Jonas Edward Salk ( ; October 28, 1914 - June 23, 1995) is an American medical and virological researcher. He found and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Born in New York City, he attended New York University School of Medicine, then chose to conduct medical research instead of being a practicing physician. In 1939, after earning his medical degree, Salk started his apprenticeship as a physician doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital. Two years later he was awarded a scholarship at the University of Michigan, where he would study the flu virus with his mentor Thomas Francis, Jr.
Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was regarded as one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. In postwar America, the annual epidemic is becoming more and more intense. The 1952 US epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of the nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to paralyzing paralysis, with most of the victims being children. "Public reaction is a plague," says historian William L. O'Neill. "Residents in urban areas will be scared every summer when this terrifying visitor returns." According to a PBS documentary in 2009, "Regardless of the atomic bomb, America's biggest fear is polio." As a result, scientists are in a frantic race to find ways to prevent or cure diseases. In 1938, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the most internationally known victim of the disease, has established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (known as the March of Dimes Foundation since 2007), an organization that will fund vaccine development.
In 1947, Salk accepted the 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 viruses. Salk sees the opportunity to expand the project towards the development of vaccines against polio, and, together with the expert research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. Field trials prepared to test the Salk vaccine, according to O'Neill, "the most complicated program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 doctors and public health workers, 64,000 school personnel and 220,000 volunteers." More than 1,800,000 schoolchildren participated in the trial. When news of the success of the vaccine was published on 12 April 1955, Salk was hailed as a "miracle-maker" and the day almost became a national holiday. Around the world, the immediate rush of vaccinations begins, with countries including Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium planning to begin a polio immunization campaign using the Salk vaccine.
Salk campaigned for mandatory vaccinations, claiming that public health should be considered a "moral commitment." The only focus is on developing a safe and effective vaccine as quickly as possible, with no interest in personal gain. When asked who the owner of the patent was, Salk said, "Yes, the people I will say, no patents, can you patent the sun?" In 1960, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which is now a center of medical and scientific research. He continues to research and publish books, including Man Unfolding (1972), Survival of the Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981), and Anatomy of Reality: Combining Intuition and Reason (1983). The last years of Salk were spent seeking a vaccine against HIV. His personal papers are stored at the University of California, San Diego Library.
Video Jonas Salk
Early life and education
Salk was born in New York City on October 28, 1914. His parents, Daniel and Dora (nÃÆ' Â © e Press) Salk, are the Jewish Ashkenazi; Daniel was born in New Jersey to eastern European immigrant parents, and Dora was born in Russia, immigrated when he was twelve. They have not received extensive formal education. He has two younger brothers, Herman and Lee, a famous child psychologist. The family moved from East Harlem to 853 Elsmere Place, the Bronx, with some time spent in Queens where he lived at 439 Beach 69th Street, Arverne, New York.
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), said Oshinsky, "a skateboard for gifted children from immigrant parents who lack money - and pedigree - to attend top private schools." In high school "he's known as a perfectionist... who reads everything he can put in his hands," according to one of his friends. Students must cram a four-year curriculum into just three years. As a result, most drop out or fail, even though the school motto "learns, learns, learns." However, from graduating students, most will have the value to enroll in CCNY, listed as highly competitive colleges.
Education
Salk enrolled in CCNY from which he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1934. Oshinsky writes that "for working-class immigrant families, City College represents the peak of public higher education." Entrance is very difficult, but the tuition is free. , but the rules are quite applicable. No one gets a profit based on a birth accident. "
At her mother's insistence, she removed the aspirations to become a lawyer, and instead concentrated on the classes needed to get into medical school. However, according to Oshinsky, the facilities at City College "are almost second tier." There is no research laboratory; the library is inadequate. The faculty contains several registered scholars. "What makes the place special," he wrote, "is the student body that has fought so hard to get there... driven by their parents.... From this line, from the 1930s and 1940s, emerging intellectual property talents, including more Nobel Prize winners - eight and PhD recipients than any other public college except University of California at Berkeley. "Salk entered CCNY at the age of 15," a common age for new students who have passed several classes along Street."
