science · 12 April 1955 · 70 years ago
In 1955, the Salk vaccine against polio was announced to work, and be “safe, effective and potent,” after a year-long field trial. Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr. made the statement at a press conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the tenth annniversary of the death of Franklin Roosevelt (1945), the U.S. president who was a victim of the disease. Dr. Francis was a former professor of Jonas Salk.