The battle to beat polio.

This is the story of polio over the last 100 years; the impact of the disease is illustrated with children in hospital wearing calipers and the professional competition between scientists in the US. Stephanie Flanders' father contracted polio in the navy when he was 21. He later went on to be one half of a singing duo, Flanders and Swann, performing in his wheelchair. He died when she was 6 1/2 from medical problems brought on by the illness.The first epidemic in the UK happened in Bristol in 1909. Professor Gareth Williams, a historian, shows Stephanie a typical caliper for a child. Children were routinely immobilised which may have caused further problems in terms of limb rehabilitation. Williams demonstrates a series of 'toys' designed to show children what life may be like in hospital. Severe cases of paralysis (when the diaphram was affected) resulted in the patient being placed in an 'iron lung'; mortality was 70%. Karl Landsteiner investigated what he thought would be a bacterium causing the disease; instead he discovered that polio was a virus. The Rockefeller Centre went on to fund the early years of research in the US. David M. Oshinsky, author, describes how laboratory monkeys were infected with the virus. It was erroneously decided that a vaccine was impossible as it was believed the disease was contracted by inhaling the virus. In June 1916, in New York, there was the biggest known global epidemic affecting 27,000 people. Quarantine was unsuccessful; animals were euthanased. 9/10 people of victims were found to be from the middle-classes - leading to the understanding that this was not a disease of poverty. Franklin D. Roosevelt was perhaps the most famous survivor of the disease and he made it his personal mission to find a cure. John Kolmer in Philadelphia worked on a live-virus vaccine. Marcus Brodie followed a course similar to that of research into rabies. The race between these two teams was also in the context of minimum regulation; Dr Paul Ofitt, inventor of the rotovirus vaccine, comments on the significance of a making a breakthrough; both teams took their results to a medical conference and both covered up the deaths of children who died as a result of being immunised; both vaccines were banned. It would be 20 years before a vaccine was available. Lord Nuffield in the UK manufactured iron lungs in his car plants and funded an iron lung for every hospital. Flanders gets into an iron lung to find out what it felt like. Meanwhile in the US, Roosevelt launched a March of Dimes appeal supported by celebrities. David Rose from the March of Dimes archive comments on its success. Public information films also underpinned the message using scare tactics. Hilary Koprowski, funded by industry, developed a live virus which could be ingested. He tried out his vaccine on a group of 'feebled-minded' children in a children's home in the US. In the UK, Gareth Williams (seen earlier in the programme) and his sister became part of group who were volunteered by their parents. In the process of the research, it was discovered that the vaccine could still be live once it passed through the gut into stools. Albert Sabin methodically and scientifically researched the virus. Jonas Salk in contrast, funded by the March of Dimes, took a different approach. A nurse from the polio ward revists her former workplace; close-by was Salk's laboratory. Ethel Bailey was the research assistant and remembers the risks they took handling the vacine. To prevent an epidemic, DDT was sprayed from planes as the only form of defence (and not a successful solution). In Dewitt, a woman remembers her childhood under the threat of polio. Her brother contracted the disease at Halloween; he died aged 6. She also contracted the illness; everything they owned was burned. In 1952, 58,000 people contracted polio in the US. Salk and Sabin publicly declared that each had the better vaccine. Salk publicly injected himself and his family; his son, a researcher himself, remembers this incident. In 1954, 2 million children were immunised with this vaccine. The Salk vaccine went into production; 2 weeks later numerous polio incidents emerged after immunisation - they had received contaminated vaccines and the vaccines were temporarily withdrawn. In 1957 in the US, there was a mass immunisation programme. In the UK, take-up was very slow. Flanders speaks to her uncle who also contracted the illness in Cork, Ireland, aged 6. The vaccine arrived in 1957 and doubts endured after the US contamination scare. A famous football player, Jeff Hall, contracted the disease - he died. Mass immunisation ensued. In 1978 polio was officially erradicated from the UK. The default vaccine in the UK was the sugar lump vaccine using the live virus because it was cheaper and easier to produce. However, it turned out that both vaccines were necessary to eradicate the disease.