As a child, Salk showed no interest in medicine or science in general. He said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement, "As a child I am not interested in science, I am only interested in human things, the human side of nature, if you like, and I am constantly interested in it."
Medical school
After City College, Salk enrolled at New York University to study medicine. According to Oshinsky, NYU based its simple reputation on famous alumni, such as Walter Reed, who helped conquer yellow fever. Tuition "relatively low, better yet, it does not discriminate against Jews,... while most of the surrounding medical schools - Cornell, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale - have strict quotas." Yale, for example, received 76 suitors, in 1935, out of a puddle of 501. Although 200 applicants were Jews, only five entered. During his years at New York University Medical School, Salk worked as a lab technician during the school year and as a camp counselor in the summer.
During Salk's medical studies, he stood out from his friends, according to Bookchin, "not only because of his continuing academic prowess - he is Alpha Omega Alpha, Phi Beta Kappa Society of medical education - but because he has decided he does not want to practice medicine. "Instead, he becomes absorbed in research, even taking a year off to study biochemistry. He then focuses his studies on bacteriology that has replaced medicine as his main interest. He says his desire is to help people in general rather than single patients. "It was a laboratory job, in particular, that gave a new direction to his life."
According to Salk: "My goal is to go to medical school, and then become a medical scientist.I do not intend to practice medicine, even in medical school, and in my apprenticeship I do all the things necessary to qualify me. , I had the opportunity along the way to drop the idea of ​​medicine and get into science. At one point at the end of my first year in medical school, I had the opportunity to spend a year in research and teaching in biochemistry, which I did and at the end That year, I was told that I could, if I wished, switch and get a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but my preference is to stick with drugs, and I believe that this is all related to my initial ambition or passion, which could be help for mankind, so to speak, in a greater sense than on a one-to-one basis. "
On the last year of his medical school Salk said: "I had the opportunity to spend time in an elective period in my final year in medical school, in a laboratory that was involved in the study of influenza.Influ viruses have just been discovered about a few years before that. the opportunity at the time to test the question of whether we can destroy the infectivity of the virus and still immunize it.Thus, with carefully designed experiments, we found it possible to do.
Postgraduate research
In 1941, during graduate work in the field of virology, Salk chose two elective months to work in Thomas Francis laboratory at the University of Michigan. Francis recently joined the medical school faculty after working for the Rockefeller Foundation, where he has discovered the type B influenza virus. According to Bookchin, "the two-month job at Francis labs is Salk's first introduction to the virological world - and he's hooked." After graduating from medical school, Salk started his residency at the prestigious Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he returned to work in the Francis laboratory.
Maps Jonas Salk
Polio research
In 1947, Salk became ambitious for his own lab and was given one at the University of Pittsburgh, but the lab was smaller than he expected and he found the rules imposed by a limited university. In 1948, Harry Weaver, research director at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, contacted Salk. He asks Salk to find out if there are more polio types than the three are known, offering additional space, tools and researchers. For the first year he collected supplies and researchers including Julius Youngner, Byron Bennett, L. James Lewis, and secretary Lorraine Friedman joined the Salk team, as well. Over time, Salk began to get grants from the Mellon family and was able to build a functioning virological laboratory. He then joined the National Foundation for the Polio Infantile Paralysis project founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The widespread publicity and fear of polio caused much funding to increase, $ 67 million in 1955, but research continues on a dangerous vaccine. Salk decided to use a safer 'killed' virus, not a weak form of the poliovirus strain as used by contemporaries Albert Sabin, who developed the oral vaccine. After a successful test on laboratory animals, on July 2, 1952, assisted by staff at Watson D.T's Detention Center for Crips, Salk injected 43 children with his deadly viral vaccine. Several weeks later, Salk injected children at Polk State School for the backward and weak minded. In 1954 he tested the vaccine on about a million children, known as polio pioneers. The vaccine was announced safely on April 12, 1955.
The project is large, involving 100 million contributors to the March of Dimes, and 7 million volunteers. The foundation lets itself owe to finance the final research needed to develop the Salk vaccine. Salk worked non-stop for two and a half years.
