Clinical Trials
The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis chose Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. at the University of Michigan to implement the first mass polio vaccine trial in 1954. More than 300,000 people, mostly volunteers, including physicians, nurses, schoolteachers, public health officials, and community members, carried out the work.
Polio Pioneer card given to each child, along with a piece of candy, 1954
Polio Pioneers
In 1954, almost 75 percent of reported poliomyelitis cases occurred in people under twenty years of age, and 50 percent in children under ten. The trial’s study population, then, targeted some 1.8 million children in the first three grades of elementary school at 215 test sites. In the double-blind experiment, 650,000 children received vaccine, 750,000 received a placebo (a solution made to look like vaccine, but containing no virus), and 430,000 served as controls and had neither. All were “Polio Pioneers.”
Randall Kerr’s vaccination record card from the 1954 clinical trial
IBM punch card used to tabulate data from the 1954 clinical trial
The study called for all children receiving vaccine or placebo to have three intramuscular injections over a five-week period. About 2 percent of the children also gave blood samples to verify their immune response.
Data from all 1,829,916 clinical trial participants were entered on IBM punch cards and tabulated. The study evaluated every scrap of evidence, from the registration methods of the participants to laboratory procedures to statistical analysis.
