© 2005 American Public Health Association DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2004.040790
Charles R. Rinaldo Jr is with the Departments of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology and Pathology, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pa. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Charles R. Rinaldo Jr, PhD, Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, A427 Crabtree Hall, 130 DeSoto St, Pittsburgh, PA 15261 (e-mail: rinaldo{at}pitt.edu).
Poliomyelitis has gone from being one of the worst scourges of the 20th century to nearing eradication in the 21st. This success is well known to be attributable to the Salk inactivated and Sabin attenuated poliovirus vaccines. However, before introduction of these vaccines, William McDowall Hammon of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health led the first major breakthrough in prevention of the disease by using passive immunization in one of the earliest double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. This study provided the first evidence that antibodies to poliovirus could prevent the disease in humans.
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