From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jonas Salk |
|
| Born |
October 28, 1914
New York, New York |
| Died |
June 23, 1995 (aged 80)
La Jolla, California,
United States |
| Residence |
New York, New York
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
La Jolla, California |
| Nationality |
American |
| Fields |
Medical research,
virology and epidemiology |
| Institutions |
University of Pittsburgh
Salk Institute
University of Michigan |
| Alma mater |
City College of New York
New York University
University of Michigan |
| Doctoral advisor |
Thomas Francis, Jr. |
| Known for |
First polio vaccine |
| Notable awards |
Lasker Award (1956) |
| Spouse |
Donna Lindsay (m. 1939–68)
Françoise Gilot (m. 1970–95) |
| Signature
|
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. Born in New York City to
Jewish parents, he attended
New York University School of Medicine, later choosing to do medical research instead of becoming a practicing physician.
Until 1957, when the Salk vaccine was introduced,
polio was considered one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. In the
postwar United States, annual
epidemics
were increasingly devastating. The 1952 U.S. epidemic was the worst
outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that
year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling
paralysis,
[1] with most of its victims being children. The "public reaction was to a plague", said historian
Bill O'Neal.
[2]
"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, America's greatest fear was polio."
[3] 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 world's 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 himself to this work for the next seven years. The field trial
set up to test the Salk vaccine was, according to O'Neill, "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.
[4]
When news of the vaccine's success was made public on April 12, 1955,
Salk was hailed as a "miracle worker" and the day almost became a
national holiday. Around the world, an immediate rush to vaccinate
began, with countries including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West
Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Belgium planning to begin
polio immunization campaigns using Salk's vaccine.
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?"
[5] 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). Salk's last years were spent searching for a vaccine against
HIV. His personal papers are stored at the
University of California, San Diego Library.
[6]
Early days
Jonas Salk was born in
New York City on October 28, 1914. His parents, Daniel and Dora (née Press) Salk, were
Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants who had not received extensive formal education. According to historian
David Oshinsky, Salk grew up in the "Jewish immigrant culture" of New York. He had two younger brothers, Herman and
Lee, a child psychologist.
[7][8] The family moved from
East Harlem to
the Bronx, with some time spent in
Queens.
Education
High school
When he was 13, Salk entered
Townsend Harris High School, a public school for intellectually gifted students. Named after the founder of
City College of New York
(CCNY), it was, said Oshinsky, "a launching pad for the talented sons
of immigrant parents who lacked the money—and pedigree—to attend a top
private school." In high school "he was known as a perfectionist . . .
who read everything he could lay his hands on," according to one of his
fellow students.
[9]
Students had to cram a four-year curriculum into just three years. As a
result, most dropped out or flunked out, despite the school's motto
"study, study, study." Of the students who graduated, however, most
would have the grades to enroll in CCNY, noted for being a highly
competitive college.
[10]:96
College
Salk enrolled in CCNY from which he earned a
Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1934.
[11]
Oshinsky writes that "for working-class immigrant families, City
College represented the apex of public higher education. Getting in was
tough, but tuition was free. Competition was intense, but the rules were
fairly applied. No one got an advantage based on an accident of birth."
[10]
At his mother's urging, he put aside aspirations of becoming a
lawyer, and instead concentrated on classes necessary for admission to
medical school. However, according to Oshinsky, the facilities at City
College were "barely second rate." There were no research laboratories;
the library was inadequate. The faculty contained few noted scholars.
"What made the place special," he writes, "was the student body that had
fought so hard to get there ... driven by their parents... From these
ranks, of the 1930s and 1940s, emerged a wealth of intellectual talent,
including more
Nobel Prize winners—eight—and PhD recipients than any other public college except the
University of California at Berkeley." Salk entered CCNY at the age of 15, a "common age for a freshman who had skipped multiple grades along the way."
[10]:98
As a child, Salk did not show any interest in medicine or science in general. He said in an interview with the
Academy of Achievement,
[12]
"As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in
things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to
be interested in that."
Medical school
After City College, Salk enrolled in
New York University to study medicine. According to Oshinsky, NYU based its modest reputation on famous alumni, such as
Walter Reed, who helped conquer
yellow fever.
Tuition was "comparatively low, better still, it did not discriminate
against Jews, . . . while most of the surrounding medical schools—
Cornell,
Columbia,
University of Pennsylvania, and
Yale—had
rigid quotas in place." Yale, for example, accepted 76 applicants, in
1935, out of a pool of 501. Although 200 of the applicants were Jewish,
only five got in.
[10]:98 During his years at
New York University Medical School, Salk worked as a laboratory technician during the school year and as a camp counselor in the summer.
[11]
During Salk's medical studies, he stood out from his peers, according
to Bookchin, "not just because of his continued academic prowess—he was
Alpha Omega Alpha, the
Phi Beta Kappa Society
of medical education—but because he had decided he did not want to
practice medicine." Instead, he became absorbed in research, even taking
a year off to study
biochemistry. He later focused more of his studies on
bacteriology
which had replaced medicine as his primary interest. He said his desire
was to help humankind in general rather than single patients.
[9] "It was the laboratory work, in particular, that gave new direction to his life."
[10]
According to Salk: "My intention was to go to medical school, and
then become a medical scientist. I did not intend to practice medicine,
although in medical school, and in my internship, I did all the things
that were necessary to qualify me in that regard. I had opportunities
along the way to drop the idea of medicine and go into science. At one
point at the end of my first year of medical school, I received an
opportunity to spend a year in research and teaching in biochemistry,
which I did. And at the end of that year, I was told that I could, if I
wished, switch and get a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but my preference was to
stay with medicine. And, I believe that this is all linked to my
original ambition, or desire, which was to be of some help to humankind,
so to speak, in a larger sense than just on a one-to-one basis."
[13]
Postgraduate research
In 1941, during his postgraduate work in virology, Salk chose a two-month elective to work in the laboratory of Dr.
Thomas Francis at the
University of Michigan. Francis had recently joined the faculty of the medical school after working for the
Rockefeller Foundation, where he had discovered the type B
influenza virus. According to Bookchin, "the two-month stint in Francis's lab was Salk's first introduction to the world of
virology—and he was hooked."
