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Carl Kurlander

The Polio Story: The Vaccine That Changed the World

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

15/03/2015

BBC Four - The Polio Story: The Vaccine That Changed the World

How Dr Jonas Salk and the 'march of dimes' came together to help conquer polio.

Documentary telling the story of how Dr Jonas Salk and the 'march of dimes' came together to help conquer polio. Featuring interviews with Bill Gates, experts and polio survivors.

It was 1952, and polio gripped the world in fear. There was no known cause, no cure and no help in sight for parents desperate to protect their children. Across the ocean, eager to beat the potentially fatal condition, polio-afflicted President Roosevelt inspired the American public to send in their dimes to fund research.  

In just a few years Joseph Salk, an ambitious 33-year-old scientist working from his basement lab in Pittsburgh, would bring infantile paralysis to its knees and change the course of medical history. Bill Gates is interviewed along with a number of world-renowned experts and survivors to tell the extraordinary story of how Dr Salk and the legendary 'march of dimes' came together to help conquer polio.

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