Cast Your Vote for Albert Sabin by June 12

Albert Sabin, MD, is one of 10 candidates under consideration to represent Ohio in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.

Each state selects two noted residents for inclusion in Statuary Hall. President James Garfield and William Allen, who served as Ohio governor from 1874 to 1876, currently represent the state. Allen’s pro-slavery views, however, recently caused Ohio legislators to seek a replacement statue for him.

All residents of Ohio – no matter what age – are encouraged to vote for one of the candidates by visiting the Legacy for Ohio website at http://www.legacyforohio.org/. Votes must be cast by Saturday, June 12.

Sabin served from 1939 through 1969 as professor of research pediatrics in the College of Medicine and as a virologist at the Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation. His research centered on polio except for several years that he spent in the military during World War II.

The polio vaccine he developed could be taken orally, either mixed with syrup or dropped on a sugar cube. The live virus used in the vaccine was too weak to attack the body but allowed a person to produce antibodies against polio and a lifetime of immunity.

By 1959, Sabin tested his vaccine on almost 50 million people in Russia, Mexico and other places in Europe and Africa where the killed-virus polio vaccine had never been used. With the success of those tests, Sabin began offering his oral polio vaccine throughout Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The first day of the mass vaccination – April 24, 1960 – became known as “Sabin Sunday” and resulted in more than 20,000 children between the ages of 3 months and 6 years being inoculated in Hamilton County.

Sabin’s tests in Cincinnati led the US Public Health Service to approve his vaccine for use and to license its manufacture. Before long it was being used around the globe and helped in the near eradication of polio.

Dr. Sabin bequeathed his papers, medals and other artifacts to the University of Cincinnati upon his death in 1993. They reside in the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions in the Harrison Health Sciences Library. In April, the library received a $314,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize the most historically significant portions of the collection and make them freely available on the Internet. More than 50,000 pages of correspondence and 1,000 photographs will be scanned during the next three years.

Some of the most important items, such as Sabin’s 1965 Lasker Clinical Research Award, are on permanent display in the Vontz Center lobby. An Ohio Historical Society marker honoring Sabin and his accomplishments also stands outside the Vontz Center’s main entrance.