Kolmer did not describe any monitoring of this experimental vaccination program nor did he provide these physicians with instructions in how to administer the vaccine or how to report side effects. Kolmer dedicated the bulk of his publications thereafter to explaining what he believed to be the cause of the 10+ reported cases of paralytic polio following vaccination, in many cases in towns where no polio outbreak had occurred. Six of these cases had been fatal. Kolmer had no control group but asserted that many more children would have gotten sick. Brodies inactivated vaccine
At nearly the same time as Kolmers project, Maurice Brodie had joined immunologist Dr. William H. Park at the New York City Health Department where they worked together on poliovirus. With the aid of grant funding from the Presidents Birthday Ball Commission (a predecessor to what would become the March of Dimes), Brodie was able to pursue development of an inactivated or "killed virus" vaccine. Brodies process also began by grinding the spinal cords of infectious monkeys and then treating the cords with various germicides, ultimately finding a solution of formaldehyde to be the most effective. By the June 1, 1934, Brodie was able to publish his first scholarly article describing his successful induction of immunity in three monkeys with inactivated polio virus.
Jonas Salk
The first effective polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk and a team at the University of Pittsburgh that included Julius Youngner, Byron Bennett, L. James Lewis, and Lorraine Friedman, which required years of subsequent testing. Salk went on CBS radio to report a successful test on a small group of adults and children on 26 March 1953; two days later, the results were published in JAMA. Leone N. Farrell invented a key laboratory technique that enabled the mass production of the vaccine by a team she led in Toronto. Beginning 23 February 1954, the vaccine was tested at Arsenal Elementary School and the Watson Home for Children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Salks vaccine was then used in a test called the Francis Field Trial, led by Thomas Francis, the largest medical experiment in history at that time. The test began with about 4,000 children at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia, and eventually involved 1.8 million children, in 44 states from Maine to California. By the conclusion of the study, roughly 440,000 received one or more injections of the vaccine, about 210,000 children received a placebo, consisting of harmless culture media, and 1.2 million children received no vaccination and served as a control group, who would then be observed to see if any contracted polio.The results of the field trial were announced 12 April 1955 (the tenth anniversary of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose paralytic illness was generally believed to have been caused by polio).