're hunched over to your typewriter in your Manhattan office. It's already dark, but you're too busy firing off memos to your department heads to go home yet. You look up as a man with a shock of white hair enters the room. It's Albert Sabin, the leading polio researcher from the University of Cincinnati. Oh, Dr. Sabin, what brings you here? A new breakthrough in the lab, I hope? No, I need you to explain yourself. Dr. Sabin throws your foundation's latest pamphlet on your desk.

1:30The words, polio can be conquered, are printed across the cover. Well, explain what? Polio can be conquered. Yes, but you're telling people that victory over the disease is imminent. It is certainly not. There are no guarantees that polio will be conquered soon or ever. This messaging is irresponsible. Dr. Sabin, I'm running a multi-million dollar charity, not a scientific journal. The foundation needs to raise public hopes to encourage donations. Donors need to know that their dimes are helping to pave the way for a vaccine. And it seems to me that some of the latest research developments are very encouraging.

2:03Oh, what do you know about research? You may know public relations, but science is a different matter. It cannot be rushed. You pound your fist against your desk, anger rising in your chest. Oh, it can't be rushed, huh? You think the 40 ,000 Americans who suffered from polio this year alone would agree that there's no rush? This has been the worst year for polio on record, and I owe it to the American people to pursue a vaccine as quickly as possible. And I owe it to the people to make sure they get the most safe and effective vaccine possible. I won't sit back while bureaucrats run this process.

2:35Has it occurred to you that bureaucrats like me are the only reason you and your friends have any money to pursue your research? Maybe so, but at least I'm not shamelessly deceiving the public. with a grimace sabin turns around and walks out of your office you lean back in your chair and make a promise to yourself from now on you're going to back researchers who understand that nothing is more urgent than developing a vaccine so you can finally stop polio for good

3:08with the spark cash plus card from capital one you earn unlimited two percent cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power, so your business can spend more and earn more. I'm Raza Jaffrey, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we go back in time to meet Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution. As America fights for freedom from Britain, Arnold emerges as one of the rebels' greatest generals. But when his loyalty is pushed to the limit, he turns spy and devises a plot to shatter the rebellion and make George Washington a prisoner. Follow The Spy Who now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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4:18In December 1949, leading polio researcher Albert Sabin lashed out at Basil O 'Connor, the director of the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis, or NFIP, for publicly claiming that polio would soon be defeated. More than two decades had passed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt recruited O 'Connor to lead the fight against polio. His foundation had raised millions of dollars to pay for patient care and laboratory research, but scientists were still no closer to developing a vaccine that would stop the spread of the disease. And with polio outbreaks on the rise, O 'Connor's patients was wearing thin.

4:52And in a time before the federal government played a major role in public health, the privately funded NFIP had complete authority over the battle against polio. And as the man steering the ship, O 'Connor was determined to speed up development of a vaccine. But he would have to grapple with a simmering feud between two scientific rivals who clashed over how to put an end to polio's cruel reign. This is Episode 2, Beyond the Microscope.

5:21By 1946, Basil O 'Connor was fed up with the slow pace of polio research. Despite rising cases, scientists were no closer to finding a vaccine that could prevent the spread of the disease. So that October, he appointed neuroscientist Harry Weaver as the NFIP's first director of research with the aim of streamlining the foundation's research agenda. Weaver was a bold, pragmatic administrator who was determined to transform polio research from a patchwork of scattered academic studies into a focused campaign for a cure. Because as director, Weaver was appalled by how many of the scientists and research labs that received grants from the NFIP were motivated by academic curiosity rather than the desire to save lives.

6:04So he revamped funding policies to reward results and cut dead weight. And he identified financial barriers that had stalled progress and developed creative solutions like overhead allowances to help universities cover indirect costs. Weaver had become convinced that only a vaccine could stop polio. But he soon learned that many scientists bristled at the idea of the NFIP directing their research, even though the organization was their chief source of funding. They saw the foundation officials as fundraisers and PR professionals who had no business weighing in on scientific matters. So Weaver set out to recruit younger, less-established scientists who shared his urgency and were willing to do the work that he deemed necessary.

