Jonas Salk: a vaccine that could have been sold, given to the world

On April 12, 1955, in a kitchen in a small town in the American Midwest, a mother turned the knob of her radio slowly, up, and up some more. Outside the window was April sunlight; the geranium on the sill had just put out new leaves, and a pot of soup was warming on the stove. Her seven-year-old daughter sat at the table, coloring a picture of the sun with crayons. Over the radio came a bulletin that had just been released: the vaccine developed by the scientist Jonas Salk, tested in the largest trial of children in the world, had been proved safe — and effective. Polio, had met its match.

Later, when she told her neighbor about that moment, she said she froze first, then turned the radio off, and on, and off again, over and over, before she dared believe she had not misheard. She stood up, walked over to her daughter, and hugged her so tightly that the crayon fell from the child's hand onto the table. "Mommy, why are you crying?" the girl asked, looking up. The mother could not answer; she only said it again and again: "It's all right, sweetheart. It's all right. This summer, we don't have to be afraid anymore."

There was a reason she said "this summer." All the summer before, the little public swimming pool near their home had kept up a handwritten notice: closed. Her daughter had pressed against the fence three times, asking when she could learn to swim; each time the mother had only stroked the child's hair and said, soon. A lively little boy from the next block, after a few days of fever once summer began, afterward had to go out in a wheelchair. From then on, whenever she passed another child's wheelchair, she would instinctively pull her own child a little closer to her side. And now the radio was telling her: this kind of day was over.

That day, countless American families sat by their radios just as she did. Factory whistles blew, bells across the city rang one after another, and schools gathered their children on the playground to make the announcement; on street corners adults wept, holding their children — the fear that had built up over so many summers, finally finding an outlet. The front pages printed one and the same name: Jonas Salk. The man who lifted the word "afraid" out of millions of mothers' hearts.

The owner of that name was born on October 28, 1914, in New York City, and grew up in an ordinary family. As a boy he was quiet and full of questions, his schoolbag stuffed with borrowed books, never letting go of a question until he understood it. When he grew up, he did not take the road that paid the most; he buried himself in the laboratory — a place where one question was worth years of answering. Later he came to the University of Pittsburgh, and in a laboratory that was not very spacious, he took on a disease that made parents across America turn pale at the name: poliomyelitis, which people were more used to calling polio.

To understand the cheering of that day in 1955, you first have to look back and see what kind of summers American parents lived through before it.

In those years, American families spent their summers in extraordinary quiet. Swimming pools that should have been crowded with children stood empty; movie theaters that should have been full for the summer vacation stayed dark; even the busiest ice-cream shop in town saw its business thin out. Mothers took their children to cottages in the country, far away from crowds; children were told not to go near the river, not to go to the amusement park, not even to drop in on a classmate's house. One summer after another, the whole country was like a room holding its breath — everyone waiting, waiting for good news that no one knew when would come.

Back then, polio was like an invisible shadow that slipped into town on the hottest days. Swimming pools posted "closed" notices at the height of the season; movie theaters went dark before the summer lineup began; the gates of public wading pools were locked. Mothers warned one another: stay away from crowded places, don't drink unboiled water, and if a child runs a fever, see a doctor at once. Every summer, whenever the radio reported a new case, their hearts tightened a little more — for this disease chose children above all: the child who had been running in the yard, laughing and chasing butterflies only yesterday, might lie in a hospital bed today, his legs never to stand again. The whole country was living through summer, and the whole country's mothers were living through it holding their breath.

The children did not understand why the grown-ups suddenly would not let them go swimming or to the movies. They only knew that every summer, their mothers' eyes followed them around — asking about every meal, feeling their foreheads at bedtime, pulling them to the washbasin first whenever they came home soaked with play. Many years later, grown up, they still remembered that careful look in their mothers' eyes — there was no blame in it, only a worry that could not be put into words.

In the middle of the panic, not everyone stayed silent. In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known to all of America by a friendlier name — the March of Dimes. The foundation raised money from ordinary people, pennies and dimes saved one by one, and carried it into laboratory after laboratory, to support scientists in their search for a way against the disease.

In those days, a small collection box often sat on the counter of the corner grocery, printed with the photograph of a sick child. Someone buying candy would drop in a coin; teachers led their classes in "dime drives," and children packed the pennies they had saved into envelopes and mailed them off. They had one simple thought in their hearts: maybe this dime of mine can save another child's leg. Sometimes, after dropping in the coin, they would reach across the counter and stroke the head of the child in the photograph, saying, "Be well — and may all the children be well." Out of millions and millions of dimes like those, the great trial of later years was funded.

It was with this kind of money that Salk began his long, hard work.

