Famous Pittsburghers:
Jonas Salk (1914 - 1995)
Humanity is truly fortunate that the son of
Russian-Jewish immigrants choose medicine over his
original goal of becoming an attorney. Or perhaps
we should thank his mother, who never thought he would
be a good lawyer!
Whatever the final motivation, love of medicine or a
mother’s desire for her son to be a doctor, Jonas Salk
started down a path that would save many people from the
devastating disease of Polio.
Jonas Salk’s story started in New York City in the
year 1914. He and his younger siblings (two
brothers and one sister) were encouraged to take their
studies seriously and do the best they could.
After completing high school, the young Salk entered
City College of New York, making him the first one in
his family on both his mother’s side and his father’s
side to go to college.
While in medical school Jonas listened to two
lectures which contradicted one another. They
started him thinking about whether you could immunize
someone by using a live virus, but safely – without
infecting the patient with the actual disease. An
opportunity to get an answer to that question came in
his final year of medical school while spending some
time in a laboratory studying the influenza virus.
Jonas developed a flu vaccine some years later, and this
set the groundwork for his eventual work on polio.
The flu vaccine that Jonas developed was no mere
experiment, but helped the U.S. Army in its quest to win
World War II!
An opportunity came in 1947 to go to Pittsburgh and
Jonas, not one to let an opportunity slip past him,
seized upon the chance to go and continue his influenza
work while also beginning his study of the polio
(poliomyelitis) viruses. Salk worked with the
National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis while at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical School and was the head
of the Virus Research Lab.
At the time, the polio virus affected approximately
25,000 people annually and in some years many more than
that. It was easily spread. The virus caused
paralysis by getting into the spinal cord of the
infected person. Though it took eight years of
hard work at the University of Pittsburgh and the
assistance of many colleagues, Jonas Salk finally
announced the creation of a vaccine made from a dead
virus rather than using a weakened form of the disease.
To Jonas it only made sense to eliminate the risk of
infection by using a dead virus, though it was certainly
not the accepted approach to take at the time.
When the announcement came in 1955, Salk received
quite a bit of attention. Perhaps you could say
that he was the “rock star” of medicine at the time.
Up until this point there was a lot of fear concerning
this virus because you never knew who or where this
disease was going to strike. It was a fear so
great it often caused people to move their families,
sometimes to other countries, in the hope of escaping
the virus. But there was no safe place.
Since the development of the vaccine, polio has been
eradicated for all practical purposes in the countries
where the Salk vaccine has been in use.
Jonas Salk founded the Salk Institute in La Jolla,
California, in 1963. Salk always considered
himself as both a scientist and a doctor and his
Institute for Biological Studies took an innovative
approach to scientific and medical research.
Salk’s three sons have followed their father into the
practice of medicine despite his initial attempts to
discourage them from going into this field. The
youngest son is a psychiatrist while the two older sons
are involved more in the area of research. Salk’s
wife, Francoise, is an artist and Salk looked upon his
marriage as very rewarding. Salk often thought of
his work as a scientist much like the work of an artist,
both requiring creativity and viewing it as more of a
“calling” than a job. His years after he left
Pittsburgh were spent writing books about the nature of
evolution and human life, conducting research and
searching for a vaccine for AIDS. Jonas Salk lived
until the age of 80 and died on June 23, 1995, of
congestive heart failure.
Salk felt that it was necessary to have a purpose in
life. By the work he did, he saved many from the
devastating effects of polio and many from living with
the constant fear of this dreaded virus. He truly
left this world better than he found it. Jonas
Salk is one of those people who put the “Ppoular” in
“Popular Pittsburgh.”
Written by Diane Gliozzi
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