Polio’s Precarious Future A Review of Polio: The Odyssey of Eradication and an Interview with Dr. T. Jacob John

Dateline 1957. At Brentwood Elementary School, I gravely receive Jonas Salk’s miracle shots, today known as inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). Five years later, at Paul Revere Junior High, I crunch sugar cubes dotted with pink along with other Angelenos who, between 1962 and 1963, collectively ingest 7.5 million doses of Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine (OPV). By now, the upside is clearer. With my own eyes, I have seen children wearing awkward leg braces and read about iron lungs. Soon after my birth, the latter, boiler-like contraptions filled entire wards of Los Angeles County-USC hospital during my city’s last, great polio epidemic