“When these two men were born, we knew not that they would change the world — and ask nothing in return. Thank G-d that that they did.”
By Michael Golden
Today is a special birthday. Or course, all birthdays are special in their own way. But not like this one.
On this date in 1914, a child was born in New York City to two Jewish parents who had no formal education. The boy, who was soon a voracious reader, skipped several grades and then enrolled in the public City Colleges of New York at the age of 15.
The young man, Jonas, had intentions to go to law school, but his mother convinced him to go to medical school instead. He stood out at NYU, but not because of his intellect or perfectionism; he wanted to go into research versus medical practice. This was rare.
In his last year of med school, he was involved in a project which determined that the infectivity of the recently discovered influenza virus could be destroyed. The experience hooked him for life on the science of virology.
Fast forward 15 years to 1948, Jonas Salk was contacted by the director or research at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and offered a laboratory, equipment and researchers. He put together a team and started earning large financial grants for his virology lab.
Salk’s work led to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt inviting him to serve on the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. In the early 1950s, the outbreak and grip of polio had the country terrified.
To make a long scientific story short(er), between 1951-1954, Salk worked incessantly to create the vaccine for polio. In 1953, he vaccinated his own children, and the following year testing was done on approximately two million other children — the “polio pioneers.” On April 12, 1955, Salk’s vaccine was announced as safe and effective for universal use (on the 10th anniversary of FDR’s death).
The foundation ended up going into debt to keep funding Salk and his efforts. Once it was a success and the vaccine was distributed far and wide, Edward R. Murrow asked Salk who owned the patent for it. The quiet scientist replied:
“Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
By a Forbes estimate, that patent would have been worth more than $7 billion.
Two other Jewish scientists, Albert Sabin and Hilary Koprowski, were working on polio vaccines at the same time as Salk. Though Salk’s invention defeated most of the complications of polio, Sabin discovered through autopsies that the virus first hit the intestines before it moved on to the central nervous system. He also discovered that it could grow in other tissues — but that meant that cheaper vaccine development was possible.
Albert Sabin and his colleagues worked obsessively between 1956-1960, and the following year their new oral form of the vaccine was available for use. For a time, it replaced Salk’s method of injection. Now it is used more widely in mass immunization campaigns in countries where the virus is a greater risk. Like Salk, Sabin refused to patent his breakthrough discovery.
Since 1988, when The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was created — which more than 190 countries and 20 million volunteers have participated in — polio has been decreased globally by 99.9 percent. Polio remains endemic in only two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. Since 1960, polio immunizations have prevented more than 30 million cases of paralysis. The CDC estimates that the vaccine has saved more than 1.5 million lives.
Salk and Sabin continued working to develop new medicines and vaccines in the decades to follow, including AIDS. Both created institutions geared toward prevention and cures.
When these two men were born, we knew not that they would change the world — and ask nothing in return. Thank G-d that they did.
