Millions Saved, Billions Spurned: The Selfless Scientist Who Gave Up a Fortune to Change the World
On April 12, 1955, people listening to the radio across the United States cheered. On the 10th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s death, a press conference was held announcing the success of clinical trials for a vaccine for polio, or polio, which paralyzed the lower part of his body.
In the mid-20th century, during the Cold War, polio was as much of a fear as a nuclear bomb. In the United States, in 1952 alone, it occurred in 58,000 people, killed 3,145 people, and paralyzed 21,269 people from the waist down. The name ‘polio’ came from the fact that children were the victims, but adults were not safe either. Roosevelt also became infected when he was 39 years old.
On this day (October 28) in 1914, Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine and saved humanity, was born in Harlem, New York City, USA, as the first son of Russian-Jewish parents who did not receive formal education.
At the age of 16, Salk graduated early from a public school for gifted children from poor families and entered the chemistry department at the City University of New York. He was interested in the humanities and dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but his mother encouraged him to pursue a career as a doctor. When I was young, seeing my friends with paralyzed legs and wearing metal braces after summer vacation played a role in my career decision.
Salk graduated from New York University School of Medicine, underwent training at Mount Sinai Hospital, and learned about flu vaccines in the laboratory of Professor Thomas Francis at the University of Michigan. In 1947, he moved to the Virus Research Institute at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and devoted himself to polio vaccine research sponsored by the ‘National Polio Foundation’ established by President Roosevelt. For six years, forgetting about holidays, he researched for 16 hours a day with repeated failures, and on March 26, 1953, he announced in the Journal of the American Medical Association that he had succeeded in developing a polio vaccine. In November of that year, he began a clinical trial with himself, researchers, family members, and volunteers, and a year and a half later, a press conference was held at the University of Michigan to announce the success of the clinical trial.
He rejects ‘exclusive offers’ from pharmaceutical companies and makes his recipe available to the world for free. Thanks to this, polio cases have drastically decreased around the world. In the United States, the number of patients has plummeted by more than 80% in two years. The media estimates that if he had pursued private interests, he would have earned up to 8 trillion won, but Salk pursued public interests, saying, “I have no problem living with the money I have earned so far.” Some critics argue that Salk’s patent revenue would have been minimal because he had no special original technology, but it is clear that if he had pursued profit, he would have made a huge fortune.
He established the Salk Institute in California to assist scientists in their research and campaigned to eradicate global hunger and disease. We also carried out activities that combined medicine and humanities. At the age of 56, he expanded his interests to include art by marrying the painter Françoise Gilot, the former wife of Pablo Picasso.
Salk’s frequent conflicts with mainstream scientists prevented him from receiving the Nobel Prize or becoming a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). However, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, and most of all, he received as much love and respect from people around the world as any other scientist. The interview with star anchorman Edward Murrow on CBS’s ‘See it Now’ on the night he announced the success of the vaccine’s clinical trial on the radio is always refreshing and heartbreaking.
“Who owns the patent on this vaccine?” -murro
“Well, it’s people. I would say, ‘There are no patents.’ “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” -Salk