Lindsay Graham

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After World War II, fascism had been defeated, but polio had not.

And the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, the March of Dimes, wanted researchers to develop a vaccine, and they wanted it quickly.

Jonas Salk spent two years identifying the three types of poliovirus that made humans ill.

While Sabin continued his own research, the two men did know one another.

What can you tell us about their relationship early on?

So there's an idea that Albert Sabin was in a race with Jonas Salk to create a polio vaccine.

Did Sabin see things in those terms?

But it was the Salk vaccine that was first.

In April 1954, field trials were conducted on hundreds of thousands of children in the United States.

And a year later, on April 12, 1955, the findings were announced at a dramatic press conference.

But Albert Sabin was at that press conference.

What did he say about that time?

So you say Sabin tested his oral polio vaccine in Eastern Europe, but this is during the Cold War.

Where did he find his test subjects?

So you've set the stage.

It's late 1950s in the USSR during the Cold War, and Russian virologist Mikhail Chumakov has samples of Albert Sabin's oral polio vaccine, the understanding of how to manufacture it, everything he needs for a mass vaccination campaign, but he can't get approval for it.

What was the problem?