Could I Have Gotten Polio Twice ?
Question: My husband was in the hospital for 15 months in an iron lung from 1943 1944. He got polio for the 2nd time after getting the vaccine in 1955. He was back in the hospital, that time for 9 months. He remembers being told that he got the virus the second time from the vaccine in the sugar cube. Wasn't the sugar cube the Sabin Vaccine in 1960?
This article mentions the Salk vaccine only being by injection. But, some people remember getting their first vaccine (which would have been Salk) by sugar cube. I got my first (1955) by injection and later one by sugar cube. Was the Salk vaccine always injected (or) was it also given on sugar cubes?
Dr. Bruno’s Response: First of all, the Sabin oral vaccine never was in injectable form and was released in 1962, so it couldn't have caused your husband’s second bout of polio in 1955.
You have to remember that the Salk vaccine was at best 72% effective and that individuals did not develop the same degree of immunity to all three types of poliovirus in the vaccine . It's possible that he got polio twice because he was inadequately immunized against one or two of the three types of poliovirus he didn’t catch in 1943.
What's worse, in what was known as the Cutter Incident, thousands of doses of Salk polio vaccine were distributed in 1955 that contained live poliovirus because the virus was inadequately killed. So it’s possible for the Salk vaccine to h ave given him polio and again because he was inadequately immunized against the types of poliovirus he didn't have in 1943.