Utah's jubilant reception for the polio vaccine
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Headlines from the Deseret News, Vernal Express, Milford News, Price Sun-Advocate, Salt Lake Tribune, Ogden Standard-Examiner and Iron County Record, April 12-14, 1955.
Seventy years ago this week, Utah joined the nation in celebrating the announcement that Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was safe and effective.
- This is Old News, our weekly injection of Utah history.
Why it mattered: Previously there had been up to 21,000 new U.S. cases per year of paralytic polio — overwhelmingly affecting young children.
Zoom in: Utahns were both jubilant and proud.
- About 20,000 kids here had joined in the trials a year earlier.
- Research at the University of Utah was instrumental to identifying the many strains of polio — a necessary first step in developing a vaccine.
By the numbers: On average, more than 16,000 U.S. cases were reported annually in the years leading up to the vaccine's release.
- By 1962, that number was down to 1,000. After that, the number stayed below 100. Polio was eradicated from the U.S. by 1979, per the CDC.
The intrigue: Anti-vaccine sentiments have since become a point of conservative political identity, chipping away at childhood immunization rates in Utah and elsewhere.
Context: Childhood immunizations have sharply declined in recent years — including the polio vaccine.
- Nearly 1 in 10 Utah kindergarteners were not documented as being immunized for polio in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.
The latest: President Trump's health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who visited Utah on Monday to highlight the state's new ban on fluoride in public water systems — has falsely claimed the polio vaccine did not actually result in a drastic decline in infections.
- He also claimed the vaccine may have caused cancers that killed more people than polio did because of some early contaminated doses. Most studies have shown no connection between those early shots and cancer, and researchers have been unable to replicate the one study that did, the AP reported.
Caveat: Kennedy has since vowed not to withdraw the polio vaccine's approval, even though one of his campaign operatives has petitioned the FDA to revoke it.
• During his Senate confirmation this year, he acknowledged the polio vaccine is safe and effective.