Episode 6: Cell Strain

In the 1950s, polio spread throughout the United States.

Heartbreakingly, it affected mainly children. Thousands died. Thousands more were paralyzed. Many ended up surviving only in iron lungs, a machine that breathed for polio victims, sometimes for years. Scientists raced to find a vaccine. After a few hard years of widespread quarantine and isolation, the scientists succeeded. The discovery of the polio vaccine was one of the brightest moments in public health history. But a vaccine required Americans to believe in a truth they couldn’t see with their own eyes. It also raised questions of access, of racial equity, and of the federal government’s role in healthcare, questions whose legacy we’re living with today.

Image: Vials of the polio vaccine are prepared to be shipped across the country and the world (Getty Images).

Key Sources

We used this cover story from Time magazine to describe Secretary Oveta Hobby. Here’s a photo of her on the cover. This article was published in Time when she resigned. 

This New York Times article from January 10, 1955, was one of the only public acknowledgments of the Black women scientists at Tuskegee whose cell lab was instrumental in developing the polio vaccine. 

Listen to then-Mayor Hubert Humphrey read the Sunday comics over the radio to entertain kids during a “Stay at Home” campaign in 1946.

Watch this educational video about polio from the March of Dimes Archives, and this one about the spread of disease, which was played in classrooms across the country.

This newsreel announces the discovery of the polio vaccine.

We used several sources to determine what Secretary Oveta Hobby said during her many appearances before Congress.

Our actors brought to life parts of an anti-vaccination pamphlet called “The Crime Against the School Child.” 

We dramatized a Cabinet meeting that took place on April 29, 1955. The full meeting minutes are available here.

We used the Congressional Record to find quotes from Senators and Congressmen about the polio vaccine. See page 37 especially.