Today is the 100th birthday of Jonas Salk, inventor of the first successful polio vaccine. Polio was once one of the most feared diseases in the United States. Before testing for Salk’s vaccine began in 1954, thousands of people a year—mainly children—contracted polio, and many died. In 1952, 60,000 children in the United States were infected with the virus, and thousands died. By 1962, it was 910. Salk chose not to patent the foundation-funded vaccine, and never made any money from it. He gave it away to drug companies to manufacture. Dr. Salk was once asked by the famous journalist Edward R. Murrow, “Who owns the patent?” Dr. Salk replied, Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? Today, polio is endemic in only two parts of the world: Nigeria, and along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The United States has been polio-free since 1979. Since the mid 1980s, there has been an international, all-out effort to rid the world of this disease. We at CareOregon would like to thank Dr. Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin (who developed a different type of polio vaccine), the March of Dimes (the nonprofit founded by Franklin D. Roosevelt that funded Dr. Salk’s research), the partners who have led the world eradication effort (Rotary International, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and the doctors, nurses and other health care professionals whose preventive care efforts save lives every day, right here in Oregon and around the world.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 18:00:00 +0000