[9]:25 From that time originates the first controversy (the second one relates in revealing
SV40 in the
rhesus monkey kidney cells used for multiplying poliomyelitis virus for vaccines in 1960
[14][15][16][17])
in Salk's career: Francis and other researchers, one of whom was Salk,
deliberately infected patients at several Michigan mental hospitals with
the influenza virus by spraying the virus into their nasal cavities.
[18]
After graduating from medical school, Salk began his residency at New York's
Mount Sinai Hospital,
where he again worked in Francis's laboratory. Few hospitals in
Manhattan had the status of Mount Sinai, particularly among the city's
Jews. Oshinsky interviewed a friend of Salk's, who said, "to intern
there was like playing ball for the New York Yankees ... only the top
men from the nation's medical schools dared apply. Out of 250 who sought
the opportunity, only a dozen were chosen."
[10]
According to Oshinsky, "Salk quickly made his mark." Although focused
mainly on research, "he showed tremendous skills as a clinician and a
surgeon." But it was "his leadership as president of the house staff of
interns and residents at Mount Sinai that best defined him to his
peers." The key issue for many of them in 1939, for example, was not the
fate of the hospital, but rather the future of Europe after
Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. In one instance, "several interns responded by wearing badges to signify support for the
Allies,"
but the hospital's director told them to remove them lest they upset
some of the patients. The interns then took the matter to Salk. Salk
replied, "everyone should wear the badge as an act of solidarity." One
intern recalled, "Jonas was a very staunch guy. He never took a backward
step on that issue or any other issue of principle between us and the
hospital."
The hospital administrators backed off and there was no
further interference from the director.
[10]
Research career
At the end of his residency, Salk began applying for permanent
research positions, but he discovered that many of the jobs he desired
were closed to him due to
Jewish quotas,
which, according to Bookchin, "prevailed in so much of the medical
research establishment." Nor could he apply at Mount Sinai, as its
policy prevented it from hiring its own interns. As a last resort, he
contacted Dr. Francis for help, but Francis had left New York University
a year earlier after accepting an offer to direct the
University of Michigan's School of Public Health.
However, "Francis did not let him down," writes Bookchin. "He secured
extra grant money and offered Salk a job" working on an
army-commissioned project in Michigan to develop an influenza vaccine.
He and Francis eventually perfected a vaccine that was soon widely used
at army bases, where "Salk had been responsible for discovering and
isolating one of the flu strains that was included in the final
vaccine."
[9]:26
By 1947, Salk decided to find an institution where he could direct
his own laboratory. After three institutions turned him down, he
received from William McEllroy, the dean of the
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine,
an offer which included a promise that he would run his own lab. He
accepted, and in the fall of that year, left Michigan and relocated to
Pennsylvania. The promise, though, was not quite what he expected. After
Salk arrived at Pittsburgh, "he discovered that he had been relegated
to cramped, unequipped quarters in the basement of the old
Municipal Hospital," writes Bookchin. As time went on, however, Salk began securing grants from the
Mellon family and was able to build a working virology laboratory, where he continued his research on flu vaccines.
[9]
Salk's work on influenza viruses has been associated with ethical
controversy. The Associated Press reported that Salk authored a research
paper describing a federally funded study that began in 1942. Salk
injected patients in a state insane asylum in
Ypsilanti, Michigan,
with an experimental influenza vaccine, then exposed them to influenza
virus months later to check the vaccine's efficacy. It is questionable
at best whether any of these patients could have understood what was
being done to them, or why.
[19]
He was later approached by the director of research at the
National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
and asked whether he would like to participate in the foundation's
polio project which had earlier been established by President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, at the time thought to be a victim of polio himself. Salk
quickly accepted the offer, saying he "would be happy to work on this
important project."
[9]
In 1956,
Wisdom magazine ran a cover story about Salk, summarizing some of the reasoning behind his desire to do research:
There are two types of medical specialists. There are those who
fight disease day and night, who assist mankind in times of despair and
agony and who preside over the awesome events of life and death. Others
work in the quiet detachment of the laboratory; their names are often
unknown to the general public, but their research may have momentous
consequences.[20]
Polio research
Postwar era
Polio was a medical oddity that baffled researchers for years. It
took a long time to learn that the virus was transmitted by fecal matter
and secretions of the nose and throat. It entered the victim orally,
established itself in the intestines, and then traveled to the brain or
spinal cord.
[2]
At the start of the 20th century, during the 1914 and 1919 polio
epidemics in the U.S., physicians and nurses made house-to-house
searches to identify all infected persons. Children suspected of being
infected were taken to hospitals and a child's family was quarantined
until that child was no longer potentially infectious, even if it meant
the family could not go to their child's funeral if the child died in
the hospital.
[21]
Many famous people were polio victims; most were able to overcome their disabilities, while others were less fortunate.
Itzhak Perlman, one of the world's finest violinists, was permanently disabled at age four, and still plays sitting down. Actor
Donald Sutherland, President Roosevelt, writer
Arthur C. Clarke, writer
Robert Anton Wilson, actress
Mia Farrow,
[22] singer-musician
Neil Young, Olympic
dressage rider
Lis Hartel, actor
Alan Alda, musician
David Sanborn, singer
Dinah Shore, singer
Joni Mitchell, former Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas, director
Francis Ford Coppola, nuclear physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer, actor
Lionel Barrymore,
[23] and Congressman
James H. Scheuer were infected.
[24]
According to American historian William O'Neill, "Paralytic
poliomyelitis (its formal name) was, if not the most serious, easily the
most frightening public health problem of the postwar era." He noted
that the epidemics kept getting worse and its victims were usually
children. By 1952, it was killing more of them than was any other
communicable disease. In the 20 states that reported the disease back in
1916, 27,363 cases were counted. New York alone had 9,023 cases, of
which 2,448 (28%) resulted in death, and a larger number in paralysis.
[2]:136
However, polio did not gain national attention until 1921, when
Franklin D. Roosevelt, former vice presidential candidate and soon to be
governor of New York, came down with a
paralytic illness, diagnosed at the time as polio.
