Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine Polio (Infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis) epidemics were a concern during the summer months for children globally, with records of polio from the Egyptians and Greeks to the 1950s epidemics. In the summer of 1921, this epidemic became notorious when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic contender for the vice presidency, was struck down by polio at the age of 39. Two U.S. virologists, Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh and Albert B. Sabin of the University of Cincinnati emerged as the most prominent among dozens of American researchers on the quest for a
Hepatitis B vaccine the vaccine still in use today. In 1976, Blumberg had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on hepatitis B (sharing it with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek for his work on kuru). In 2002, Blumberg published a book, "Hepatitis B: The Hunt for a Killer Virus". In the book, according to Paul A. Offit—Hilleman's biographer and an accomplished vaccinologist himself—Blumberg... ... claimed that the hepatitis B vaccine was his invention. Maurice Hilleman's name is mentioned once... Blumberg failed to mention that it was Hilleman who had figured out how to inactivate hepatitis B virus, how to kill