70 years after the FDA deemed Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine safe and effective, health officials and community members gathered to celebrate the vaccine and discuss vaccination hesitancy.

The event took place on April 12 in the Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom in the School of Law and featured distinguished medical and public health professionals, including the son of Jonas Salk, who celebrated the lasting impact of the vaccine and discussed issues like vaccine skepticism. 

Chancellor Emeritus Mark Nordenberg opened the ceremony by recognizing the work of Jonas Salk and his research team in developing the polio vaccine at Pitt’s School of Medicine before Allegheny County Councilmember Bob Macy took to the podium and recounted his experience watching his childhood neighbor contract polio.

“I had a neighbor, Betsy Carr, who was part of a family of three, but I never saw her,” Macy said. “And then one day, I saw her with leg braces, with arm braces that she used as canes to get around.”

Macy described getting the polio vaccine as a child and highlighted the University’s role in the vaccine’s development. 

“Being a young person, I didn’t know, [but] one of the things I did know was that I had to go get a shot one day. It was the polio shot, and I still have that scar, but it’s fading with age. That stuff goes away,” Macy said. “But I think it’s important to know that a lot of medical advances have been done right here. We have to be proud of our School of Medicine. We have to be proud of Pitt.”

Mainly affecting children and young adults, poliovirus attacks the nervous system, causing partial or complete paralysis in the arms and legs, affecting muscles in the respiratory system and throat and creating difficulty speaking, swallowing and breathing.

In 1952, the disease infected around 58,000 people in the United States, many of whom were left using walking aids to assist with balance and mobility and full-body breathing apparatuses called iron lungs, according to Macy. After Salk received a grant from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to develop a vaccine for polio, he conducted human trials on former polio patients and his own family, gaining national recognition for the vaccine’s success.

Dr. Peter Salk, the son of Jonas Salk, president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation and professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at Pitt, reflected on “looking back” on the vaccine’s history and planning for the future of medicine.

“[It’s] really heart-lifting to take a moment to reflect on how we need to move ourselves best into the future, to preserve the kind of momentum that has been developed over all of these years for the sake of humanity,” Salk said.

Salk presented slides showcasing the development of the vaccine in Pittsburgh and the trials that took place in the Salk Laboratory, as well as roadblocks to the vaccine’s approval.

Aditi Chaudhary, a senior history and philosophy of science major who plans to attend graduate school at Pitt Public Health to study infectious diseases and microbiology, reflected on the major contributions the University has made to the field of public health. 

“Oftentimes, it’s easy to forget how important Pitt is within national history, and also international history, with vaccines,” Chaudhary said. “We’ve always had such a devotion to science [and] funding for science.”

Following Salk’s presentation, Donald Burke, dean emeritus of the School of Public Health, moderated a panel discussing vaccine skepticism in recent years. Paul Offit, professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania; Terence Dermody, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the School of Medicine; Iulia Vann, director of the Allegheny Department of Health and Salk gave personal thoughts about vaccine hesitancy. 

When asked about his thoughts on the “anti-vax movement,” Offit said he thinks it is “perfectly reasonable to be skeptical” of vaccines and that he sympathizes with parents who have concerns about vaccinating their children.

“You’re asking [parents] to give vaccines to prevent 14 different diseases in the first few years of life,” Offit said. “It can be as many as five shots at one time to prevent diseases that most people don’t see. I would be surprised if there wasn’t any hesitancy. It’s important to ask these questions.”

Offit expressed frustration with “professional anti-vaxxers” like Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he described as a “science denialist” and “conspiracy theorist.” He discussed Kennedy’s claims that vaccines cause autism, citing 24 separate studies that disproved this theory.

“It doesn’t cause autism, [but] you can’t convince people of that because they think it’s just a conspiracy to hide the truth run by the pharmaceutical industry,” Offit said. “That’s really frustrating, because it does a lot of harm. There’s no getting past that. There’s no convincing.”

Vann discussed how historic mistreatment of people of color has contributed to hesitancy around getting vaccines and suggested that public health officials keep this in mind when encouraging citizens to get vaccinated. 

“[For] general people, mistrust is not necessarily irrational — sometimes it can be earned,” Vann said. “Historically, science and medicine have not always been incredibly ethical in the way that we have conducted different studies. So when we’re telling vulnerable communities to come get the vaccine and trust us, we need to be mindful that sometimes we have not done the best of jobs to really protect these communities.”

Following the event, a reception was held on the ground floors and featured a display of artifacts, including photos from the Salk Laboratory and glass tubes used to grow the poliovirus, provided by the University Library System Archives and Special Collections.

Lisa Rossi, a community member who attended the event, said she thought the panel was a “very good conversation,” given the current political climate.

“It’s an important discussion to be had, especially today,” Rossi said. “These are things that we’re all feeling and experiencing right now, and it’s very powerful to hear [their] views. It’s just amazing that all of this happened here in Pittsburgh.”