Poliomyelitis, also known as poliomyelitis, was an infectious disease caused by a virus that occupied the throat and intestinal tract. It is spread by person-to-person contact, through the stool and sneezing of an infected person. Polio has affected humanity throughout history, attacks the nervous system and can cause varying degrees of paralysis. Polio was very common in the United States and caused serious illness in thousands of people each year. The disease has mainly affected babies and children, but some adults have also developed late cases of the virus. Even one of the greatest presidents of all time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was stricken with polio in 1921 and left paralyzed from the waist down. The creator of the vaccine was Dr. Jonas Salk. Dr. Salk was an experienced scientist who studied at the University of Pittsburgh and helped create influenza vaccines during World War II. He only began researching the polio vaccine in 1948 and only two years later did he have an early version of the vaccine. Salk was so confident and believed in his vaccine that he used one of the first tests of the vaccine on himself and his family. On March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk successfully tested a polio vaccine. He stunned the world by announcing his vaccine on CBS National. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The polio vaccine was such an incredible breakthrough because of the quality and speed with which I worked. In April 1955, the safety of the vaccine was proven and began to spread throughout the country, causing the number of new polio cases to drop to 6,000 in 1957, the first year after the vaccine was widely available. . Comparing this number to just 5 years earlier, 58,000 new cases were reported and 3,000 casualties were caused. The numbers continued to decline, with polio cases falling to more than 100 in the 1960s and more than 10 in the 1970s. Polio was eliminated from the United States thanks to widespread polio vaccination in this country. country. Polio was declared eradicated in the United States in 1979, becoming the first virus to achieve this goal. Dr. Salk's decision not to receive the polio vaccine saved millions of lives and stopped a widespread epidemic considered normal in the United States..