Albert Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine that has made it possible to get within a hair’s breadth of eliminating polio from the planet. How this medical miracle evolved includes Sabin’s adventures spanning four decades and four continents while dealing with other scientists and leaders with a single-minded determination to conquer polio.
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 most from getting a disease that in the 1950s was personified as “The Crippler” in frightening pre-matinee newsreels. After seeing the film in which the Crippler’s shadow falls over girls and boys at play, seemingly giving them poliomyelitis, children had nightmares, and parents gave money to the March of Dimes.

A consequence of the Sabin vaccine’s success is that generations of people born after polio was wiped out in the Western Hemisphere have little knowledge of the disease or the race to develop a vaccine against it. They might be surprised to learn that only the prospect of nuclear war scared their parents and grandparents more than  a polio epidemic, according to polls taken after WW II. The story of Albert Sabin’s life will help fill in the gaps in the history of poliomyelitis.