The attenuated polio vaccine Salk is the first vaccine for this disease; it came into use in 1955. It is on the World Health Organization's Essential Medicines List, the most effective and safe medication needed in the health system.
Become a public figure
Celebrity versus privacy
Salk prefers not having a career as a scientist who is influenced by too much personal attention, because he always strives to remain independent and personal in his research and life, but this proves impossible. "Young man, great tragedy has befallen you - you have lost your anonymity," television character Ed Murrow told Salk shortly after the onslaught of media attention. When Murrow asked him, "Who is the owner of this patent?", Salk replied, "Yes, the people I will say, no patents, can you patent the sun?" This vaccine is valued at $ 7 billion if it has been patented. However, lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis looked at the possibility of a patent, but ultimately determined that the vaccine was not a patented invention because of the prior art.
Salk served on the board of directors of the Foundation John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur.
Writer Jon Cohen noted, "Jonas Salk makes scientists and journalists ridiculous.As the only living scientist whose face is known worldwide, Salk, in the public eye, has an aura of superstars.The pilot will announce that he is on board and passengers will applaud.Hotels will routinely upgrade him to their penthouse suites.Eating in restaurants certainly means distraction from admirers, and scientists approach him with astonishing wonder as if some of the stardust might be contagious. "
For the most part, however, Salk is "shocked at the demands on the public figure he has become and upset from what he considers to be an invasion of his privacy", wrote The New York Times, a few months after the announcement of his vaccine. The Times article notes, "at 40, a previously unknown scientist... was lifted from his laboratory almost to the level of the folk hero." He received presidential quotes, award points, four honorary titles, half a dozen foreign decorations, and letters from thousands of fellow citizens. Her college, City College of New York, gave her an honorary degree as Doctor of Laws. But "despite the great honors", The New York Times wrote, "Salk is very disturbed by the roar of fame that has come down upon him.... He talks constantly about getting out of the limelight, and back to his lab... because of his genuine hatred for publicity, which he believes is inappropriate for a scientist. "
During the 1980 interview, 25 years later, he said, "As if I have been public property ever since, it has to respond to the external, as well as internal, impulses.... It brings me great satisfaction, opens up many opportunities, but at the same time putting a lot of burden on me.This changed my career, my relationship with colleagues: I am a public figure, not one of them anymore. "
Maintaining its individuality
"If the scientist's Salk sounds loud," wrote The New York Times, "Salk the man is a very warm person and a great enthusiasm, and people who meet him generally like him." A Washington correspondent commented, "He can sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, and I've never bought anything before." The award-winning Walter Nelson-Rees geneticist calls him "a renaissance scientist: brilliant, sophisticated, driven... a fantastic creature."
He likes to talk to people he likes, and "he likes a lot of people", wrote the Times . "He spoke quickly, meticulously, and often in full paragraphs." And "He has little obvious interest in the things that most people are interested in - like making money." That includes "in the category of fur coat and Cadillac - not necessary", he said.
Setting the Salk Institute
In the years after Salk's discovery, many supporters, especially the National Foundation, "helped him build his dream of a research complex for the investigation of biological phenomena 'from cell to society." Called the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, opened in 1963 in the San Diego neighborhood of La Jolla. Salk believes that the agency will help new and upcoming scientists throughout their careers, as he himself says, "I think how nice it would be if a place like this existed and I was invited to work there." This is something that Salk was deprived of early in life, but because of his accomplishments, was able to provide for future scientists.
In 1966, Salk described his "ambitious plan to create a kind of Socrates academy in which two supposedly alienated cultures of science and humanism would have a favorable atmosphere for cross-fertilization." Writer and journalist Howard Taubman explains:
Though he is clearly future-oriented, Dr. Salk has not lost its way from the institute's immediate objective, which is the development and use of a new biology, called molecular and cellular biology, described as part physics, part chemistry and part biology. The broad objective of this science is to understand the processes of human life.
There is talk here about the possibility, once the secret of how cells are triggered to produce antibodies is discovered, that a single vaccine can be developed to protect a child against many common infectious diseases. There is speculation about the power to isolate and possibly eliminate the genetic mistakes that cause birth defects.
