History Lesson: Vaccine Trials in the Classroom

摘要

One of the indelible images from the 1954 Jonas Salk polio vaccine trials is that of smiling, middle-class American schoolchildren eagerly lining up to be inoculated. Did these students’ families realize that the safety of the vaccine they were about to receive had been questioned by some of the country’s leading experts? The history of how schools have been used for vaccine trials goes well beyond polio and raises important questions about the evolution of research ethics. This month’s feature in a Public Health Then and Now by Schupmann (p. 1015), explores this story in depth, tracing it backward to diphtheria and forward to measles.