KAREN TORGHELE on the Albert Sabin Biography

I had the privilege of interviewing 80 scientists and luminaries to document their experiences for the CDC Oral History of Polio Project. In doing research to prepare for the interviews, I was surprised to find there was no biography of Albert Sabin, developer of the oral polio vaccine. But when I asked interviewees if they had known Sabin, people who knew him didn’t have to tell me—it was revealed first in their facial expressions and coloring. Then hands might run through hair or cover a smile as they remembered their Sabin encounters or stories from others about him. One scientist showed me a copy of the 40-year-old manuscript with the red hand-written comments Sabin penned to tear apart the paper he wrote. The creativity of his criticisms was impressive.

But each recounted Sabin experience ended with admiration of his scientific excellence along with what the researchers learned from him and passed on to others. The stories making up Sabin’s unique life journey and the scientific principles by which he lived are worth preserving for present and future generations. Five years ago, with the help of scores of others, I began.

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But each recounted Sabin experience ended with superlatives describing his scientific excellence and effects of what the researchers learned from him and passed on to others. The stories making up Sabin’s unique life journey and the scientific methodology he developed and research principles by which he lived are worth preserving for present and future generations. Five years ago, with the help of scores of others, I began the first Albert Sabin biography.

WHY AN ALBERT SABIN BIOGRAPHY?

 

Albert Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine that is making it possible to get within a hair’s breadth of eliminating polio from the planet. His other accomplishments and personal adventures span eight decades and five continents as he dealt with fellow scientists, world leaders, wars, politics, and ways to decrease the effects of universal health problems-especially those affecting children.

In the 1960s and for the rest of his life, Albert Sabin was recognized wherever he went and was `revered for the live attenuated polio vaccine he developed and provided worldwide. Mothers were known to kiss his hand or cry in thanks when they saw him. His oral polio vaccine made it possible to eradicate polio from even the most poverty-stricken and densely populated countries on earth. Yet, there is no book dedicated to the story of his life and how he developed the vaccine. In the era of the COVID pandemic, there is much to be learned from Albert Sabin’s methods and public health activism that can be applied to current coronavirus issues and other public health disasters.  

*For an excellent biography of Jonas Salk, who invented the first injectable poliovirus vaccine in 1955 using a killed virus formula, see Jonas Salk, A Life by Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs.

Developer of the Oral Polio Vaccine

DR. ALBERT B. SABIN

At Sabin’s 80th birthday celebration in 1986, he admitted without feigned modesty that over half the world’s population had protective elements in their bodies because of him. His oral polio vaccine kept them from getting a disease that in the 1950s was personified as “The Crippler” in pre-matinee movie theater newsreels. In the 5-minute film, children are seen happily playing in the sun as the grim reaper-type figure approaches and casts a dark shadow over them. The next time we see one of the children, she is sitting in a wheelchair. After seeing the newsreel, children had nightmares and their parents gave money to the March of Dimes.
A consequence of Sabin’s vaccine success is that people born after polio was declared eradicated in most of the world have little knowledge of polio or the race to develop a vaccine against it. They might be surprised to learn that according to polls conducted after World War II, only nuclear war scared their parents and grandparents more than the prospect of a polio epidemic. Those born before the vaccine was available have not forgotten the friends, relatives, and celebrities whose lives were changed forever from the virus they could not prevent from damaging their bodies.

WHY HASN'T ALBERT SABIN'S BIOGRAPHY BEEN WRITTEN?

 Saul Benison was a medical historian who tried. He invested five years during which he interviewed Sabin about details of his scientific and personal life. However, Benison’s planned biography containing the interviews and his commentary was never published, reportedly because the two fought over some aspects of the project. There were a few other attempts to record his life story that did not come to fruition. Sabin’s perfectionism and unfiltered caustic criticism may have made the task too difficult at the time.

The prospect of writing Sabin’s biography is still daunting. One impediment is the prospect of combing through the 400 linear feet of records in the Sabin archives at the University of Cincinnati, where he spent most of his career and donated his papers. The Hauck Center, where they are stored, looks like a police evidence room with shelf after shelf of boxes of letters, pictures, documents, scientific publications, lab notebooks, and microscope slides Sabin stained and studied himself. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, most of the contents are now digitized, so reviewing the pertinent records is more realistic.

MORE ON ALBERT B. SABIN

Presenting the Albert B. Sabin Research Notebook Digitization Project Lecture Series | LibLog (uc.edu)

Examples of stories included in Sabin's biography

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