Who is Dr Jonas Salk | Polio Vaccine | Nobel Peace Prize Recipient | Founder of the Salk Institute for Scientific Research

Jonas Salk (October 28, 1914 - June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine. He was born in New York City, where his parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. Although they themselves lacked formal education, they were determined to see their children succeed. While attending medical school at New York University, he stood out from his peers not just because of his academic prowess, but because he chose to do medical research instead of becoming a physician.

Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most frightening public health problem of the postwar era. Annual epidemics kept getting worse and victims were usually children. By 1952 it was killing more of them than any other communicable disease with over 57,000 cases reported that year. The "public reaction was to a plague," said historian William O'Neill. "Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned." As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a cure. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the world's most recognized victim of the disease and founded the institute to fund and create a vaccine.

In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. While working there, with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, Salk saw an opportunity to develop a vaccine against polio, and devoted himself to this work for the next eight years. The field tests Salk set up were, 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." When news of the discovery was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a "miracle worker," and the day "almost became a national holiday." He further endeared himself to the public by refusing to patent the vaccine, as he had no desire to profit personally from the discovery, but merely wished to see the vaccine disseminated as widely as possible.

In 1963, 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 (1983). Dr. Salk's last years were spent searching for a vaccine against AIDS. He died on June 23, 1995 at the age of 81. Source: Wikipedia

• The Time 100 The Most Important People of the Century
• Jonas Salk Trust
• Salk Institute for Biological Studies
• Documents regarding Jonas Salk and the Salk Polio Vaccine, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
• 1985 Open Mind interview with Richard D. Heffer: Man Evolving...
• University of Pittsburgh Jonas Salk site
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette feature on Jonas Salk and the Polio cure 50 years later
• The Salk School of Science (New York, NY)
• Patent US Patent 5,256,767 : Vaccine against HIV

Jonas Salk was born in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Dora and Daniel B. Salk. He had two brothers, Lee and Herman Salk. Herman became a veterinarian, and Lee became a clinical psychologist. Jonas graduated from Townsend Harris High School and then went to the City College of New York, where he earned a B.Sc. He received a medical degree from the School of Medicine at New York University in June 1939. While in college he met his future wife, Donna Lindsay, whom he married on June 9, 1939. They had three children: Peter, Darrell, and Jonathan. In 1968, they divorced, and in 1970 Salk married Françoise Gilot, the former mistress of Pablo Picasso. As a child, Salk did not show any interest in medicine or science in general. He says in an interview with the Academy of Achievement "As a child I was not interested in human anatomy. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that. That's what motivates me. And in a way, it's the human dimension that has intrigued me." His first desire was to become a lawyer and only due to his mother's persuasion (which included her telling him he wouldn't be good at it), he changed from a pre-law student to a pre-med student. During his first year in medical school, he was offered the chance to do research and teach biochemistry. He recalls this experience in the previously mentioned interview: 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 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.

His first desire was to become a lawyer and only due to his mother's persuasion (which included her telling him he wouldn't be good at it), he changed from a pre-law student to a pre-med student. During his first year in medical school, he was offered the chance to do research and teach biochemistry. He recalls this experience in the previously mentioned interview: 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 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. While attending the NYU School of Medicine, he heard two lectures that would change his life forever. Salk reflected on the lectures in 1990: In the first lecture, we were told that it was possible to immunize against diphtheria and tetanus by the use of a chemically treated toxin [to kill it]... In the very next lecture, we were told that in order to immunize against a virus disease it was necessary to go through the experience of infection. It was not possible to kill the virus... The light went on at that point. I said that those two statements can't possibly both be true. One has to be false.[citation needed] In 1938, while still in college, Salk began working with Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr. on an influenza vaccine. In 1941, Francis was appointed the head of the epidemiology department at the newly formed School of Public Health at the University of Michigan, and Salk, who in 1942 won a research fellowship, followed him. Together they worked to develop an influenza vaccine at the behest of the United States Army. Salk advanced to the position of assistant professor of epidemiology and continued his work on virology. After medical school, Salk first worked as a staff physician at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Later, he worked for Dr. Francis's virus lab at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 1947, he moved to Pittsburgh, where he led the Virus Research lab at the University of Pittsburgh. During the 1950s, Salk developed, tested and refined the first successful killed-virus polio vaccine, using inactive (dead) poliovirus cells that were injected into the body. In 1955 he began immunizations at Pittsburgh's Arsenal Elementary School in the Lawrenceville neighborhood. (Hilary Koprowski had already in 1950 initiated the use of an oral attenuated-live-virus polio vaccine, which would prove to be the future of polio immunization.) In 1965, Salk struck out on his own, leaving the University of Pittsburgh and establishing the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where the major focus of study was molecular biology and genetics. The first faculty included many distinguished members such as Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Salk directed the institute until his retirement in 1985. During Salk's last years, he co-founded The Immune Response Corporation with Kevin Kimberlin to search for a vaccine against AIDS, and patented a p24- vaccine as "Remune". Salk died on June 23, 1995 in La Jolla, CA, at the age of 80 due to heart failure. Image & Article Source

