Who is jonas salk

Following an anonymous tip, police enter a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, an exclusive suburb of San Diego, California, and discover 39 victims of a mass suicide. The deceased—21 women and 18 men of varying ages—were all found lying peaceably in matching dark clothes and Nike In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a historic peace agreement, ending three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel and establishing diplomatic and commercial ties.

Less than two years Italy attacks the British fleet at Souda Bay, Crete, using detachable warheads to sink a British cruiser. The manned torpedo, also known as the The antiwar movement had initially given Nixon a chance to make good on his campaign promises to end the war in On March 26, , President Thomas Jefferson attends a public party at the Senate and leads a diverse crowd in consuming an enormous loaf of bread dubbed the mammoth loaf.

The giant bread was baked to go with the remnants of an enormous block of cheese. Two years earlier, a Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. This Side of Paradise is published, immediately launching year-old F.

Scott Fitzgerald to fame and fortune. In , Salk went to the University of Michigan on a research fellowship and soon advanced to the position of assistant professor of epidemiology, or, the study of the causes and control of epidemics. He continued his research in the field and began teaching at the University of Pittsburgh in Since the turn of the century, polio outbreaks had grown more frequent— 57, cases were recorded in He saw a great need for a vaccine against polio, and decided to devote his research to that cause for the next eight years.

His hard work paid off. In , he announced the development of a trial vaccine for Polio, or poliomyelitis.

His vaccine was composed of "killed" polio virus, which retained the ability to immunize without the risk of infecting the patient. He first inoculated volunteers, including himself, his wife, and their three sons, with a polio vaccine made from this killed virus. But it also provided opportunities in other ways. These are the prices; one has to pay for the pluses as well as the minuses.

How did you react to that instant world-hero status? Were there tragic aspects to your loss of anonymity? Jonas Salk: Yes, there were. I suddenly found myself being treated like a public figure, or a hero. I was no longer able to use my time altogether at my own discretion, but I made every effort to do so.

And before not too long, things quieted down. From that point of view, it was a unique experience, not to be repeated again. It was not unlike the ending of a war, if you like. People often say they remember two things. That is how these two things associate in the minds of people. That was the mood of the country and the world at the time.

I felt myself very much like someone in the eye of a hurricane because all this swirling was going on around me.

It was at that moment that everything changed. It was Edward R. Even today, there is debate about the vaccines. The oral vaccine developed by Sabin is a live vaccine.

That decision, that deliberate shift in policy, was made at a time when we already knew that the vaccine-associated cases were occurring, and I had a difficulty understanding the logic of that, I must say. Was that a wise decision? Should this simply have been allowed to proceed in a natural way without declaring any preference, and let nature take its course?

If you look at the story in the Scandinavian countries, where the killed-virus vaccine was used, polio has been eradicated. Here we continue to have vaccine-associated polio, even though there are parts of the world, underdeveloped countries, where the live-virus vaccine is not working and the killed-virus vaccine is being used. In Israel, just recently, they decided to use the killed-vaccine first, followed by the live vaccine.

I always find policies like that really political rather than scientific. They are using the killed vaccine to make the live vaccine safe. But do you need the live vaccine to make the killed vaccine effective? We also know that in parts of the world where other viruses inhabit the intestinal tract, there are inhibitors that prevent the live virus vaccine from taking effect.

It now is possible with fewer doses to produce uniform protection that is life-long. So many assertions were made to discredit the use of the inactive virus vaccine which had no basis in scientific reality. I have come to appreciate how the evolutionary process works. I see evolution as error making and error correction.

Whatever errors were made are going to be corrected. In my own judgment, if they had not taken that position at that time, polio would have been eradicated from the United States much sooner. In a matter of just a few years, the incidence of the disease was reduced by 95 percent. The remainder would have been taken care of simply with time. The idea of shifting from one preparation to another had reasons that were beyond the realm of science.

How do you see the role of teamwork in science? How do you balance that? You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. Therefore, since whatever we do has to be part of a team, part of a community, we have to attempt to bring together those who have the same conviction, see the same things. Then it becomes a matter of time, when one or the other will prevail.

Fortunately, there is all this diversity, and if not for that, problems would not be solved. If everyone saw things in a certain way, and it was the — quote— wrong way, it would not lead to the path of solution. If we were to study the anatomy of success, then a great deal would be learned about the human attributes are associated with success. I think a great deal about that. Jonas Salk: Well, I play with words. The evolvers are people who cause things to change.

The maintainers of the status quo do everything to keep things from changing. And, there I see differences in perception, differences in vision, differences in interpretation, and differences in temperament, in personality. The number of evolvers are much fewer than the maintainers of the status quo. And, amongst the evolvers, there are some who are initiators, some who go along with what other people recognize to be new or different. We know what that means. If you are, then it would be well to recognize that there were others before you.