[25] At the age of 39, Roosevelt was left with severe paralysis and spent most of his presidency in a wheelchair.
Subsequently, as more states began recording instances of the
disease, the numbers of victims grew larger. Nearly 58,000 cases of
polio were reported in 1952, with 3,145 people dying and 21,269 left
with mild to disabling paralysis.
[1]
In some parts of the country, concern assumed almost the dimensions of
panic. According to Olson, "parents kept children home from school,
avoided parks and swimming pools, and played only in small groups with
the closest of friends."
[25]
Cases usually increased during the summer when children were home
from school. "The public reaction was to a plague," noted O'Neill.
"Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this
frightful visitor returned."
[2] As a result, Olson points out, "scientists were in a frantic race to find a cure."
[25] The famous U.S. artist
Andrew Wyeth created a painting in 1948 depicting his neighbor, Christina Olson, who was crippled with polio. The painting,
Christina's World, is considered his most famous work.
[26]
Initial work
Salk became ambitious for his own lab and was finally granted one at
the University of Pittsburgh. However, he was disappointed. The lab they
had given him was much smaller than he had hoped and the university
forced him to conform to many rules which stunted his research as a
beginning virologist.
[27]
In 1948, Harry Weaver, the director of research at the National
Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which later became known as the
March of Dimes, contacted Salk. He asked Salk to join the fight against
polio and research/confirm how many polio types existed. At the time,
scientists had discovered three; they wanted to know if there were any
more types. Although this type of polio research would be repetitious,
boring, and time-consuming, the foundation agreed to pay for additional
space, equipment, and researchers. Once the research was finished, Salk
would be able to keep the facilities and continue his previous work.
Because Salk desperately needed space, he joined the fight. For the
first year, he gathered supplies and researchers. Dr. Julius Youngner,
Byron Bennett, Dr. L. James Lewis, and secretary Lorraine Friedman
joined Salk's team, as well.
[28] Youngner remembers this period:
Jonas was swimming against the current. He was a young whippersnapper
who came out of nowhere, and suddenly is taking on this responsibility,
and not only that, but getting the support of Basil O’Connor, because
Jonas convinced Basil O’Connor that we were going to do it.[3]
Preliminary results
Oshinsky writes that as "headlines screamed, 'Polio Scourge,' 'Polio
Panic', and 'Polio's Deadly Path'," parents "faced a dilemma" and a
feeling of personal helplessness in the midst of an "apparently runaway
epidemic." Their "postwar culture was being turned upside down" as polio
became the "crack in the fantasy" of a suburban home "bursting with
children." Parents began to see that there would be an alternative,
however: "Since worry did no good and quarantine seemed fruitless,
parents might best protect their children by helping others to discover a
vaccine against polio, and, perhaps, even a cure." The public soon
realized that this kind of research demanded "big money" and an "army of
devoted volunteers",
[10]:85–87 but Salk was determined to make it over this barrier.
The fight against polio did not really get under way until 1938 when
the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis was born, headed by
Basil O'Connor, the former law partner of President Roosevelt, the
U.S.'s most famous polio victim. That same year, the first
March of Dimes
fundraising program was set up, with radio networks offering free
30-second slots for promotion. Listeners were asked to send in a dime
and the White House received 2,680,000 letters within days.
Patients in iron lungs during 1952 epidemic
As the fear of polio increased each year, funds to combat it
increased from $1.8 million to $67 million by 1955. Research continued
during those years, but, writes O'Neill, "everything scientists believed
about polio at first was wrong, leading them down many blind alleys . .
. furthermore, most researchers were experimenting with highly
dangerous 'live' vaccines. In one test, six children were killed and
three left crippled."
[2]
"This was the situation when young Jonas Salk, a medical doctor in
charge of a virology laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, decided
to use the safer 'killed' virus," writes O'Neill. Despite a general
lack of enthusiasm for this approach, O'Connor backed Salk handsomely.
After successful tests on laboratory animals, it next had to be tested
on human beings. On July 2, 1952, assisted by the staff at the D.T.
Watson Home for Crippled Children, Jonas Salk injected 43 children with
his killed-virus vaccine. A few weeks after the Watson tests, Salk
injected children at the Polk State School for the retarded and
feeble-minded.
[29]
In November 1953, at a conference in New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel,
he said, "I will be personally responsible for the vaccine." He
announced that his wife and three sons had been among the first
volunteers to be inoculated with his vaccine.
[30]
Salk in 1955 at the University of Pittsburgh
It was critical that Salk develop the trust of the U.S. public for
his experiments and the mass tests that would become necessary. An
associate of his noted, "That boy really suffers when he sees a
paralytic case. You look at him and you see him thinking, 'My God, this
can be prevented'."
[31] An article in
Wisdom notes that at one point, "he even thought of giving up virus research":
"But as he was sitting in a park and watching children play, he
realized how important his work was. He saw that there were thousands of
children and adults who would never walk again and whose bodies would
be paralyzed. He realized his awesome responsibility, and so he
continued his task with renewed vigor."
[20]
As a result of Salk's preliminary results in 1954, "when polio was
destroying more American children than any other communicable disease,
his vaccine was ready for field testing."
[2]
Field trials
Magazine photo of Jonas Salk in laboratory
The field trial set up to test the vaccine developed by Salk and his
research team was, according to O'Neill, "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,"
[2] with over 1,800,000 school children participating in the trial.
[4] A 1954
Gallup poll showed that more Americans knew about the polio field trials than could give the full name of the President.
March of Dimes poster circa 1957
According to medical author Paul Offit, "more Americans had
participated in the funding, development, and testing of the polio
vaccine than had participated in the nomination and election of the
president."
[32]:54 At least 100 million people had contributed to the March of Dimes, and seven million had donated their time and labor, as well.
[2] They included fund-raisers, committee workers, and volunteers at clinics and record centers.
Doris Fleischer, a disability historian, noted that O'Connor was
willing to take whatever risks necessary to serve the purposes of the
foundation. She writes, "When O'Connor realized that success seemed
imminent, he allowed the foundation to go into debt to finance the final
research required to develop the Salk vaccine. His 'passionate'
devotion to this task became almost 'obsessive' when his daughter, a
mother of five, told him that she had contracted the illness, saying,
'I've gotten some of your polio.'"
