Jonas Salk was a child of poor Jewish immigrant parents
living in New York City. He didn’t
receive a regular Public School education, being raised in the devout Jewish
culture there. When he was 13, he was
accepted into a public school that took only gifted students. They crammed 4 years into 3, causing many
students to fail. But Jonas kept
studying hard and passed.
He went to college at age 15, accepted into New York City
College. It was a free college, but
really hard to get into. He graduated in
1934 with a Bachelor’s in Science and headed to Medical School at New York
University. What set him apart there was
that he didn’t intend to become a doctor.
He said, “… 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."
After graduating from Medical school, he did an internship
at the University of Michigan, where he worked with a Doctor Francis who was developing
the flu vaccine. He was hooked! Virology was his field!
Within a few years of developing flu vaccines in his own laboratory,
Jonas was asked to work with a group of researchers to discover a vaccine to
give protection against the dreaded disease Polio. With this request came research money to fund
the project.
Polio was a very prevalent disease that often struck
children. It began as muscle weakness,
then disability. The most severe cases
caused death. In 1938, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt came down with the disease and resources became committed
to the cause. The March of Dimes began
asking for donations to further research.
The disease had been around since the 1800’s, and an epidemic had
occurred between 1914 and 1919. Each
year it struck more people. By 1952,
60,000 people were diagnosed with it yearly and 3,000 died, while 21,000 were
left crippled by it. Researchers tried
for many years to develop a vaccine that would stop this disease, but the
experiments they tried often gave the patient the disease.
Jonas was excited to join the group and try to help. He wanted to try injecting children with
‘killed’ Polio viruses to see if their bodies would become immune to the
disease. They had been using ‘live’
viruses before then. It took years of
experimentation to isolate the virus, then kill it to make it ready to be
used. It was said that he worked 16 hour
days for 2 and a half years to perfect it.
Jonas nearly gave up. He said
that watching children play on a playground made realize that there were
thousands of people counting on him to stop this disease or they would be
paralyzed and never walk again. With
that thought, he continued his work with ‘renewed vigor.’
He announced in 1954 that he thought he had a good
vaccine. He was so sure that he injected
himself, his wife and children with it.
He had to try it on lots of people to see if it would work, so he had to
gain the public’s trust, and this gesture went a long way. Besides, Polio was so feared that many
parents were willing to try almost anything to avoid it. He got the parents of 1.8 million school
children to agree to participate.
On April 12, 1955, the researchers announced that the trial
had been completed and determined that the virus was safe and effective. It was a historic day, resembling a national
holiday. People observed moments of
silence, rang bells in churches, honked horns, blew factory whistles, prayed in
churches and synagogues, fired gun salutes, closed the schools or held school
assemblies, drank toasts, hugged children, smiled at strangers and forgave
enemies. Mostly, parents and teachers
wept. One would think that a war had
ended. Everyone was grateful to Dr.
Jonas Salk for saving their loved ones.
Announcing this big news on that day was calculated. It was exactly 10 years from the day that
President Roosevelt had died. It was a
fitting day to declare Polio was defeated.
Jonas himself became a celebrity overnight. If he was on an airplane, the pilot would
announce it and everyone would break into applause. He was upgraded to Penthouse suites when he
travelled and stayed at a hotel. And if
he was at a restaurant, people would come over and talk to him. It started to irritate him that his privacy
seemed gone forever.
The vaccine worked in a big way. In 1962, only 910 cases were noted in the
United States, down from more than 37,000 cases in 1954. Parents didn’t have to worry anymore about
losing a child or a childhood by this dreaded disease. Efforts are still underway to complete
destroy this disease from the whole earth.
Jonas Salk started out with a goal to help humankind. He studied hard and made the most of the
education he could get. And he worked
hard to find the vaccine that would change our world. What contribution will you make with your hard-earned education?
To learn more, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
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