The Life of Jonas Edward Salk (Argumentative)

**The Life of Jonas Edward Salk**

In 1955, at the height of the poliomyelitis epidemic, an American medical researcher and virologist by the name of Jonas Edward Salk would introduce the first ever poliomyelitis vaccine to the world, saving countless lives with his historic discovery. For this reason, Jonas Salk should be remembered as a great and influential man that changed the course of virology, disease control and prevention, as well as changing millions of people's lives forever from this deadly and paralytic virus.

Born on October 28th, 1914 in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrants Daniel and Dora Salk, Jonas Salk was the eldest of their three sons and the first to attend college. Salk and his family were poor. His father worked in the garment district. Education was essential to his parents, and they encouraged him to apply himself to his studies. After high school, Salk attended the City College of New York, where he earned a bachelor's degree in science. He later went on to achieve his medical degree from the New York University School of Medicine in 1939. Salk then took up an internship as a scientific physician at Mount Sinai Hospital for two years.

In 1942, Salk went to the University of Michigan on a research fellowship to develop an influenza vaccine with his friend and mentor from NYU, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. head of the epidemiology department at Michigan’s new School of Public Health, who taught him the methodology of vaccine development. In the same year Salk co-authored a clinical trial that injected experimental influenza vaccine in male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, then exposed them to influenza several months later. The mentally unstable victims of this medical experiment were described as being "senile and debilitated," meaning that acquiring their rational consent to participate in dangerous and possibly life threatening experiments would have been impossible due to their feeble state of mind. Salk is considered one of the most important and influential figures of the medical field, but was, in fact, found to have been conducting trials in violation of medical ethics and of the law today. Not acquiring patient consent and then proceeding to test experimental vaccines unbeknownst to them is morally wrong. Unfortunately committing these unethical and immoral acts in the medical field at the time we all too common. Not a single medical physician thought twice whether what they were doing was wrong from a medical or even legal standpoint, so this was never stopped nor addressed as serious problem.

Notwithstanding of these unethical acts, Salk was appointed director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1947. Funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known today as the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, he began to conduct research and develop the techniques that would lead to a vaccine to end the poliomyelitis epidemic. In 1951, despite the feedback from his fellow colleagues in the medical field at the time, Salk was convinced that if the poliomyelitis viruses had been grown in a laboratory and then destroyed using formaldehyde, it could be used as a suitable and safe vaccine that would not harm the patient. Eleven years later, Salk’s rival, Albert Sabin, would release a vaccine proving Salk’s inferior, quickly becoming the worlds vaccine of choice against poliomyelitis virus. Sabin’s vaccine would be composed of live poliomyelitis cells rather than dead cells as Salk used. (pbs.org)

By 1952, poliomyelitis vaccine tests became one of the largest clinical trials in medical history. This continued two years after. Salk was backed by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and its president Basil O'Connor. On April 26, 1954, six-year-old Randy Kerr was injected with Salk’s poliomyelitis vaccine at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Months later, almost two million people, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, joined him in becoming “polio pioneers.” Prior to the first “polio pioneers”, Salk tested the vaccine on himself along with his wife and three sons. Finally in 1955, Salk's poliomyelitis vaccine was deemed safe, approved for public distribution, and presented to the world. Upon its release to the globe, Salk’s poliomyelitis vaccine, initially designed to solve the poliomyelitis epidemic, killed eleven people, but more often than not, severely paralyzed two hundred of the patients by causing them to contract the poliomyelitis virus itself. Despite these deaths and contraction statistics, the vaccine kept its public distribution approval and doctors, especially in the United States, in spite of the order from the United States Surgeon General to temporarily halt all inoculations, continued to vaccinate patients, including schoolchildren, endangering their health in the process. If Salk had initially listened to his colleagues feedback and used live cells as Sabin did, eleven patients would still be alive and two hundred would not have contracted poliomyelitis and been severely paralyzed. Nonetheless, those deaths and contractions from Salk's vaccine were necessary to the future of research for other deadly viruses vaccines. In the following year there were 28,985 cases of poliomyelitis in the United States. By 1957, there were only 5,894 cases. Salk's vaccine was used by 90 other countries by 1959.

For his unprincipled and illegal actions in the early years of his medical physician career, Salk is considered by many to be, frankly, a medical criminal. He is, however, credited with pioneering the virology field in the fight against the poliomyelitis epidemic of the 1940’s - 1950’s. Consequent to his research and work in creating the first, but surely not the last, poliomyelitis vaccine the world has seen, Jonas Edward Salk will be remembered for what he undoubtedly is, a hero to a generation in fear of permanent and severe paralyzation. The end justified the means.

- Tronlegacy2000 (talk)