[33]
With the hopes of the world upon him, "Salk worked sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for years . . .", wrote Denenberg.
[34] It had been, Salk later described, "two and a half years of drudgery and hard work."
[9]:44 The results of the tests were eventually deemed successful and, O'Neill wrote, "Salk had justified Basil O'Connor's faith."
[2]
The research by Salk was not without controversy.
Esther Lederberg, a well-known microbiologist, felt that Salk needed detailed records to ensure that his vaccine was as effective as claimed.
[35]
Developing a vaccine
Test results announced
On April 12, 1955, Dr.
Thomas Francis, Jr.,
of the University of Michigan, the monitor of the test results,
"declared the vaccine to be safe and effective." The announcement was
made at the University of Michigan, exactly 10 years to the day after
the death of President Roosevelt. Five hundred people, including 150
press, radio, and television reporters, filled the room; 16 television
and newsreel cameras stood on a long platform at the back, and 54,000
physicians, sitting in movie theaters across the country, watched the
broadcast on closed-circuit television.
Eli Lilly and Company
paid $250,000 to broadcast the event. Americans turned on their radios
to hear the details, department stores set up loudspeakers, and judges
suspended trials so everyone in the courtroom could hear. Europeans
listened on the
Voice of America. Paul Offit writes about the event:
Shopkeeper expresses a nation's gratitude for Dr. Salk's discovery (April 13, 1955)
- "The presentation was numbing, but the results were clear: the
vaccine worked. Inside the auditorium Americans tearfully and joyfully
embraced the results. By the time Thomas Francis stepped down from the
podium, church bells were ringing across the country, factories were
observing moments of silence, synagogues and churches were holding
prayer meetings, and parents and teachers were weeping. One shopkeeper
painted a sign on his window: 'Thank you, Dr. Salk.' 'It was as if a war
had ended', one observer recalled."[32]:56
"The report", wrote
The New York Times, "was a medical
classic." Dr. Francis reported that the vaccinations had been 80 to 90%
effective on the basis of results in 11 states. Overall, the vaccine was
administered to over 440,000 children in 44 states, three Canadian
provinces, and
Helsinki, Finland,
[4]
and the final report required the evaluation of 144,000,000 separate
items of information.
After the announcement, when asked whether the
effectiveness of the vaccine could be improved, Salk said,
"Theoretically, the new 1955 vaccines and vaccination procedures may
lead to 100 percent protection from paralysis of all those vaccinated."
[36]
"A victory for the whole nation"
Dr. Jonas Salk receiving a Gold Medal from President Eisenhower (January 27, 1956).
Salk’s new vaccine was transformed by
Alan John Beale’s
team, based in Glaxo, England, into something which could be
manufactured on the enormous scale which the widespread threat of
poliomyelitis required. Within minutes of Francis's declaration that the
vaccine was safe and effective, the news of the event was carried coast
to coast by wire services and radio and television newscasts. According
to Debbie Bookchin, "across the nation there were spontaneous
celebrations... business came to a halt as the news spread. The mayor of
New York City interrupted a city council meeting to announce the news,
adding, 'I think we are all quite proud that Dr. Salk is a graduate of
City College.'"
[9]:46
"By the next morning", writes Bookchin, "politicians around the country
were falling over themselves trying to figure out ways they could
congratulate Salk, with several suggesting special medals and honors be
awarded.... In the
Eisenhower
White House, plans were already afoot to present Salk a special
presidential medal designating him "a benefactor of mankind" in a Rose
Garden ceremony.
It was also declared "a victory for the whole nation" as Jonas Salk
became "world famous overnight and was showered with awards", wrote
O'Neill. The governor of Pennsylvania had a medal struck, and the state
legislature gave him a chaired professorship. However, New York City
could not get him to accept a
ticker tape parade. Instead, New York created eight "Jonas Salk Scholarships" for future medical students. He received a
Presidential Citation, the nation's first
Congressional Medal for
Distinguished Civilian Service, and a large number of honorary degrees and related honors.
[2]:138
According to O'Neill, "April 12th had almost become a national
holiday: people observed moments of silence, rang bells, honked horns,
blew factory whistles, fired salutes, kept their red lights red in brief
periods of tribute, took the rest of the day off, closed their schools
or convoked fervid assemblies therein, drank toasts, hugged children,
attended church, smiled at strangers, and forgave enemies."
[2]:138
By July, movie studios were already fighting for the motion-picture rights to his film biography.
Twentieth Century-Fox began writing a screenplay and
Warner Brothers filed a claim to the title
The Triumph of Dr. Jonas Salk shortly after the formal announcement of the vaccine.
[37]
Global acceptance and hope
Six months before Salk's announcement, optimism and hope were so
widespread, the Polio Fund in the U.S. had already contracted to
purchase enough of the Salk vaccine to immunize 9,000,000 children and
pregnant women the following year.
[38]
And around the world, the official news prompted an immediate
international rush to vaccinate. Medical historian Debbie Bookchin
writes, "Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands,
Switzerland, and Belgium all announced plans to either immediately
begin polio immunization campaigns using Salk's vaccine or to gear up to
quickly do so. "Overnight", she adds, "Salk had become an international
hero and a household name. His vaccine was a modern medical miracle."
[9]:47
Because Salk was the first to prove that a 'killed'-virus could prevent
polio, medical historian Paul Offit wrote in 2007 that "for this
observation alone, Salk should have been awarded the
Nobel Prize.
[32] Virologist
Isabel Morgan
had earlier shown and published that a 'killed'-virus could prevent
polio, although she did not test her vaccines on humans. Morgan's work,
nonetheless, was a key link in the chain of progress toward the
killed-virus polio vaccine for humans later developed and tested by
Salk.
By the summer of 1957, over two years later, 100 million doses had
been distributed throughout the United States and "reported
complications following their administration have been remarkably rare",
noted the scientists at the International Polio Conference in Geneva.