6:44One of them was a young researcher named Jonas Salk. Salk was born in New York City in 1914 to working-class Russian-Jewish immigrants. He sped through his studies, entering high school at age 12 and the City College of New York at age 15. He found direction at NYU Medical School, one of the few local medical schools in the 1930s that did not have quotas capping Jewish students. There, he discovered his passion for lab work and vaccine research, studying under his mentor, virologist Thomas Francis Jr. Then, after graduating in 1939, Salk interned at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital, a highly coveted position that one of his friends likened to playing baseball for the New York Yankees.

7:26A few years later, in 1941, he secured a fellowship working under Thomas Francis, who had begun running influenza vaccine experiments at the University of Michigan. This position helped Salk obtain a deferment from serving in the Army during World War II because during the war, the health of America's troops became a major priority, and the U.S. Army was able to recruit Francis to develop an influenza vaccine. At the time, most virologists favored what are known as live virus vaccines, containing a weakened version of the actual virus they're trying to inoculate against. These vaccines trigger mild infections that leave the body with lasting immunity.

8:02And by the 1940s, scientists had successfully developed live virus vaccines for other diseases like smallpox and yellow fever. But in his research on influenza, Salk's mentor Francis favored a different approach. He believed that immunity did not require a natural infection in the body, arguing that a killed virus vaccine containing an inactive virus could safely trick the immune system into producing protective antibodies. He insisted that killed virus vaccines were faster and easier to develop, and unlike live virus vaccines, there was no risk of a properly prepared killed virus replicating and reverting to its original virulent form.

8:39So he focused on experimenting with different methods for inactivating the influenza virus, And working together in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Francis and Salk tested killed-virus flu vaccines on thousands of U.S. soldiers with promising results. But over time, the relationship between the two men frayed. Francis valued restraint, while Salk was anxious to innovate. Salk later reflected, I wanted to do independent work, and I wanted to do it my way. So in 1947, Salk accepted a role as the director of a new virus research program at the University of Pittsburgh. The job had little status. The university did not have a reputation as a major research institution.

9:19Salk's new quarters were cramped basement rooms in the city's municipal hospital with little staff and no graduate students. Still, Salk was eager for the chance to lead his own research. And in December 1947, the director of research for the NFIP, Harry Weaver, visited Salk in his Pittsburgh lab as a part of his mission to find new talent to develop a polio vaccine. Weaver knew that over the years, scientists had isolated dozens of strains of poliovirus from patients. They had seen that many of the strains were so closely related that immunity to one protected against the rest. This meant they belonged to the same virus type.

9:55But scientists did not know exactly how many types of polio existed. If polio was like smallpox, which had just one type, the task of creating a vaccine would be relatively simple. But if polio was like the flu, which had several different types, developing a vaccine would be much more difficult. So to move forward, Weaver knew that scientists needed to solve two main problems. First, they needed to identify the different types of poliovirus. And second, they needed to produce a safe and consistent supply of each type for use in a vaccine. But the leading scientists advising Weaver had no interest in doing the tedious work of identifying poliovirus types, which required a lengthy process of elimination.

10:36Even Weaver admitted, I know of no problem in all the medical sciences that was more uninteresting to Solve. But he still hoped that Jonas Solve might be just the man for the task.

10:49Imagine it's December 1947 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You're the research director for the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis, and you're walking through the basement of the city's old municipal hospital. You push open a door and step inside a dark and cramped laboratory, where you find a man in a white lab coat hunched over a microscope. Excuse me, Jonas Salk? As you approach, you notice his stick-rimmed glasses and receding hairline give him a look of authority beyond his years. He looks up from his work with a questioning stare. Yes, how may I help you? Well, good afternoon. I'm with the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis, and I'd like to know what you know about polio, Dr.

11:26Salk. Oh, well, not much, I'm afraid. My research is in influenza. And how's that going? You scan the bare-bones lab, your eyes falling upon a leak in the ceiling. Salk follows your gaze. Well, yeah, it's been a struggle, I'll admit. I can't seem to get the university to respond to my requests for equipment or staff. Well, maybe I could help you with that. That is, if you agree to work on polio. The National Foundation is launching an ambitious project next year. Yeah, what type of project? Well, if a vaccine is ever going to work, it will need to protect people from every type of poliovirus. So someone needs to go through the hundreds of samples of the virus and classify them by type.

