- Person
- Jonas Salk
- Lived
- 1914–1995
- Field
- Medicine
- From
- American
The story
Jonas Salk was born in New York City in 1914 to a Jewish family; his mother had emigrated from Minsk. Polio was then one of the most feared diseases in America, paralysing and killing children every summer. In 1952 the United States suffered an outbreak of about 58,000 cases. In 1948 Salk, at the University of Pittsburgh, began seven years of work to develop a vaccine, funded largely by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the millions of ordinary Americans who gave to its March of Dimes.
When the success of his vaccine was announced on 12 April 1955 he was hailed as a miracle worker. He chose not to patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it, in order to get it to as many people as possible. When the broadcaster Ed Murrow asked him who owned the patent, he replied: 'Well, the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?'
The National Foundation and the University of Pittsburgh had in fact looked into a patent, though not to make money, since they had already committed to give the formula to drug companies for free; their lawyers concluded the techniques were probably not novel enough to patent. Salk's own aim was to maximise distribution. He had little interest in wealth, once putting money in the same category as mink coats and Cadillacs: unnecessary.
A rush to vaccinate began in the United States and in countries including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. By 1959 the Salk vaccine had reached about 90 countries. In the United States, annual polio cases fell from about 35,000 in 1953 to 161 by 1961, and less than 25 years after the vaccine's release, polio transmission had been eliminated in the country.
The vaccine is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, and an improved version of Salk's injected vaccine is the type now used in the United States. In 1963 Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California.
Why it matters
Salk's vaccine ended the terror of polio epidemics, and his refusal to profit from it became a lasting example of science given freely to humanity.
About Jonas Salk
Virologist who developed the first successful polio vaccine; refused to patent it, calling the breakthrough a gift to the world.
More about Jonas Salk
- Jonas Salk founded the Salk Institute in 1963In 1963 Jonas Salk opened the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, a research centre designed by architect Louis Kahn.
- Salk helped develop a flu vaccine for the US ArmyBefore polio, Jonas Salk worked with Thomas Francis Jr. at the University of Michigan on an army-commissioned influenza vaccine that was soon widely used at army bases.
- Salk's vaccine was tested in a trial of 1.8 million childrenThe 1954 field trial of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine involved over 1.8 million schoolchildren, 20,000 physicians and 220,000 volunteers. The children were called Polio Pioneers.
- Salk spent his final years seeking an AIDS vaccineFrom the mid-1980s until his death in 1995, Jonas Salk worked on a vaccine and immune therapy against HIV, applying the killed-virus approach he had used against polio.
- Salk tested his polio vaccine on himself and his familyBefore the national trial, Jonas Salk gave his killed-virus polio vaccine to volunteers including himself, his wife and their children. All developed antibodies with no ill effects.
- Salk called vaccinating every child a moral commitmentFor the rest of his life Jonas Salk campaigned for the vaccination of all children against disease, which he described as a moral commitment.
- Salk's vaccine cut US polio cases from 45,000 to 910On 12 April 1955 Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was declared safe and effective. US polio cases fell from an average of over 45,000 a year to 910 by 1962.
Sources
- Jonas Salk Wikipedia
- About Jonas Salk Salk Institute
- Polio vaccine Wikipedia
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