Jonas Salk could be a billionaire
In the American School of Pittsburgh, the inventor of the vaccine, 40-year-old Salk, makes a mass vaccine against five thousand polio schoolchildren on February 23, 1954.
After World War II, an outbreak of polio, an acute viral infection that can affect the nervous system, has occurred. Most often, children are ill. In half the cases, the course of the disease is uncomplicated. However, 40% of patients cripple paralysis, 10% die from respiratory failure.
Only in 1952, in the United States, polio killed 3,145 people and paralyzed 21,269, most of them children. There is no cure. Only the “iron lungs” were saved - oxygen chambers in which patients with paralyzed respiratory muscles lay until the end of their lives.
President Franklin Roosevelt, who himself suffered from this disease, created the National Pediatric Paralysis Foundation. Americans donated from 10 cents to a million dollars to research and develop drugs for the disease.
The son of Polish immigrants, Salk, still at the New York University School of Medicine, is interested in virology. Together with the scientist Thomas Francis, they developed a flu vaccine for the American army during the Second World War. He begins to look for cures for polio. Works 16 hours a day, seven days a week. In the laboratory, the University of Pittsburgh spends two and a half years.
Allocates a group of live polio viruses, kills them with formalin. Based on dead viruses, it creates a vaccine that stimulates the production of its own antibodies against the causative agent in the human body.
Dr. Salk reports to the US Department of Health. Those allow vaccination with an almost unproven drug for schoolchildren and volunteers. Nobody refuses injections - neither parents nor children. The vaccine was safe and did not cause allergies. The analysis for several months shows the presence of antibodies.
A year later, on television, the foundation's experts announce the results: the vaccine is harmless, it reliably protects against a terrible disease. The vaccine is passed to Europe and the Soviet Union. Salk does not patent his invention, as scientists and inventors of drugs do. If he had done this, then with current money, permission to produce a vaccine would have cost $ 7 billion. People’s diseases have been reduced by polio by 99%.
After World War II, an outbreak of polio, an acute viral infection that can affect the nervous system, has occurred. Most often, children are ill. In half the cases, the course of the disease is uncomplicated. However, 40% of patients cripple paralysis, 10% die from respiratory failure.
Only in 1952, in the United States, polio killed 3,145 people and paralyzed 21,269, most of them children. There is no cure. Only the “iron lungs” were saved - oxygen chambers in which patients with paralyzed respiratory muscles lay until the end of their lives.
President Franklin Roosevelt, who himself suffered from this disease, created the National Pediatric Paralysis Foundation. Americans donated from 10 cents to a million dollars to research and develop drugs for the disease.
Photo © gazeta.ua
The son of Polish immigrants, Salk, still at the New York University School of Medicine, is interested in virology. Together with the scientist Thomas Francis, they developed a flu vaccine for the American army during the Second World War. He begins to look for cures for polio. Works 16 hours a day, seven days a week. In the laboratory, the University of Pittsburgh spends two and a half years.
Allocates a group of live polio viruses, kills them with formalin. Based on dead viruses, it creates a vaccine that stimulates the production of its own antibodies against the causative agent in the human body.
Dr. Salk reports to the US Department of Health. Those allow vaccination with an almost unproven drug for schoolchildren and volunteers. Nobody refuses injections - neither parents nor children. The vaccine was safe and did not cause allergies. The analysis for several months shows the presence of antibodies.
A year later, on television, the foundation's experts announce the results: the vaccine is harmless, it reliably protects against a terrible disease. The vaccine is passed to Europe and the Soviet Union. Salk does not patent his invention, as scientists and inventors of drugs do. If he had done this, then with current money, permission to produce a vaccine would have cost $ 7 billion. People’s diseases have been reduced by polio by 99%.