12:05Salk crosses his arms. Oh, virus typing, huh? Grunt work. I didn't move my family all the way to Pittsburgh to become a bean counter, sir. Well, it might not sound glamorous, but I believe I can make it worth your while. This project has the potential to lead to something much bigger, and it will come with a substantial annual grant from the National Foundation. You point to the leak in the ceiling. And if you don't mind me saying, it looks like you could use the money. Well, how much are we talking about? I could start you with$150 ,000 in the first year, and we'll see how we go from there. Salk's eyes widen, his face lightening up with unmistakable excitement.

12:44$150 ,000? Well then, yes, count me in. You step forward to shake Salk's hand, a grin spreading across your face. You're thrilled to find a scientist hungry enough to do your bidding, performing the painstaking work that will finally lay the groundwork for a vaccine.

13:05Jonas Salk had little interest in studying polio. He had never researched the disease or even attended a conference on the subject. And he knew that virus typing was dull and repetitive work that would take years to complete, the kind of work that more senior scientists typically passed on to graduate students. But the 33-year-old Salk agreed to join the polio typing project after Weaver offered him a generous multi-year grant to expand his staff and facilities. Beginning in 1949, Salk's team worked seven days a week, passing 196 strains of poliovirus through rhesus monkeys shipped in from India.

13:40Salk and his team injected the monkeys' brains with fecal samples from human polio victims. And once the animals were paralyzed from the disease, the researchers euthanized them, then harvested the virus from their nerve tissue. Roughly 17 ,000 monkeys would be sacrificed for the virus typing project alone. Next, they inoculated healthy monkeys with tissue samples of known virus strains. Once they had established immunity, they exposed the monkeys to unknown strains. If they proved vulnerable to infection, it meant the unknown strains belonged to a different type of poliovirus than the type they had been inoculated with.

14:16It was an exhausting process of elimination, one that demonstrated Salk's lowly status among researchers. But although he did not have the credentials of other scientists in the polio field, Harry Weaver appreciated his ambition, reflecting Salk thought big. He wanted to leap, not crawl. And Salk pushed his staff to their limits too, putting intense pressure on them to take that leap with him. But while Salk was working away on his typing project, another team of researchers grappled with the second obstacle to a polio vaccine, how to produce a safe and plentiful supply of the virus. In the early 1900s, scientists had developed the ability to grow and nurture living cells in vitro, outside their human or animal hosts.

14:59But early polio experiments showed that polio could only grow in nervous tissue. This presented a major problem, because the nervous tissue of monkeys was known to cause dangerous inflammation of the brain and spinal cord when injected into humans. But in 1948, Harvard scientist John Enders decided to test a hunch. He hypothesized that since poliovirus could also be found in the gastrointestinal tract, then it had to grow in other parts of the body besides nervous tissue. He put this idea to the test, placing strains of poliovirus in flasks of monkey kidney tissue. And to his delight, the virus thrived.

15:36In January 1949, Enders published his results, announcing that scientists could create a safe, abundant source of poliovirus by growing it in kidney tissue. This was a breakthrough, overturning decades of conventional wisdom, one that won Enders and his colleagues the Nobel Prize. So now, researchers like Salk had a safe method for growing poliovirus, and that would allow them to produce enough virus to make a vaccine. But while scientists were unraveling the mysteries of polio in their labs, the disease continued to claim more victims. 1949 was the worst year on record, with 42 ,000 cases reported across America.

16:14The most devastating outbreak was in the West Texas town of San Angelo, which saw 400 cases. Residents there took desperate measures, purchasing fogging trucks to spray the streets with the pesticide DDT, even though scientists had proved that insects did not spread the virus. Local hardware stores hawked their own formulas of insecticide, companies sold polio insurance, and some unscrupulous chiropractors alleged that their services could offer immunity. By the time the outbreak ended, 84 San Angelo residents were paralyzed and 28 were dead. All across the country, Americans lived in fear of an epidemic like San Angelo's.

