- Person
- Jonas Salk
- Lived
- 1914–1995
- Field
- Medicine
- From
- American
The story
Many scientists in the early 1950s believed that only a live, weakened virus could give lasting immunity against polio; Albert Sabin was developing such a vaccine. Jonas Salk disagreed. He was convinced that a vaccine made from killed poliovirus could protect people without any risk of infecting them. Working at the University of Pittsburgh with a team that included Julius Youngner, Byron Bennett, L. James Lewis and Lorraine Friedman, he grew the virus and inactivated it with formalin.
After successful tests on laboratory animals, he began human testing near Pittsburgh. On 2 July 1952, with the help of staff at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, he injected 43 children with his vaccine. To show his confidence in the vaccine, he also gave it to volunteers who had never had polio, including himself, a laboratory scientist, his wife and their three sons. He vaccinated his own children in 1953. According to the Salk Institute, every one of them developed anti-polio antibodies and none had a negative reaction.
On 26 March 1953 Salk went on CBS radio to report a successful test on a small group of adults and children, and two days later the results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Further testing followed at Arsenal Elementary School and the Watson Home in Pittsburgh from February 1954.
Those early results gave the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis the confidence to organise a nationwide field trial in 1954, involving more than 1.8 million schoolchildren. Salk's approach, using a killed rather than a live virus, also meant that the vaccine itself could not cause the disease it was designed to prevent, a reassurance that mattered greatly to frightened parents.
His three sons grew up to work in medicine and science: Peter became a physician and part-time professor of infectious diseases, Darrell worked on vaccines and genetics, and Jonathan became a psychiatrist.
Why it matters
Salk's willingness to vaccinate his own family helped build public trust in a vaccine that would soon protect millions of children.
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 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 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
- Polio vaccine Wikipedia
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