2. 1955 polio vaccine not properly inactivated (“cutter incident”)
In 1955, the Salk polio vaccine was approved for wide use. Following successful field trials, batches of the cure produced by Cutter Laboratories in California were ready to be spread across the country. However, instead of the killed virus preparation,the salk vaccine contained the active virus.
Vaccines from those batches were administered to around 120,000 children, and around 40,000 of those children eventually developed “abortive” polio, the symptoms and signs of a viral infection without the paralysis for which polio was known and feared.
According to the data, 56 children were reported to have paralytic polio after getting the vaccine, with five dying. Similar to other dangerous vaccines, this one had low to no confidence in its effectiveness. In the early 1960s, the Sabin oral polio vaccine replaced the inactivated vaccine.