Dr Salk, a creative human being himself, hopes that the institute will do its part in digging up the wisdom of nature and thus helping to enlarge human wisdom. For the ultimate goal of science, humanism and art, in its judgment, is to liberate every individual to cultivate his full creativity, wherever he is directed.... As if preparing for such a Socratic meeting, this institute of architecture, Louis Kahn, has installed whiteboards at concrete sections on the walls along the way.
The New York Times , in a 1980 article celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Salk vaccine, illustrates the current workings at the facility:
At the institute, an elaborate laboratory and learning unit located on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, Dr. Salk holds the title of founding director and resident. Its own laboratory group is concerned with immunological aspects of cancer and autoimmune disease mechanisms, such as multiple sclerosis, in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues.
In an interview about his future hopes at the institute, he said, "In the end, what may be more important is my creation from the institute and what will emerge from it, for example as a place for excellence, creative environment for creative minds."
Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, was a prominent professor at the institute until his death in 2004.
The institute also serves as a basis for the 1979 book Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar. Life Laboratory: The Construction of Scientific Facts .
The AIDS vaccine works
Beginning in the mid-1980s, Salk was also involved in research to develop a vaccine for another more recent outbreak, AIDS. To continue this research, he founded Immune Response Corporation with Kevin Kimberlin, to search for vaccines, and patented Remune, an immune-based therapy. He can not get product liability insurance. The AIDS vaccine project was discontinued in 2007, 12 years after the death of Jonas Salk in 1995.
Although much progress has been made in treating AIDS, "the world is still waiting for the magical vaccine conquered by the polio conquerors," wrote historian Alan Axelrod.
Salk's "biophilosophy"
In 1966, The New York Times called it "Mr. Biophilosophy." According to Times and journalist Howard Taubman, "he never forgets... there is an awful lot of darkness for humans to penetrate.As a biologist, he believes that his science is at the border of extraordinary new discoveries, and as a philosopher, he is convinced that humanists and artists have joined the scientists to achieve human understanding in all their physical, mental, and spiritual complexities.This kind of exchange may lead, he hopes, to the new and important school of thought he will point to as biophilosophers. "Salk told his cousin, Joel Kassiday, at the Future Congress Clearinghouse meeting on Capitol Hill in 1984 that he was optimistic that ways to prevent most human and animal diseases would eventually be developed. Salk says people should be prepared to take a wise risk, because "risk-free society will become a dead-end society" without progress.
Salk describes his "biophilosophy" as the application of "biological and evolutionary perspectives on philosophical, cultural, social, and psychological issues." He goes into more detail in his two books, Man's Unfolding , and The Survival of the Wisest . In an interview in 1980, he described his thoughts on this issue, including the feeling that a sharp rise and a declining estimate in the human population would occur and ultimately bring about a change in human attitudes:
I think biological knowledge as a useful analogy for understanding human nature.... People think of biology in terms of practical matters like medicine, but its contribution to the knowledge of the living system and ourselves will be in the future just as important... In the past, humans were concerned with death, high death; his attitude is antideath, antidisease ", he said." In the future, his attitude will be expressed in the form of prolife and prohealth. The past is dominated by death control; in the future, birth control will become more important. The changes we observed are part of the natural order and are expected from our capacity to adapt. Much more important to work together and collaborate. We are coauthor with the nature of our destiny.
His definition of "biophilosopher" is "Someone who refers to the scriptures of nature, recognizes 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 consciousness, our ability to imagine and anticipate the future, and to choose between alternatives. "
Just before his death, Salk was working on a new book along the theme of biophilosophy, which was personally reported titled Millennium of the Mind .
Personal life
A day after graduating from medical school in 1939, Salk married Donna Lindsay, a master candidate at the New York College of Social Work. David Oshinsky writes that Donna's father, Elmer Lindsay, "a rich Manhattan dentist, viewed Salk as less social, some wounded under Donna's former applicants." Finally, his father consented to the marriage on two conditions: first, Salk had to wait until he could be registered as the official MD on the wedding invitation, and secondly, he had to improve his "better status" by giving himself a middle name. "
They have three children: Peter, Darrell, and Jonathan Salk. In 1968, they divorced, and in 1970, Salk married French painter FranÃÆ'§oise Gilot, former mistress of artist Pablo Picasso.