Scientists from other nations reported similar experiences: Denmark, for
example, "reported only a few sporadic cases among the 2,500,000 ...
who received the vaccine." Australia reported virtually no polio during
her past summer season.
[39]
Other countries where the vaccine was not yet in use suffered
continued epidemics, however. In 1957, Hungary, for example, reported a
severe epidemic requiring emergency international assistance. By the
first half of the year, it had 713 reported cases and a death rate of
6.6%, and the peak infection months of summer were still ahead. Canada
sent a shipment of vaccine to Hungary by a refrigerated plane, and
Britain and Sweden sent
iron lungs.
A few years later, during a polio outbreak in Canada, "masked bandits"
stole 75,000 Salk vaccine shots from a Montreal university research
center.
[40]
Worldwide eradication successes and failures
By the end of 1990, an estimated 500,000 annual cases worldwide of
paralysis resulting from polio had been prevented due to immunization programs carried out by the
World Health Organization (WHO),
UNICEF, and many other organizations, and in 1991, transmission of polio was declared as "interrupted" in the
Western Hemisphere.
In
developing countries, estimates in 1988 ran as high as 350,000 cases each year.
[41] As a result, in 2002, more than 500 million children were immunized in 93 countries,
[21]:112 and by December 2002, there were only 1,924 cases worldwide, mostly in India,
[42] with six other countries where polio was still endemic:
Afghanistan,
Egypt,
Niger,
Nigeria,
Pakistan, and
Somalia.
[43]
By early 2014, however, the WHO listed only three remaining countries
where polio was still endemic, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, and
declared Pakistan's city of
Peshawar as the world's "largest reservoir" of polio.
[44]
Pakistan's high numbers are attributed partly to the fact that
religious extremists have preached the conspiracy theory that the
vaccine is actually a western conspiracy to sterilize the population. As
a result, many have gone unvaccinated, with 65 vaccine workers having
been killed by extremists since December 2012 and cases increasing 400%
during 2014 alone.
[45]
China
In 1993, China initiated a national immunization program, with over
80 million children getting vaccinated in just two days; by the
following year, the country reported only five cases of polio.
[46]
India
In 1981, India reported over 38,000 cases of polio. By 1999,
intensive vaccination campaigns had succeeded in eradicating the type 2
strain of virus from India. Microsoft cofounder
Bill Gates sponsored a campaign to eradicate polio, and the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed nearly $1 billion to health and development projects throughout India.
[47]
The last case of polio in India, in two-year-old Rukhsaar Khatoon, was
confirmed on January 13, 2011. India was removed from the list of
polio-endemic countries in 2012, and marked two years without a case of
polio on January 13, 2013.
[48] As no new cases were found by January 2014, the nation was officially declared polio-free.
[42]
Africa
In 2003, after an outbreak in Nigeria, international organizations
spent $10 million to vaccinate 15 million children in Nigeria and
neighboring countries.
[21]:112
Latin America
During the 1970s,
Latin America
had an estimated 15,000 paralysis cases, with about 1,750 deaths each
year from polio. By 1991, the last case of polio was reported in Latin
America and the
Caribbean, and polio has now been declared as fully eliminated from the region.
[49]
Remaining eradication efforts
In 1988, numerous international medical organizations launched a
campaign to eradicate polio globally, as had been successfully done for
smallpox. By 2003, polio had been eradicated in all but a few countries, among them Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan
[50] However,
mullahs in northern Nigeria began to oppose the vaccination program, claiming that it was a plot to spread
AIDS and
sterility, and prevented any vaccination. Polio cases in Nigeria tripled over the next three years.
[50]
Environmental scientist
Lester Brown speculates that Nigerian
Muslims may have spread the disease to Muslims of other polio-free countries during their annual pilgrimage to
Mecca, in
Saudi Arabia. With these same fears, Saudi Arabian officials imposed polio vaccination requirement on certain visitors.
In Pakistan in 2007, opposition was violent to vaccinations in the
Northwest Frontier Province, where a doctor and a health worker in the polio eradication program were killed. Since then, the
Taliban has blocked all vaccinations in the
Swat Valley
of Pakistan. As a result, Pakistan was the only country in 2010 to
record an increase in cases of polio, according to the WHO, along with
having the highest incidence of polio in the world.
[51]
Meanwhile, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent
$1.5 billion, plans to spend another $1.8 billion through 2018 to help
eradicate the virus.
[52]
New medical research projects urged
Just two weeks after the vaccine was announced, Senator
Hubert H. Humphrey (Democrat,
Minnesota) urged President
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"to show the nation's gratitude to Dr. Jonas E. Salk for his new polio
vaccine by 'loosening the purse-strings' on federal medical research."
[53]
Salk knew it would take time to verify his theories and improve the
vaccine. "He still wants to find out a number of things about polio",
wrote
The New York Times that summer. Questions remained: "How
long will the immunity last? Are there any children who cannot be
immunized? What improvements can be made?" Beyond that, "he has far
bigger goals—'more in the nature of dreams right now'—involving other
diseases."
[31]
Over the next few years, while trying to perfect the polio vaccine, Salk had begun working unannounced, on a cure for
cancer. A 1958 article in
The New York Times confirmed "that he had been conducting experiments on cancer patients." The news was leaked after a Pittsburgh newspaper, the
Sun-Telegraph,
reported that he had been giving injections to children suffering from
cancer. Salk stated afterwards, "It is true that we have been conducting
experiments in many persons with a variety of cancer and cancer-like
conditions ... but we have no treatment for cancer. Our studies are of a
strictly exploratory nature..."
[54] In 1965, he also said "a vaccine for the
common cold is a matter of time and of solving some technical problems."
[55]
Final conquest of polio and the Sabin vaccine controversy
Years before the Salk vaccine was officially announced as safe, Dr.
Albert Sabin
had joined in the search for a vaccine, using a 'live'-virus, as
opposed to Salk's 'killed'-virus. Sabin, however, had been "openly
hostile to Salk."
Debbie Bookchin
writes that he had been "perhaps accurately guessing that Salk was
about to challenge him for ascendancy in the polio world." After one
presentation that Salk made to a medical conference, "Sabin mounted a
full-scale offensive, engaging in a piecemeal demolition of his
presentation."
