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Iron lungs were large metal tube-like boxes that provided breathing support for paralyzed polio patients (two photos below). The iron lung was first invented in 1929 by Dr. Phillip Drinker and Dr. Charles McKhann at Boston Children’s Hospital. Iron lungs were temporary, or sometimes permanent, solutions for polio patients whose paralysis affected their breathing.

Scientists from the FDA Office of Biologics Research and Review (OBRR), which is what the biologics regulation team was called in the 1980s, continued their long-standing involvement in poliomyelitis work in the early 1980s, investigating inactivated poliomyelitis vaccines that had been superseded by the live-attenuated vaccine in the U. S. since the early 1960s, though the former continued to be used widely in other countries. The Office collaborated with others in studies of the inactivated vaccines, which could offer advantages in both cost and dosing schedules and made use of more recent genetic technology in its assessment of the character of the vaccines. They also worked with the World Health Organization to develop international guidelines for testing live polio vaccine viruses.

Late in 1987, what was now called the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) licensed a more potent inactivated poliomyelitis vaccine. Improvements in cell culture and purification facilitated this new, more effective vaccine requiring three vaccinations instead of four. This vaccine was preferred for unimmunized adults and for children with suppressed immune systems.

Although polio has no cure, as you will read in this timeline, vaccines have successfully eradicated polio in the western hemisphere since 1994.

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