Didn the polio vaccine come from animal experimentation?
Animal experimentation actually delayed this much-needed vaccine throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Polio first broke out around 1835, with victims rapidly becoming paralyzed and dying. In 1840, an orthopedic surgeon wrote that the spinal cord was the seat of infection, a hypothesis that was proven twenty-three years later. In 1908, scientists suggested that a virus was responsible, a virus that might be eradicated with a vaccine. In developing a vaccine, it is very important to determine how the infection enters the body and takes hold. You cannot interrupt its contagion unless you determine its path. Pathologists discovered the poliovirus in human intestines as early as 1912, which suggested it might enter humans through the digestive track. Meanwhile researchers successfully infected animals with polio. This “triumph” wound up postponing the development of an efficacious vaccine by decades. As it turned out, our close relatives the monkeys contracted polio nasally (
