- Person
- Jonas Salk
- Lived
- 1914–1995
- Field
- Medicine
- From
- American
The story
When the AIDS epidemic emerged in the 1980s, Jonas Salk was already in his seventies and could have retired with every honour medicine could offer. He was founding director of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, where his own laboratory group studied the immune aspects of cancer and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Instead of stepping back, beginning in the mid-1980s, he turned to the search for a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
He co-founded the Immune Response Corporation with Kevin Kimberlin and developed Remune, invented in 1987, the first therapeutic HIV vaccine based on a killed whole virus. It was made from HIV that had been chemically inactivated and irradiated to destroy its genetic material. The idea echoed his polio work: use a killed virus to train the immune system to fight infection. Unlike a preventive vaccine, Remune was meant to strengthen the immune response of people already infected.
Salk had long believed that the immune system could be taught to do more. In the 1960s colleagues at his institute speculated that understanding how cells are triggered to make antibodies might one day allow a single vaccine to protect a child against many diseases. He told a cousin in 1984 that he was optimistic ways to prevent most human and animal diseases would eventually be found, and that a risk-free society would become a dead-end society.
Salk focused on this research in the last years of his life, until his death from heart failure in La Jolla on 23 June 1995 at the age of 80. Trials of Remune continued after his death, but most showed no clear benefit, the product did not reach the market and the project was discontinued in 2007.
Still, Salk's late-career commitment showed the same willingness to tackle the most frightening disease of the age that had defined his work on polio.
Why it matters
Salk's AIDS research reflected a lifelong belief that vaccines could protect people from even the most feared epidemics.
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 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 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
- Remune 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.