[9]
However, the National Foundation "swiftly put its full weight behind
Salk. Here, finally, was a polio researcher, they said, who had
accomplished something."
[9]
By 1962, polio had become almost extinct, with only 910 cases
reported that year—down from 37,476 in 1954. "It's a matter of
principle", Salk said. "It is not a Salk versus Sabin controversy, a
competition between two people... I had worked with influenza viruses,
helping to establish the efficacy of a 'killed'-virus vaccine... I
demonstrated that it could be 100% effective if the quantity of virus in
the vaccine was sufficient."
[56]
That same year, the state of New York's Health Department recommended
"that the Salk vaccine be given preference over the Sabin oral
vaccine..."
[57]
On October 20, 1998, after 18 years of using the Sabin vaccine,
however, the federal government recommended that children use the Salk
vaccine exclusively. Sabin's polio vaccine is no longer available in the
United States.
[32]:127
While OPV is not recommended by the CDC, its website explained that
Sabin's OPV is more suited to areas where polio is endemic, because of
"its advantages over IPV in providing intestinal immunity and providing
secondary spread of the vaccine to unprotected contacts."
[58]
On January 4, 2013, the World Health Organization called for the
Sabin OPV, which contains the type 2 strain of poliovirus, to be phased
out as soon as possible; although the type 2 strain has been eradicated
in the wild, vaccine-derived strains still circulate in polio-endemic
nations. A different OPV would continue to be administered, protecting
against types 1 and 3, which are both still endemic in the wild in
Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The WHO also called for the rapid
introduction of the Salk IPV, which will be used along with OPV during a
transition period. Once types 1 and 3 cease to be endemic, the OPV will
be phased out, and the Salk vaccine will be used exclusively.
[59]
Looking back—public confusion over which vaccine to use
In September 1962, public health officials in the U.S. and Canada
faced a "major dilemma": whether to continue using the recently begun
Sabin vaccine inoculations until further studies were conducted, due to
reports of polio cases among persons who had received it. The U.S.
Surgeon General, Luther Terry, recommended a temporary halt due to 16
cases of confirmed polio in adults. And "the Canadian Federal Health
Department recommended against mass use of the [Sabin] oral vaccine
pending further study of its effects." One of the unfortunate results
caused by the controversy was that "many authorities have deplored the
confusion that has been created in the public mind."
[60]
Due to the
American Medical Association's
(AMA) "obstructive tactics, however, which caused numerous delays",
writes O'Neill, the AMA had called for mass vaccinations in early 1962
employing Sabin's vaccine rather than Salk's. However, writes O'Neill,
"as 'live'-virus was more dangerous, it caused an unknown number of
polio cases... [but] the medical establishment seemed not to mind,
having gotten its own way at last." But, concludes O'Neill, "polio was
conquered all the same, even if not so quickly and safely as it might
have been."
[2]:139
In 1980, Salk pointed out the renewed interest in his
killed virus vaccine, particularly in
developing countries. "The 'live' virus vaccine is highly effective in
developed countries
...", he said, "but in the developing countries, where polio is on the
increase, the drawback is that the live virus fails to establish the
infection that leads to immunity because of intestinal inhibitors in the
population."
[56] Recent evidence of this was found in
Iran,
where a number of children receiving the oral vaccine became infected
with polio, leading Iranian researchers to recommend using the killed
virus in the future.
[61]
Basil O'Connor enters the controversy
Two months after the Salk vaccine was announced to the world, in
1955, Basil O'Connor found it necessary to respond to critics of the
vaccine, especially Dr. Sabin. As the President of the National
Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, he said, during a news conference
before a congressional group in Washington, that "criticism of the Salk
vaccine program by Dr. Albert Sabin of the
University of Cincinnati was 'old stuff'." According to
The New York Times,
"Dr. Sabin recommended at a hearing before a House investigating
subcommittee that Salk inoculations be suspended" until a safer
preparation could be perfected.
[62] O'Connor responded in a prepared statement: (excerpt)
- "He's been using it [criticism] for years. He used it in an attempt
to stop the field trials of the Salk vaccine... The Salk vaccine is safe
and effective and will protect children from paralytic polio to the
extent of 60 to 90 percent... In the United States, Canada and Denmark,
7,675,000 children have actually received the Salk vaccine with no
untoward results. There could be no better proof of its safety than
this. No vaccine in the history of the world has ever had such a test
for safety. Anyone who would seek to prevent its use for other than
unanswerable scientific reasons would be acting neither as a scientist
nor as a humanitarian....
- "Those who would prevent its use must be prepared to be haunted for
life by the crippled bodies of little children who could have been saved
from paralysis had they been permitted to receive the Salk vaccine."[62]
However, a year and a half after the Salk vaccine was introduced, a
Sabin vaccine had still not yet been tested on humans. Sabin himself
said, in October 1956, that "the Salk vaccine is still the only
protection against polio available to the public." He was hoping to be
able to start tests on humans by the end of the year or by 1957.
[63]
The Cutter incident
In 1955, Cutter Laboratories was one of several companies licensed by
the United States government to produce Salk's polio vaccine. In what
came to be known as the
Cutter incident,
a production error caused some lots of the Cutter vaccine to be tainted
with live polio virus. It was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters
in U.S. history and caused several thousand children to be exposed to
live polio virus, causing 56 cases of paralytic polio and five deaths.
[64]
10th-anniversary ceremonies
On April 12, 1965, leaders of the Senate and House presented Salk
with a joint resolution expressing the nation's gratitude to him, his
colleagues in the project, and the March of Dimes, which helped to
finance the work. President
Lyndon B. Johnson called him to the White House to congratulate him personally. Dr. Luther Terry,
Surgeon General of the United States,
said in a statement marking the anniversary that only 121 cases of
polio were reported the previous year, as opposed to more than 28,000
ten years before. "This represents an historic triumph of preventive
medicine—unparalleled in history", Dr. Terry said.
