Every summer in mid-twentieth-century America, a particular terror descended on families. Swimming pools closed, movie theaters emptied, and parents kept their children indoors, watching for the first signs of fever and muscle weakness. Poliomyelitis was a disease that struck without warning, paralyzing thousands of children each year, killing hundreds, and leaving survivors dependent on iron lungs and leg braces. Jonas Salk, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants from New York City, decided to end it.
Working at the University of Pittsburgh with a team of dedicated researchers, Salk took an approach that many of his colleagues considered reckless: developing a vaccine using killed virus rather than the weakened live virus favored by the scientific establishment. He tested it on himself, his wife, and his three sons before undertaking the largest medical field trial in history. In April 1955, the results were announced: the vaccine was safe, effective, and potent. Church bells rang across the country. Salk became the most celebrated scientist in America overnight.
When the journalist Edward R. Murrow asked him who owned the patent, Salk gave an answer that has echoed through the decades. He said there was no patent—that it belonged to the people. The vaccine could have made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. He chose instead to ensure that it could be manufactured as widely and cheaply as possible. He never received the Nobel Prize, and some colleagues in the scientific community regarded him with jealousy, but he appeared unbothered by either slight. He spent the rest of his life founding a research institute and working on other medical challenges, including early HIV/AIDS research.
Salk's decision not to patent the vaccine was an act of repair so fundamental that it is easy to overlook its radicalism. He held in his hands a discovery worth billions and gave it away because he believed that the elimination of suffering should not be a product for sale. In doing so, he offered the world a model of what science can be when it serves humanity rather than profit—a gift freely given to mend what was broken.
"Perhaps the reason the Universe gave you a broken world is so that you could have a chance to fix it."