What have the Czechs ever done for us ( 3) - The Sugar Cube

The Sugar Cube? Really? Are you kidding me? What's that all about? And why did it play a role in combatting disease?

Well, the sugar cube was important in that it was a symbol of Victorian industrialisation - humans finding yet another way to manipulate science and nature in order to meets its needs.

Also, in the next century, the humble sugar cube played an important role in helping to combat the spread of the devastating childhood disease, polio. How? Because the sugar cube was used to administer the oral vaccine created by Albert Sabin. The earlier vaccine developed by Jonas Salk used a different type of vaccine - a 'killed virus' but it had to be given in the arm.

Because Salk's vaccine was first, Sabin's vaccine failed to attract any attention or finance so, in order to raise the funds to test his vaccine, Sabin went to the USSR - the Soviet Union.

After Sabin's vaccine was trialled in the Soviet Union, and other communist countries, it soon became the vaccine of use ;mainly because of the ease of administration, and it surpassed Salk's vaccine as the vaccine of choice.

The clinical trials of Sabin's oral vaccine in what is now ex- communist countries led to the then Czechoslovakia being the first country in the world to declare that polio had been eradicated.
Sources and credits:
All effort has been made to identify the owners of copyright for any picture used in the making of this video and given full accreditation.

David, Elizabeth. English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Middlesex: Penguin, 1977 (p. 139).

Škovránek,V. and Žáček, K. (1961) Oral Poliovirus Vaccine (Sabin) in Czechoslovakia Effectiveness of Nation-Wide Use in 1960 .JAMA. 176(6):524-526.

Slonim ,D. Svandová ,E. Strand P. and Benes, C. ( 1995) History of poliomyelitis in the Czech Republic--Part III
https://cejph.szu.cz/artkey/cjp-199503-0002_History-of-poliomyelitis-in-the-Czech-Republic-Part-III.

http://kramerius.medvik.cz/search/pdf/web/viewer.html?pid=uuid:38873207-69b8-11e3-93fe-d485646517a0#page=7

https://www.saveur.com/history-sugar-cube/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/10/30/929080692/the-campaign-to-wipe-out-polio-was-going-really-well-until-it-wasnt?t=1607940
Photos:

Daniel Baránek, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12302489

Paul Alexander - Allison Smith/ The Guardian.

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