Salk and the 1955 polio vaccine field trials remembered.

On April 12, 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was declared safe and effective after field trials involving about 1.8 million American schoolchildren known as 'polio pioneers.' The Deseret News archives note Utah's participation and follow the vaccine's role in dramatically reducing polio.

This article recalls the April 12, 1955 announcement that Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was declared safe and effective. The declaration followed nearly a year of nationwide field trials that involved roughly 1.8 million American children. The Deseret News front page at the time noted Utah's participation in those trials. The story was originally published April 12, 2025 as a look back through the Deseret News archives. Key points: - The announcement date was April 12, 1955, after field trials begun in 1954. - About 1.8 million first-, second- and third-grade children were given a series of three Salk vaccine injections, typically spaced a month apart. - In the early 1950s polio could cause tens of thousands of cases in a peak year, including paralysis and deaths; some patients required iron lungs to breathe. - President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped establish the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1938, and the March of Dimes supported fundraising for polio research. - Dr. Jonas Salk later founded the Salk Institute in 1960, continued biomedical research on diseases such as multiple sclerosis and cancer, co-founded Immune Response Corp. in 1987, and died in 1995. Summary: The 1955 declaration marked the conclusion of one of the largest medical field trials to date and is recorded in the Deseret News archives as a major public-health milestone. The vaccine's approval and subsequent developments, including later oral vaccines, contributed to a substantial decline in polio cases in the decades that followed.