Today, I am thankful for the smallest US coin and its connection to a global cure.
In 1921, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was vacationing in Maine, when he came down with illness characterized by fever, a facial palsy, and paralysis. FDR was diagnosed with paralytic polio, which would leave him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Despite his disability, FDR remained an active civil servant, ultimately making his way to the Governor’s Mansion in Albany, New York, in 1929, and then to the White House in 1932.
FDR was viewed by many as an incredible stalwart who flourished despite his disability. His New Deal program, Works Relief Program, and Social Security notions would help to revive our nation. His tenacious, can-do attitude and steadfast optimism sparked a recovering nation into believing that anything was possible with a bullish recipe of foresight, diligence, and stamina. In this setting, FDR appealed to the American public in January 1938 to address an epidemic. In the face of poverty tied to the Great Depression, polio has spread widely throughout the US in the 1930s, crippling 10,000 to 60,000 children each summer. So, on January 3,1938, FDA asked Americans to contribute whatever they could to the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis (NFIP), a foundation he founded with his legal colleague, Basil O’Connor, to tackle polio. At any early event, a celebrity singer, Eddie Cantor, joked that Americans should send whatever spare change they could muster to the White House for research against polio, referring to it as a March of Dimes (a play of words on a popular radio show at that time, the March of Time). Well, the American public responded, and millions of dimes (and dollars) poured into the White House.
The research that sprung from the March of Dimes initiative changed the world’s understanding of polio. Among many initiatives, the foundation funded research by a young, aspiring virologist named Dr. Jonas Salk to develop an inactivated vaccine against the 3 polio strains in 1952. The NFIP, still led by Basil O’Connor, then prepped a clinical trial to evaluate the Salk vaccine. He asked a highly respected University of Michigan virologist, Thomas (Tommy) Francis to design and lead the Salk vaccine trial. Over 1.8 million second and third grade children would participate, as would over 100 study staff from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Children from 47 states in the US, as well as Canada and Finland, participated in the trial.
One can only imagine the buzz and excitement in the Rackman Auditorium at the University of Michigan as Drs. Francis and Salk approached the podium and shared the results on this day (Apr 12) in 1955. The vaccine was highly effective in preventing paralytic polio.
Our country has chosen to commemorate the vision behind the March of Dimes campaign by engraving FDR’s bust on the US dime. The Salk vaccine, still used in the US today, reduced the number of polio cases from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,600 by 1957. By 1979, the US successfully declared the eradication of polio. Polio was eliminated from the Americas by 1994, and we now stand on the brink of global polio elimination, with only 94 global cases reported worldwide in 2019.
So, the next time you hold a dime in your hand, be grateful that it stands for so much more than just 10 cents.
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