When Elvis Got the Polio Shot on Live TV

It was a powerful message that dramatically increased uptake

Perhaps it’s burning love, perhaps it’s burning fever. You can prevent all sorts of nasty illnesses, including ones that cause a spike in body temperature, by getting vaccinated. Elvis knew this and used his fame to get the anti-vaccine fuckwaffles to STFU by having the new polio vaccination injected into his arm on television.

--On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down: October 28, 1956--

Sometimes polio was like a mild case of the flu: fever, sore throat, body aches, etc. Other times, the girl next door would no longer go a-walking. In only about 0.5 percent of cases did it affect the central nervous system, leading to permanent disability and even death. But considering how virulent the disease is, that was still a lot of people.

Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh created the first effective polio vaccine in 1952. Prior to that, as many as 20,000 Americans were paralyzed annually by the disease, most of them children. Salk first tested the vaccine on himself and his family. It was declared safe in the spring of 1955, but in the rush to produce it vaccine protocols were not strictly followed by two manufacturers, and more than two hundred people ended up getting paralytic polio via their vaccines, because the solution had not been properly inactivated. Eleven people died. The government took immediate steps, and those were the only incidents of a tainted polio vaccine.

Because the disease mostly affected children, they were the focus of the vaccination program. Teens and adults were choosing to opt-out, believing they weren’t at risk. Tell that to President Roosevelt, who contracted the disease when he was thirty-nine. The vaccine was working, but herd immunity wasn’t being reached because adults weren’t getting vaccinated.

Public health officials reached out to Elvis, whose star was on the rise, to see if he would be willing to get publicly vaccinated to promote Salk’s life-saving discovery. He agreed, and on October 28, 1956, he received his shot on television by Dr. Harold Fuerst and Dr. Leona Baumgartner in the CBS studios in New York. Over the next six months, the polio vaccination rate among teens went from less than 1 percent to 80 percent. Within four years, rates of polio declined by 90 percent. Elvis wasn’t always the greatest guy, but he is credited with playing a major role in this success.

It’s worth mentioning that Salk refused to patent his vaccine, giving it away instead. It’s estimated he gave up about seven billion dollars in wealth with this act of generosity. To both Elvis and Salk, I wish to say thank you. Thank you very much.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.