In 1947, Salk received a position at the University of Pittsburgh, as the head of the Virus Research lab. Though he continued his research on improving the influenza vaccine, he set his sights on the poliomyelitis virus. Although about 99% of cases of polio are asymptomatic, the polio virus can attack the nervous system and within a few hours of infection, paralysis can occur. The death rate for paralytic cases is about 5-10%. Death usually occurs when the breathing muscles become paralyzed. Polio was sometimes hard to diagnose because of its flu-like symptoms, which include stiff neck, fever, and headache. At that time, it was believed that immunity can come only after the body has survived at least a mild infection by live virus. In contrast, Salk observed that it is possible to acquire immunity through contact with inactivated (killed) virus. Using formaldehyde, Salk killed the polio virus, but kept it intact enough to trigger the necessary immune response. Salk's research caught the attention of Basil O'Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now known as the March of Dimes Foundation). The organization decided to fund Salk's efforts to develop a killed virus vaccine. The vaccine was first tested in monkeys, and then in patients at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children. After successful tests, in 1952, Salk tested his vaccine on volunteering parties, including himself, the laboratory staff, his wife, and his children. In 1954, national testing began on two million children, ages six to nine, who became known as the Polio Pioneers. This was one of the first double-blind placebo-controlled tests, which has since become standard: half of the treated received the vaccine, and half received a placebo, where neither the individuals nor the researchers know who belongs to the control group and the experimental group. One-third of the children, who lived in areas where vaccine was not available, were observed in order to evaluate the background level of polio in this age group. On April 12, 1955, the results were announced: the vaccine was safe and effective. The patient would develop immunity to the live disease due to the body's earlier reaction to the killed virus.

Salk's vaccine was instrumental in beginning the eradication of polio, a once widely-feared disease. Polio epidemics in 1916 left about 6000 dead and 27,000 paralyzed in the United States. In 1952, 57,628 cases were recorded in the U.S. After the vaccine became available, polio cases in the U.S. dropped by 85-90 percent in only two years. Unfortunately, some drug companies manufactured contaminated polio vaccine containing live virus, and this error cost dozens of lives. However, the live-virus oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin became the preferred alternative after a sometimes intense clash between the two scientists and their adherents. The Salk vaccine, which is injected, proved to be effective in sharply reducing the number of polio cases in the United States. A disadvantage to Salk's vaccine was that booster shots had to be taken periodically. The Sabin vaccine had the advantage of easier delivery and became accepted in the United States after the testing abroad. It was licensed in 1961 and eventually became the vaccine of choice in most parts of the world. The last indigenous case of polio in the U.S. was reported in 1991. Partly because of that fact, only inactivated, Salk-type polio vaccines have been recommended for use in the United States since 2000. The Salk vaccine was based upon plasmid DNA. Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg and Jonas Salk were colleagues and friends. However, Lederberg had expressed reservations concerning polio and the Salk vaccine. Esther Lederberg was quite well aware that from an epidemiological viewpoint it was possible that Salk's vaccine was not as effective as he thought. Specifically, the incidence of polio was noted to occur in waves. Thus, Lederberg wondered whether the marked reduction in polio cases was due to Salk's vaccine or the end of a wave of infection (and Salk's vaccine having little effect). Lederberg felt that Salk could have done more to elucidate this possible ambiguity had he kept better records. Image and Article Source

• CGDev.org - 'Vaccines for Development', Center for Global Development
• PBS.org - 'People and Discoveries: Salk Produces Polio Vaccine 1952', PBS
• SFGate.com - 'Rogue virus in the vaccine: Early polio vaccine harbored virus now feared to cause cancer in humans', William Carlsen, San Francisco Chronicle (July 15, 2001)
• Documents regarding Jonas Salk and the Salk Polio Vaccine, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

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