Jonas Salk died of heart failure at age 80 on June 23, 1995, in La Jolla, and was buried at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.
Awards and acknowledgments
- 1955, one month after the vaccine announcement, he was honored by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where he was given the "highest award for service" by Governor George M. Leader, Meritorious Service Medal, where the governor added, >
... in recognition of his 'medical history' discovery... Dr. Salk is a meritorious service of magnitude and the highest dimension to the commonwealth, the state and mankind. "The governor, who has three children, said that" as a parent, he "humbly thanked Dr. Salk," and as Governor, "proudly rewarded him."
- 1955, City University of New York creates Salk Scholarship funds awarded to some of the leading pre-medical students each year
- 1956, was awarded the Lasker Award
- 1957, City Hospital building, where Salk conducted polio research at the University of Pittsburgh, renamed Jonas Salk Hall and is home to the School of Pharmacy and Dentistry.
- 1958, was awarded the James D. Bruce Memorial Award
- 1958, elected at the Polio Hall of Fame, dedicated to Warm Springs, Georgia
- 1975, was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award and the Congressional Gold Medal
- 1976, was awarded the Golden Plate Academy of Achievement Award
- 1976, named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association
- 1977, was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter, with the following statement accompanying the medal:
Because of Doctor Jonas E. Salk, our country is free from the cruel epidemics of poliomyelitis that once hit almost every year. Because of his tireless work, countless hundreds of thousands who may have been paralyzed become healthy today. This is an actual award from Doctor Salk, and there is no way to add it. This Medal of Freedom can only express our gratitude, and our deepest gratitude.
- 1996, the March of Dimes Foundation created a $ 250,000 annual "Gift" of cash to prominent biologists in honor of Salk.
- 2006, the United States Postal Service issued a 63-cent Distinguished Americans stamp in honor.
- 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inaugurated Salk to the California Hall of Fame.
- 2009, the boy chapter of BBO 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 originated in Rotary International more than a decade earlier.
- 2014, On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Salk, Google Doodle was created to honor doctors and medical researchers. The doodle shows happy and healthy children and adults playing and going about their lives with two children holding signs saying, "Thank you, Dr. Salk!"
Documentary movie
- In early 2009, the American Public Broadcasting Service aired his new documentary, American Experience: The Polio Crusade . Documentary, available on DVD, can also be viewed online.
- 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 , premiered its world premiere. Directed by Tjardus Greidanus and produced by Laura Davis, the documentary was composed by Hollywood screenwriter and producer Carl Kurlander to bring "a new perspective to the era."
- In 2014, actor and director Robert Redford, once beaten with mild cases of polio when he was a kid, directed a documentary about the Salk Institute in La Jolla.
Salk book publication
- Man Unfolding (1972)
- Survival of the Wisest (1973)
- World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981)
- The Anatomy of Reality: Intuition and Reason Combination (1983)
See also
- Lee Salk
References
Further reading
- Jacobs, Charlotte DeCroes. Jonas Salk: A Life , Oxford University. Press (2015), scientific biography
External links
- The American Experience: The Polio Crusade video, 1 hour. by PBS
- "Legacy Salk Institute", video, 30 minutes, history of Salk vaccine
- Introduction to "Polio Vaccine", Britannica , video, 1 minute
- Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation
- Jonas Salk Trust
- Salk Institute for Biological Studies
- Documents on Jonas Salk and Salk Polio Vaccine, Presidential Library Dwight D. Eisenhower
- 1985 Open Mind interview with Richard D. Heffner: Man Evolving...
- Jonas Salk University Site
- Pittsburgh Post-Sheet feature on Jonas Salk and Polio drugs 50 years later
- Salk School of Science (New York, New York)
- US Patent Patent 5,256,767: Vaccine against HIV
- Short film Man Evolving (1985) is available for free download on the Internet Archive
- List of Jonas Salk Papers, 1926-1991 - MSS 1, held at the Special & amp; Archive
- http://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-jonas-salk-and-the-polio-vaccine
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