16:51And that summer, Life magazine described polio as the nation's leading public health threat a sudden and capricious disease that was, worst of all, uncontrollable. But two years later, there was finally cause for celebration. In 1951, Salk completed his typing project. He confirmed that there were three types of poliovirus. Type 1 was the most common, representing 82 % of cases. Type 2 made up 10 % of cases. And Type 3 made up the remaining 8%. Salk and his team had demonstrated that for a vaccine to be successful, it would have to protect against all three types of poliovirus. At long last, the main scientific obstacles to developing a polio vaccine had been removed.

17:34Scientists had identified three types of poliovirus and learned how to safely grow each one of them. These breakthroughs raised hopes that polio could finally be conquered, but with lives at stake, Basil O 'Connor feared a vaccine would still not come soon enough, so he resolved to fund a scientist who would stop at nothing to fast-track a cure.

17:58I'm Raza Jaffrey, and in the new season of The Spy Who, they open the file on Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution. America is fighting to free itself from the British Empire, and one of its foremost generals is Benedict Arnold. He's a smuggler turned battlefield hero and admired for his aggressive tactics. But when a war wound, a new wife, debts and politics test his loyalty to the mags, he turns spy and devises a plot to shatter the revolution and help Britain capture rebel commander-in-chief General George Washington. And that plot would make him the most infamous traitor in US history.

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19:53In the summer of 1951, Jonas Salk traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, to report his breakthrough in classifying the different polio strains at an international conference. NFIP Research Director Harry Weaver arranged the presentation in the hope that it would mark Salk's rise in the field. But at the time, most elite virologists still regarded Salk as an outsider and a scientific lightweight. Few underestimated Salk's abilities as much as Albert Sabin, a longtime polio researcher at the University of Cincinnati. Sabin had helped oversee the virus typing project, and Salk and Sabin traveled to the conference together.

20:29Salk reflected, During the voyage, it became obvious that I was a nice young whippersnapper from Pittsburgh, going to Denmark to report on some drudgery I had performed. I might have failed abysmally, it seemed clear, if Albert had not been pulling the strings and setting the standards. Albert Sabin was born in Poland, but moved to New Jersey at age 15, fleeing violence that erupted after World War I. He rose from humble immigrant roots to become one of America's foremost virologists. He was a brilliant and highly dedicated scientist, but he was also competitive, arrogant, and abrasive. One researcher described him as a mean goddamn bastard.

21:05Another colleague declared, All us who know Albert admire him and detest him at the same time. But no one could besmirch his work on polio. Sabin saw the impact of polio firsthand in 1931, treating patients in New York City's Bellevue Hospital during a major epidemic. Four years later, Sabin joined the prestigious Rockefeller Institute, where he gained a reputation for his work ethic and his ego. Absorbing lessons from his mentors, he became convinced that true immunity against polio required a live virus vaccine, one that was strong enough to generate lasting antibodies yet too weak to cause serious disease.

21:42In 1939, Sabin left the Rockefeller Institute to run his own lab at the University of Cincinnati. There, he had performed a series of autopsies on polio victims that demonstrated that the virus lived in the digestive tract, not the nasal passages as previously believed. This was a crucial discovery that helped crack the code of how polio operates in the body. And having immersed himself in the field, he firmly believed that vaccine development should be led by scientists like himself and not fundraisers and administrators like Basil O 'Connor and Harry Weaver. In December 1949, he admonished O 'Connor for declaring that the conquest of polio was now in sight in an NFIP fundraising pamphlet.

22:21Sabin was afraid that the claim could mislead the public. He told O 'Connor that there was no assurances of ever preventing polio and said that he was irresponsible for suggesting otherwise. But O 'Connor had his own priorities as director of the foundation. In the two decades since he had taken the lead in the campaign against polio, he had become a powerhouse organizer and fundraiser. He had risen far above his working-class roots, with his Park Avenue home and memberships to New York's most exclusive clubs. He hung a large portrait of himself across from his desk, and every day he wore a fresh carnation in the lapel of his tailored pinstripe suits.