Reference
- Salk, Jonas Edward (1914-1995)US microbiologist who produced the first successful vaccine against the paralytic disease poliomyelitis.
Salk was born in New York, the son of Polish-Jewish Immigrants on 28 October 1914. He graduated in surgery from the College of the City of New York in 1934, and then became a research fellow at the New York University College of Medicine, where he studied the chemistry of proteins. In 1939 he was awarded a doctorate in medicine and during the next three years worked at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, before joining the research staff of the Virus Research Unit in the University of Michigan, where he worked on influenza vaccines until 1944. The next two years were spent in consultation regarding the protection of the armed forces from epidemics. In 1946 he became an assistant professor in epidemiology at Michigan and the following year he was invited by the University of Pittsburgh to join a special medical research unit there to carry out a three-year programme on the causes and treatment of viral diseases. The development of the Salk vaccine against poliomyelitis was announced in 1955. He was appointed director of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, in 1962. He died on 23 June 1995.
The major obstacle to research on the preparation of vaccines in the 1940s was the difficulty of obtaining sufficient virus. Unlike bacteria, which may be grown in culture, viruses need living cells on which to grow. A breakthrough came when it was found that viruses could be grown in live chick embryos. John Enders improved on this technique with the use of mashed embryonic tissue, supplied with nutrients, and with the addition of penicillin to keep down the growth of bacteria...
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Perspectives
Jonas Salk
When a waiting world learned on April 12, 1955, that Jonas Salk had successfully created a vaccine to prevent poliomyelitis, he became a hero overnight. Born in a New York tenement, humble in manner, Salk had all the makings of a twentieth-century icon - a knight in a white coat. In the wakeof his achievement, he received a staggering number of awards and honors; for years his name ranked with Gandhi and Churchill on lists of the most revered people. And yet the one group whose adulation he craved - the scientific community - remained ominously silent. "The worst tragedy that couldhave befallen me was my success," Salk later said. "I knew right away that I was through - cast out."In the first complete biography of Jonas Salk, Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs unravels Salk's story to reveal an unconventional scientist and a misunderstood and vulnerable man. Despite his incredible success in developing the polio vaccine, Salk was ostracized by his fellow scientists, who accused him offailing to give proper credit to other researchers and scorned his taste for media attention. Even before success catapulted him into the limelight, Salk was an inscrutable man disliked by many of his peers. Driven by an intense desire to aid mankind, he was initially oblivious and eventuallyresigned to the personal cost - as well as the costs suffered by his family and friends. And yet Salk remained, in the eyes of the public, an adored hero.Based on hundreds of personal interviews and unprecedented access to Salk's sealed archives, Jacobs' biography offers the most complete picture of this complicated figure. Salk's story has never been fully told; until now, his role in preventing polio has overshadowed his part in co-developing thefirst influenza vaccine, his effort to meld the sciences and humanities in the magnificent Salk Institute, and his pioneering work on AIDS. A vivid and intimate portrait, this will become the standard work on the remarkable life of Jonas Salk.
The Virus and the Vaccine
Jonas Salk's polio vaccine has taken on an almost legendary quality as a medical miracle, for it largely eradicated one of the most feared diseases of the 20th century. But the story of the vaccine has a dark side, one that has never been fully told before... Between 1954 and 1963, close to 98 million Americans received polio vaccinations contaminated with a carcinogenic monkey virus, now known as SV40. A concerted government effort downplayed the incident, and it was generally accepted that although oncogenic to laboratory animals, SV40 was harmless to humans.But now SV40 in showing up in human cancers, and prominent researchers are demanding a serious public health response to this forgotten polio vaccine contaminant. A gripping medical detective story, The Virus and the Vaccine raises major questions about vaccine policy.
Jonas Salk
The biography series, aimed at young adults, profiles important modern-era scientists. The volumes focus on the lives of those men and women who, in the 19th and 20th centuries, made the greatest contributions to scientific knowledge. Each book looks at a scientist - or group of scientists - whose work had a major impact on a particular field. In simple prose, free of technical jargon, each scientist's achievements are discussed, including the scientific principles underlying his or her work. The human drama of scientific work, conveying the excitement and frustration of research, as well as the exhilaration and rewards of discovery, are also depicted.
Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine
Tells the story of Jonas Salk's involvement in the development of a polio vaccine. Written in graphic-novel format.
Polio Vaccine
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
When "poliomyelitis" swept the nation, thousands died or were disabled before American ingenuity, trial and error, and blatant acts of desperation led to one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history. We'll see how polio shaped the vision of FDR, and catapulted the young unknown doctor Jonas Salk to international celebrity.
Jonas Salk: Polio Vaccine
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowPolio caused shortness of breath and permanent paralysis. Dr. Jonas Salk revamped the virus research laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh after World War II. Basil O'Connor gathered funding for the Foundation for Infant Paralysis.
Jonas Salk
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowSalk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh in 1947 and received a grant to study polio. He believed he could trick the body into creating antibodies with an inactivated vaccine instead of using a live virus that put recipients at risk.
Online Resources
- Jonas Salk (1914–1995): A vaccine against polioThose who lived through the 1940s and 1950s will not forget the devastating ravages of poliomyelitis, a spinal cord motor neuron disease caused by the poliovirus. Indeed, the mere mention of the virus quickly evokes heartwrenching images of crippled children in leg braces, or an infant trapped in a sarcophagus-like breathing machine known as the ‘iron lung’. However, the poliovirus is on the verge of global eradication today – an astounding achievement of modern medicine. Jonas Salk played a pivotal role in achieving this success by being the first to devise and implement a safe and effective vaccine against polio.
- Jonas Salk-BiographyJonas Salk was an American physician and medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective vaccine for polio.
Who Was Jonas Salk?
Jonas Salk was one of the leading scientists of the twentieth century and the creator of the first polio vaccine. In 1942 at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Salk became part of a group that was working to develop a vaccine against the flu. In 1947, he became head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. At Pittsburgh he began research on polio. On April 12, 1955, the vaccine was released for use in the United States. He established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 1963. - JONAS SALK-Salk Institute for Biological StudiesJonas Edward Salk was born October 28, 1914 in New York City, the eldest of three sons to Russian-Jewish immigrants Daniel and Dora Salk. The first member of his family to attend college, he earned his medical degree from the New York University School of Medicine in 1939 and became a scientist physician at Mount Sinai Hospital.
- Salk and Sabin: poliomyelitis immunisationIn 1935 Maurice Brodie had attempted to modify the virus by exposing it to formaldehyde. This formalin inactivated ‘‘vaccine’’ was first tried with 20 monkeys, then with 3000 children. The results were poor and Brodie’s vaccine was never used again.1 John Kollmer used live attenuated virus that also proved ineffective, and was blamed for causing
many cases of polio, some fatal.
Salk Vaccine Works
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowJonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine in 1955. He talks about his continued purpose and explains how to think like nature.