Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine he would not patent

Photo: SAS Scandinavian Airlines, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jonas Salk was born in New York City in 1914 to Jewish immigrant parents. He studied at City College and New York University’s medical school.

During World War II he worked with Thomas Francis Jr. on flu vaccines at the University of Michigan.

Pittsburgh

In 1947 Salk moved to the University of Pittsburgh. With funding from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now the March of Dimes, his lab worked on a vaccine using killed poliovirus.

Polio was a dreaded disease. In 1952 the U.S. recorded about 58,000 cases.

The trial

In 1954 more than a million children, called “Polio Pioneers,” took part in a field trial. On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective. Cases dropped sharply within a few years.

Asked on television who owned the patent, Salk said, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

Albert Sabin’s oral vaccine later replaced Salk’s in many countries. Salk founded the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, in 1960 and died in 1995.