The Center for the History of Medicine

Polio Exhibit

40th Anniversary Program of Events

Leaders of the March of Dimes Golden Mile Walk

On Wednesday, April 12, 1995, the University of Michigan, together with the March of Dimes Foundation for Birth Defects, celebrated the 40th anniversary of the announcement a safe and effective vaccine in the fight against polio.

The commemoration began at 10 a.m. at the University's Rackham Building, the same time and place the announcement was made in 1955. Guest of honor at the celebration was Dr. Jonas Salk, whose development of the killed-virus vaccine meant the end of polio in the United States.

Dr. Salk, speaking from the same podium at the Rackham auditorium where the announcement was made 40 years before, used the story of the search for a polio vaccine as a model for what is possible and emphasized the importance of looking back at the past to see how it will affect the future.

Tribute was also paid to Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., the chairman of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health at the time of the polio vaccine field trials. Dr. Francis was responsible for coordinating and evaluating the results of the nationwide vaccine trials.

After the ceremonies at the Rackham Building, Dr. Salk, President James J. Duderstadt, and Jennifer Howse, president of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, led the March of Dimes Golden Mile Walk. The purpose of the walk was to highlight the upcoming twentieth-fifth anniversary of the March of Dimes Walk America, a fund-raising activity for the prevention of birth defects.

References: Remarks by Jonas Salk

Photo Credits:

Leaders of the March of Dimes Golden Mile Walk

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