Are we all like that? We are not like that. What role does instinct play in decision-making? Has your gut ever sent you in a surprising direction? Jonas Salk: I call that intuition. Reason alone will not serve. Intuition alone can be improved by reason, but reason alone without intuition can easily lead the wrong way. The both are necessary.

The way I like to put it is that I might have an intuition about something, I send it over to the reason department. The art of science is as important as so-called technical science. You need both. What led you to make the tremendous investment of time in founding your own institute here in San Diego?

Jonas Salk: It was not founding my own institute, just to put it into perspective. I also saw the need for fundamental studies in biology to help give us the basic background on which to understand about the problems of cancer, for example, or autoimmune disease.

Eventually I knew that the neurosciences were going to be terribly important. I also recognized that it would be necessary to address the human dimension as well, appreciating how much more morbidity and mortality is associated with war, with crime, drug abuse and so forth. And so, I thought that it would be well to consider establishing an institution that would be concerned not merely with nature, but with the human side of nature, not only with the molecular, cellular dimension, but what I call the human dimension.

I thought if such individuals were to work together in the same context that we would begin to understand a great deal more, much more about these different realms by their commingling. And it was an idea that was articulated before its time. The institute has not addressed the human dimension directly, in the work it is doing at the present time, although it did in the beginning. But that will probably change. However, that was addressed in the establishment of the institute and the creation of this marvelous architectural setting, where people could do scientific work in a work of art, to see what would happen if you set up what I call a crucible for creativity.

It was set up on the basis of an evolutionary philosophy, acknowledging that it would be here long into the future. It was designed to invite change both structurally and in the laboratories and spaces, and also organizationally, and in subject matter. So, without my being conscious of what I was doing, intuitively I was expressing something that might be thought of more in the realm of a work of art, which I attempted to do in a scientific and rational way as well. The institute has been quite successful, in its way.

I think it will be successful in other ways in the future if this philosophy continues to prevail. I did all that myself but I want to see what happens if you do the experiment the other way. How will we know what might happen, unless we try? That was part of the motivation. I also felt the need myself to lead a double life, because of my dual interests in nature and the human side of nature. I see myself as having some artistic and philosophical inclinations.

And I tried to create a place for people like myself. You certainly have attracted many of the greatest scientific minds of the time here.

Jonas Salk: Yes, but I would say that was part of the design. I was looking for people of size, of quality. The selection process at the beginning I was hoping would continue. Well, this process of selection is also part of natural selection.

What mystery would you most like to crack now? What would you most like to accomplish? I see the continuity from what appears to be the beginning of time, when pre-biological evolution took place, and biological evolution, and then when the human mind came upon the scene and the emergence of ideas — accumulative genes, which I see as manifestations of the process of evolution at work on the gray matter. I am interested in a phase that I think we are entering. From discovery to extinction.

JAMA, Aug ; Landmark article Aug 6, Considerations in the preparation and use of poliomyelitis virus vaccine. By Jonas E. JAMA, May ; Salk And Angela M. Byron L. Bennett and Jonas E. Salk and Byron L. Control of influenza and poliomyelitis with killed virus vaccines. J Salk and D Salk. Science, Mar ; - Vaccinology Of Poliomyelitis. Darrel Salk and Jonas Salk. Volume 2, Issue 1, March , Pages Jonas Salk.

Vaccine, Volume 8, Issue 5, October , Pages Salk, Jonas Salk and Dominique Dormont.. Vaccine, Volume 12, Issue 12, , Pages Creativity As A Distributed Function. Bruce J. West and Jonas Salk. Complexity, Organization And Uncertainty. Immunology Today, Volume 8, Issue 1, , Pages Darrell Salk, AntonL.

Van Wezel and Jonas Salk. Merging Intuition And Reason. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Volume 26, Issue 2, September , Pages Jeffrey Kluger. New York:G. Don McLeese. Juvenile audience, Internet Resource. Deanne Durrett. Elementary and Junior High School.

Marjorie Curson. Juvenile audience. Englewood Cliffs, N. Jonas Salk : Conquering Polio. Jonas Salk : Polio Pioneer. Corinne J Naden; Rose Blue. Primary school. Brookfield, CT:Millbrook Press, James Barter. Richard Hantula. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac, Debbie Bookchin; Jim Schumacher. New York : St.

Katherine E Krohn; A Milgrom. Juvenile Audience. John Bankston. Jonas Salk : creator of the Polio Vaccine. Salvatore Tocci.