29/10/2014
“There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” - Jonas Salk
For six decades after the first major American polio epidemic occurred near Rutland, Vermont, in the summer of 1894, the highly contagious disease terrorized the United States. Polio, which struck children disproportionately, could attack the central nervous system and cause muscle deterioration, paralysis and even death. American virologist Jonas Salk, who was born 100 years ago on October 28, 1914, developed the world’s first safe and effective polio vaccine, the vaccine that has nearly eradicated the most dreaded disease of the 20th century.
While most scientists believed that effective vaccines could only be developed with live viruses, Salk developed a “killed-virus” vaccine by growing samples of the virus and then deactivating them by adding formaldehyde so that they could no longer reproduce.
After successfully inoculating thousands of monkeys, Salk began the risky step of testing the vaccine on humans in 1952. In addition to administering the vaccine to children at two Pittsburgh-area institutions, Salk injected himself, his wife and his three sons in his kitchen after boiling the needles and syringes on his stovetop. Salk announced the success of the initial human tests to a national radio audience on March 26, 1953.
The clinical trial was the biggest public health experiment in American history. The Salk vaccine was declared safe and effective in 1955. An oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin was first tested in 1957 and went into widespread use in 1963.
Salk did not patent his vaccine.
Once Sabin’s oral vaccine finally became available in 1962, it quickly supplanted Salk’s injected vaccine because it was cheaper to produce and easier to administer. Ultimately, both vaccines produced by the bitter rivals nearly eradicated the disease from the planet. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were only 416 reported cases of polio worldwide in 2013, mostly confined to a handful of Asian and African countries.
Here are some interesting details about Jonas Salk & the polio vaccine: http://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-jonas-salk-and-the-polio-vaccine
