- Person
- Jonas Salk
- Lived
- 1914–1995
- Field
- Medicine
- From
- American
The story
Jonas Salk first became fascinated by vaccines as a medical student at New York University, when he spent elective time in a laboratory studying the influenza virus, which had been discovered only a few years earlier. He wanted to know whether a virus could be killed so that it could no longer infect, yet still train the body to defend itself, and his carefully designed experiments suggested it could.
His guide was Thomas Francis Jr., a Rockefeller Institute researcher who had become the first American to isolate the human flu virus and who discovered the type B influenza virus. Francis headed the bacteriology department at NYU from 1938 to 1941. In 1941 Salk spent a two-month elective in Francis's laboratory at the University of Michigan, and Salk's biographer wrote that he was hooked on virology.
In 1942 Salk went to the University of Michigan on a research fellowship and rejoined Francis, who had become director of the Commission on Influenza of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board and head of epidemiology at Michigan's new School of Public Health. With the Second World War under way, the US Army commissioned a flu vaccine. Francis and Salk perfected one that was soon widely used at army bases, and Salk himself discovered and isolated one of the influenza strains included in the final vaccine. He soon became an assistant professor of epidemiology.
The project taught Salk the methods of vaccine development, which the Salk Institute credits Francis with teaching him. It also convinced him that a killed-virus vaccine could work, the approach he would later use against polio when, in 1947, he moved to the University of Pittsburgh to run his own Virus Research Laboratory.
The partnership continued. When Salk's polio vaccine was ready for its national test in 1954, it was Francis who designed and led the field trial, and the results were announced at the University of Michigan on 12 April 1955.
Why it matters
The wartime flu vaccine protected soldiers from a disease that had killed millions in the 1918 pandemic and gave Salk the training that led to the polio vaccine.
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 chose not to patent the polio vaccineAsked who owned the patent on his polio vaccine, Jonas Salk answered: 'Well, the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?'
- 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'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
- About Jonas Salk Salk Institute for Biological Studies
- Jonas Salk Wikipedia
- Thomas Francis Jr. Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.