Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an - TopicsExpress



          

Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to Jewish parents. Although they had little formal education, his parents were determined to see their children succeed. While attending New York University School of Medicine, Salk stood out from his peers, not just because of his academic prowess, but because he went into medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician. Until 1957, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most frightening public health problem of the post-war United States. Annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nations history. The public reaction was to a plague, said historian Bill ONeal. Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned. According to a 2009 PBS documentary, Apart from the atomic bomb, Americas greatest fear was polio. As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt was the worlds most recognized victim of the disease and founded the organization, the March of Dimes Foundation that would fund the development of a vaccine. In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine. In 1948, he undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted him to this work for the next seven years. The field trial set up to test the Salk vaccine was, according to ONeill, the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers. Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial. When news of the vaccines success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a miracle worker and the day almost became a national holiday. His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? The vaccine is calculated to be worth $7 billion had it been patented. In 1960, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is today a center for medical and scientific research. He continued to conduct research and publish books, including Man Unfolding (1972), The Survival of the Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981), and Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason (1983). Salks last years were spent searching for a vaccine against HIV. His personal papers are stored at the University of California, San Diego Library. Sd Chowdhury
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 07:11:46 +0000

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