[55]
30th anniversary—"Jonas Salk Day"
On May 6, 1985, President
Ronald Reagan proclaimed that day to be "Jonas Salk Day". His proclamation read, in part:
One of the greatest challenges to mankind always has been eradicating
the presence of debilitating disease. Until just thirty years ago
poliomyelitis occurred in the United States and throughout the world in
epidemic proportions, striking tens of thousands and killing thousands
in our own country each year. Dr. Jonas E. Salk changed all that. This
year we observe the 30th anniversary of the licensing and manufacturing
of the vaccine discovered by this great American. Even before another
successful vaccine was discovered, Dr. Salk's discovery had reduced
polio and its effects by 97 percent. Today, polio is not a familiar
disease to younger Americans, and many have difficulty appreciating the
magnitude of the disorder that the Salk vaccine virtually wiped from the
face of the Earth.[65]
Becoming a public figure
Celebrity versus privacy
Salk preferred not to have his career as a scientist affected by too
much personal attention, as he had always tried to remain independent
and private in his research and life, but this proved to be impossible.
"Young man, a great tragedy has befallen you—you've lost your
anonymity", the television personality
Ed Murrow said to Salk shortly after the onslaught of media attention.
[56] When Murrow asked him, "Who owns this patent?", Salk replied, "No one. Could you patent the sun?"
[66] The vaccine is calculated to be worth $7 billion had it been patented.
[67]
However, lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis
did look into the possibility of a patent, but ultimately determined
that the vaccine was not a patentable invention because of
prior art.
[68]
Author Jon Cohen noted, "Jonas Salk made scientists and journalists
alike go goofy. As one of the only living scientists whose face was
known the world over, Salk, in the public's eye, had a superstar aura.
Airplane pilots would announce that he was on board and passengers would
burst into applause. Hotels routinely would upgrade him into their
penthouse suites. A meal at a restaurant inevitably meant an
interruption from an admirer, and scientists approached him with
drop-jawed wonder as though some of the stardust might rub off."
[69]
For the most part, however, Salk was "appalled at the demands on the
public figure he has become and resentful of what he considers to be the
invasion of his privacy", wrote
The New York Times, a few months after his vaccine announcement.
[31] The
Times
article noted, "at 40, the once obscure scientist ... was lifted from
his laboratory almost to the level of a folk hero." He received a
presidential citation, a score of awards, four honorary degrees, half a
dozen foreign decorations, and letters from thousands of fellow
citizens. His alma mater, City College of New York, gave him an honorary
degree as Doctor of Laws. But "despite such very nice tributes",
The New York Times
wrote, "Salk is profoundly disturbed by the torrent of fame that has
descended upon him.... He talks continually about getting out of the
limelight and back to his laboratory... because of his genuine distaste
for publicity, which he believes is inappropriate for a scientist."
[31]
During a 1980 interview, 25 years later, he said, "It's as if I've
been a public property ever since, having to respond to external, as
well as internal, impulses.... It's brought me enormous gratification,
opened many opportunities, but at the same time placed many burdens on
me. It altered my career, my relationships with colleagues; I am a
public figure, no longer one of them."
[56]
Maintaining his individuality
"If Salk the scientist sounds austere", wrote
The New York Times,
"Salk the man is a person of great warmth and tremendous enthusiasm.
People who meet him generally like him." A Washington newspaper
correspondent commented, "He could sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, and I
never bought anything before." Award-winning geneticist
Walter Nelson-Rees called him "a renaissance scientist: brilliant, sophisticated, driven... a fantastic creature."
[70]:127
He enjoys talking to people he likes, and "he likes a lot of people", wrote the
Times.
"He talks quickly, articulately, and often in complete paragraphs." And
"He has very little perceptible interest in the things that interest
most people—such as making money." That belongs "in the category of mink
coats and Cadillacs—unnecessary", he said.
[31]
Establishing the Salk Institute
The Salk Institute at La Jolla
In the years after Salk's discovery, many supporters, in particular
the National Foundation, "helped him build his dream of a research
complex for the investigation of biological phenomena 'from cell to
society'."
[attribution needed] Called the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, it opened in 1963 in the San Diego neighborhood of
La Jolla.
Salk believed that the institution would help new and upcoming
scientists along in their careers, as he said himself, "I thought how
nice it would be if a place like this existed and I was invited to work
there." This was something that Salk was deprived of early in his life,
but due to his achievements, was able to provide for future scientists.
In 1966, Salk described his "ambitious plan for the creation of a kind of
Socratic
academy where the supposedly alienated two cultures of science and
humanism will have a favorable atmosphere for cross-fertilization."
[71] Author and journalist
Howard Taubman explained:
- "Although he is distinctly future-oriented, Dr. Salk has not lost
sight of the institute's immediate aim, which is the development and use
of the new biology, called molecular and cellular biology,
described as part physics, part chemistry and part biology. The
broad-gauged purpose of this science is to understand man's life
processes.
- "There is talk here of the possibility, once the secret of how the cell is triggered to manufacture antibodies
is discovered, that a single vaccine may be developed to protect a
child against many common infectious diseases. There is speculation
about the power to isolate and perhaps eliminate genetic errors that
lead to birth defects.
- "Dr. Salk, a creative man himself, hopes that the institute will do
its share in probing the wisdom of nature and thus help enlarge the
wisdom of man. For the ultimate purpose of science, humanism and the
arts, in his judgment, is the freeing of each individual to cultivate
his full creativity, in whichever direction it leads. . . As if to
prepare for Socratic encounters such as these, the institute's
architect, Louis Kahn, has installed blackboards in place of concrete facings on the walls along the walks."[71]
The New York Times, in a 1980 article celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Salk vaccine, described the current workings at the facility:
- "At the institute, a magnificent complex of laboratories and study
units set on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, Dr. Salk holds the titles
of founding director and resident fellow. His own laboratory group is
concerned with the immunologic aspects of cancer and the mechanisms of autoimmune disease, such as multiple sclerosis, in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues.[56]
- In an interview about his future hopes at the institute, he said,
"In the end, what may have more significance is my creation of the
institute and what will come out of it, because of its example as a
place for excellence, a creative environment for creative minds."
Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the structure of the
DNA molecule, was a leading professor at the institute until his death in 2004.
AIDS vaccine work
Beginning in the mid-1980s, Salk also engaged in research to develop a vaccine for another, more recent plague,
AIDS. To further this research, he cofounded the Immune Response Corporation with
Kevin Kimberlin, to search for a vaccine, and patented
Remune, an immune-based therapy.
[72] The AIDS vaccine project was discontinued in 2007, 12 years after Jonas Salk's death in 1995.
Although many advances have been made in treating AIDS, "the world
still waited for the miracle vaccine the conqueror of polio had sought",
wrote historian
Alan Axelrod.
[73]:294
Salk's "biophilosophy"
Jonas Salk during a 1988 Centers for Disease Control visit
In 1966,
The New York Times referred to him as the "Father of Biophilosophy." According to
Times journalist and author
Howard Taubman,
"he never forgets... there is a vast amount of darkness for man to
penetrate. As a biologist, he believes that his science is on the
frontier of tremendous new discoveries; and as a philosopher, he is
convinced that humanists and artists have joined the scientists to
achieve an understanding of man in all his physical, mental and
spiritual complexity. Such interchanges might lead, he would hope, to a
new and important school of thinkers he would designate as
biophilosophers."
[71]
Salk describes his "biophilosophy" as the application of a
"biological, evolutionary point of view to philosophical, cultural,
social and psychological problems." He went into more detail in two of
his books,
Man's Unfolding, and
The Survival of the Wisest.
In an interview in 1980, he described his thoughts on the subject,
including his feeling that a sharp rise and an expected leveling off in
the human population would take place and eventually bring a change in
human attitudes:
- "I think of biological knowledge as providing useful analogies for understanding human nature.... People think of biology
in terms of such practical matters as drugs, but its contribution to
knowledge about living systems and ourselves will in the future be
equally important.... In the past epoch, man was concerned with death,
high mortality; his attitudes were antideath, antidisease", he says. "In
the future, his attitudes will be expressed in terms of prolife and
prohealth. The past was dominated by death control; in the future, birth
control will be more important. These changes we're observing are part
of a natural order and to be expected from our capacity to adapt. It's
much more important to cooperate and collaborate. We are the co-authors
with nature of our destiny."[56]
His definition of a "biophilosopher" is "Someone who draws upon the
scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process
of evolution, and understands that we have become the process itself,
through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness,
our capacity to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose from
among alternatives."
[74]
Personal life
The day after his graduation from medical school in 1939, Salk
married Donna Lindsay, a master's candidate at the New York College of
Social Work. David Oshinsky writes that her father, Elmer Lindsay, "a
wealthy Manhattan dentist, viewed Salk as a social inferior, several
cuts below Donna's former suitors." Eventually, her father agreed to the
marriage on two conditions: first, Salk must wait until he could be
listed as an official M.D. on the wedding invitations, and second, he
must improve his "rather pedestrian status" by giving himself a middle
name."
[10]
They had three children: Peter, Darrell, and Jonathan Salk. In 1968, they divorced, and in 1970, Salk married
Françoise Gilot, the former mistress of
Pablo Picasso.
Jonas Salk died from heart failure at the age of 80 on June 23, 1995, in La Jolla,
[75] and was buried at
El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.
[76]
Honors and recognition
-
- "... in recognition of his 'historical medical' discovery... Dr.
Salk's achievement is meritorious service of the highest magnitude and
dimension for the commonwealth, the country and mankind." The governor,
who had three children, said that "as a parent he was 'humbly thankful
to Dr. Salk,' and as Governor, 'proud to pay him tribute'."[77]
- 1955, City University of New York creates the Salk Scholarship fund
which it awards to multiple outstanding pre-med students each year
- 1956, awarded the Lasker Award
- 1957, the Municipal Hospital building, where Salk conducted his polio research at the University of Pittsburgh, is renamed Jonas Salk Hall and is home to the University's School of Pharmacy and Dentistry.[78]
- 1958, awarded the James D. Bruce Memorial Award
Salk's bronze bust in the Polio Hall of Fame
-
- "Because of Doctor Jonas E. Salk, our country is free from the cruel
epidemics of poliomyelitis that once struck almost yearly. Because of
his tireless work, untold hundreds of thousands who might have been
crippled are sound in body today. These are Doctor Salk's true honors,
and there is no way to add to them. This Medal of Freedom can only
express our gratitude, and our deepest thanks."
- 1996, the March of Dimes Foundation created an annual $250,000 cash "Prize" to outstanding biologists as a tribute to Salk.[79]
- 2006, the United States Postal Service issued a 63-cent Distinguished Americans series postage stamp in his honor.
- 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Salk into the California Hall of Fame.[80]
- 2009, BBYO boys chapter chartered in his honor in Scottsdale, Arizona, Named "Jonas Salk AZA #2357"
- Schools in Mesa, Arizona, Spokane, Washington, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bolingbrook, Illinois, Levittown, New York, Old Bridge, New Jersey, Merrillville, Indiana, and Sacramento, California are named after him.
- 2012, October 24, in honor of his birthday, has been named "World Polio Day", and was originated by Rotary International over a decade earlier.[81]
- 2014, On the 100th anniversary of Salk's birth, a Google Doodle
was created to honor the physician and medical researcher. The doodle
shows happy and healthy children and adults playing and going about
their lives with two children hold up a sign saying, "Thank you, Dr.
Salk!" [82]
- 2015, In 2015 Salk will be featured, along with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the front of a United States commemorative one-dollar coin honoring the March of Dimes.[83]
Documentary films
- On April 12, 2010, to help celebrate the 55th anniversary of the Salk vaccine, a new 66-minute documentary, The Shot Felt 'Round the World, had its world premiere. Directed by Tjardus Greidanus[84] and produced by Laura Davis,[85] the documentary was conceived by Hollywood screenwriter and producer Carl Kurlander to bring "a fresh perspective on the era."[86]
- In 2014, actor and director Robert Redford, who was once struck with a mild case of polio when he was a child, directed a documentary about the Salk Institute in La Jolla.[87]
Salk's book publications
