In this episode, we profile Albert Bruce Sabin, the Polish-American medical researcher whose pioneering work played a decisive role in the near-eradication of polio. Born Abram Saperstejn in 1906, Sabin emigrated to the United States as a teenager, eventually switching his studies from dentistry to virology to pursue a career in infectious disease research.

While Jonas Salk is often remembered for the first polio vaccine, we dive into how Sabin’s approach differed fundamentally. We explain how Sabin developed an oral vaccine using live attenuated virus strains, which—unlike Salk’s "dead" injectable vaccine—multiplied in the intestines to block the virus from entering the bloodstream and successfully broke the chain of transmission.

Key topics covered in this episode include:

• The Cold War Connection: How Sab ...