Who Was Jonas Salk? Jonas Salk was one of the leading scientists of the twentieth century and the creator of the first polio vaccine. In 1942 at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Salk became part of a group that was working to develop a vaccine against the flu.Apr 27, 2017
How did Jonas Salk change history?
Jonas Salk, in full Jonas Edward Salk, (born October 28, 1914, New York, New York, U.S.—died June 23, 1995, La Jolla, California), American physician and medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective vaccine for polio.
What impact did Jonas Salk have?
Jonas Edward Salk is credited with creating the first effective vaccine against poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis). Epidemics of poliomyelitis had intensified, and in 1952, about 58,000 cases and more than 3,000 deaths were reported in the United States alone.
Why is Dr Jonas Salk significant in American history?
On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio.
How did Jonas Salk help the community?
Contrary to the era's prevailing scientific opinion, Salk believed his vaccine, composed of “killed” polio virus, could immunize without risk of infecting the patient. Salk administered the vaccine to volunteers who had not had polio, including himself, his lab scientist, his wife and their children.
Why was Jonas Salk hailed as a hero?
Jonas Salk, who developed the vaccine that is believed to have struck the death knell of polio, as he received a special citation from President Dwight David Eisenhower in the White House Rose Garden.
Who invented vaccine for polio?
The discovery that the various antigenic strains of PVs could be grouped into three distinct viral types and the propagation of the PV in vitro led to the development of the vaccines against poliomyelitis: the formalin-inactivated vaccine (IPV) by Jonas Salk (1953) and the live-attenuated vaccines (OPV) by Albert Sabin ...
How effective was the polio vaccine when it first came out?
The Salk vaccine had been 60–70% effective against PV1 (poliovirus type 1), over 90% effective against PV2 and PV3, and 94% effective against the development of bulbar polio. Soon after Salk's vaccine was licensed in 1955, children's vaccination campaigns were launched.
How did Jonas Salk discover the polio vaccine?
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.
Did Salk patent his vaccine?
Salk was immediately hailed as a "miracle worker" when the vaccine's success was first made public in April 1955, and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution.
Who discovered the vaccination for small pox?
The basis for vaccination began in 1796 when the English doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had gotten cowpox were protected from smallpox. Jenner also knew about variolation and guessed that exposure to cowpox could be used to protect against smallpox.
Who invented the flu vaccine?
Early 1940s: Jonas Salk, MD (yes, the same doctor who worked on the polio vaccine!) and others work to develop the first inactivated flu vaccine with support from the U.S. Army.
Who discovered the vaccine for yellow fever?
In 1951, Max Theiler of the Rockefeller Foundation received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of an effective vaccine against yellow fever—a discovery first reported in the JEM 70 years ago. This was the first, and so far the only, Nobel Prize given for the development of a virus vaccine.
Epidemiology
History
In the early 1950s, 25,000 to 50,000 new cases of polio occurred each year. Jonas Salk (19141995) became a national hero when he allayed the fear of the dreaded disease with his polio vaccine, approved in 1955. Although it was the first polio vaccine, it was not to be the last; Albert Bruce Sabin (19061993) introduced an oral vaccine in the United States in the 1960s that replac…
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Early life and education
Jonas Salk was born in New York City, his parents eldest son. His mother was a Russian Jewish immigrant and his father the son of Jewish immigrants. Salk was encouraged throughout his youth to succeed academically. He graduated from high school at the age of 15 and then entered the City College of New York. Although he originally intended to pursue law, he became intereste…
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Background
In 1951 the National Foundation typing program confirmed that there were three types of poliovirus. By that time Salk was convinced that the same killed-virus principle he had used to develop an influenza vaccine would work for polio. He also believed that it would be less dangerous than a live vaccine: if the vaccine contained only dead virus, then it could not acciden…
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Research
Salk developed methods for growing large quantities of the three types of polioviruses on cultures of monkey kidney cells. He then killed the viruses with formaldehyde. When injected into monkeys, the vaccine protected them against paralytic poliomyelitis. In 1952 Salk began testing the vaccine in humans, starting with children who had already been...
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Preparation
In order to conduct these massive trials Salks vaccine needed to be produced on a large scale. Accomplishing this required the assistance of the pharmaceutical industry, and well-known companies like Eli Lilly and Company, Wyeth Laboratories, and Parke, Davis and Company agreed to make the new vaccine.
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Early life
Sabin was born in 1906 in Bialystok, Russia (now part of Poland). At the age of 15 he emigrated with his family to the United States. After Sabin graduated from high school in Paterson, New Jersey, his uncle agreed to finance his college education, provided that Sabin studied dentistry. After two years preparing for dentistry at New York University, Sabin switched to medicine, havin…
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Military service
During World War II, Sabin left his polio research to serve in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. There he investigated other diseases like insect-borne encephalitis and dengue, working on vaccines for both.
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Prevention
Sabins live-virus, oral polio vaccine (administered in drops or on a sugar cube) soon replaced Salks killed-virus, injectable vaccine in many parts of the world. In 1994 the WHO declared that naturally occurring poliovirus had been eradicated from the Western Hemisphere owing to repeated mass immunization campaigns with the Sabin vaccine in Central and South America. T…
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Later life
Although he was the first to produce a polio vaccine, Salk did not win the Nobel Prize or become a member of the National Academy of Sciences. An object of public adulation because of his pioneering work, he spent his life trying to avoid the limelight but nevertheless endured the animosity of many of his colleagues who saw him as a publicity hound. In 1962 he founded the …
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Influence
Sabin, too, continued his work and held a series of influential positions at such organizations as the Weizmann Institute of Science, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and the National Institutes of Health.
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