At his laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, he worked for years. He stayed late into the night every day; the light in his laboratory was often the last one out in the whole building. Together with the young people on his team, he grew the virus, then found a way to kill it little by little, and turn it into a vaccine — so that the body, without ever meeting the real enemy, would learn to fight first. Failure was routine: this batch was not pure enough, that batch was not stable enough, and the next one had to be torn up and started over.

Once, months of work were wiped out in one go, and his young colleague sat at the bench for a long while without a word. Salk set a cup of hot coffee beside him and said: "Be sad if you like — only tonight. Tomorrow morning, we start it all over again." The colleague recalled later that it was those words that sent him tying his white apron back on the next day. Others tried to persuade Salk: "Jonas, rest one night. The sky isn't going to fall." He looked at the bench and answered: "No, it isn't going to fall — but those children's summers come only once a year. Every time we try once more, they have that much more hope."

Those days lasted a long, long time — so long that his colleagues lost count of how many times "starting over" happened in that room; so long that outside the window, Pittsburgh turned from winter to summer, and calendar after calendar on the white wall turned its pages.

He told the young people in the laboratory that what they were making was not a vial of medicine — it was a mother's good night's sleep. "Do you know," he would remind them, "right now, mothers all across America wake up in the middle of the night and reach out to feel whether their child beside them is still hot. The day we finish this vaccine, they will be able to sleep through the night at last." His colleagues wrote those words on the whiteboard, where they stayed for years.

In 1954, funded by the March of Dimes, the largest field trial in the history of humankind officially began. About 1.8 million children rolled up their sleeves and walked into the trial.

Long lines formed on the school playgrounds; the children were a little nervous, and a little curious. One little boy clutched his mother's hand and would not let go; she knelt down, looked him in the eye, and said: "After this shot, the disease that picks on little children will never dare come near you again." His teacher knelt too and soothed him softly: "It's just a mosquito bite. After the bite, you're a grown-up who can protect yourself." Millions of families signed the consent forms and gave their children's arms away — handing over their hope, shot by shot, to the stern-faced scientist in the laboratory.

In the first few days of the trial, some schools felt as busy as a festival. The children lined up, got their shots, and received a small souvenir card. One little girl, after her shot, turned around and asked her teacher earnestly: "Teacher, does that mean I can go swimming every day now?" The teacher smiled and said: "Yes — once this medicine is proved to work, summer will belong to you again." The girl kept the words in her heart and, when she got home, told them to her mother, word for word.

The year that followed was a long wait. Data came in batches to the laboratory; Salk and his colleagues checked it number by number, compared it row by row of tables. That tiny room held the summers of 1.8 million children. Outside, life went on as usual: the pools stayed closed, the movie theaters stayed dark, mothers still felt their children's foreheads every night. And Salk knew that they were rushing, for the world, a key to open summer again.

All through that year, people often called the foundation to ask: "Any news? Does it work?" The switchboard operators could only ask them to wait a little longer. Mothers talked about it in their kitchens; grocery clerks talked about it; teachers talked about it. No one knew how long the answer would take, but everyone carried the same hope in their hearts — that the people in white coats would give summer back to the children, soon.

On April 12, 1955, the answer was finally laid on the long table of the press conference: the vaccine was safe, the vaccine was effective. That day came to be known as the day "polio met its match."

The mother by the radio had no way of knowing that the man who had made all this real was standing right then under the spotlights, surrounded by the thanks of the whole world. But soon, a question almost no inventor can escape was placed before him: this vaccine was worth a great, great deal of money — should he — take out a patent?

Friends did the math for him: this vaccine would be used by millions upon millions of people; if he held it in his own hands, money would flow in like water. Colleagues in the laboratory half-joked that from now on, they would never have to worry about funding again. Salk listened, neither agreeing nor refusing, and simply turned his eyes to the window.

In a CBS television interview, the reporter Edward R. Murrow asked him: "Who owns the patent on this vaccine?"

Salk looked into the camera and, almost without pausing, answered quietly: "Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"

People watching on television froze, and then applause broke out. By later estimates, had he taken out a patent, the vaccine would have been worth about seven billion dollars. But Salk barely paused on that number for a second — money had never been what he wanted; what he wanted, from the very beginning, was for the vaccine to spread across the world in the widest possible way, so that children in every corner could get this shot.

Some felt sorry for him, saying he could have been a man of fabulous wealth. He did not see it that way. The sun hung in the sky not to be sold to anyone; and a vaccine, once made, was not meant to be locked into someone's safe. He took the most valuable thing in the world and made it the cheapest of gifts, and gave it to the whole world.

When the news spread, some admired him, and some found it hard to believe. Newspapers put his choice on the front page; strangers sent letters from all over the country — thanks, greetings, and children's drawings: a man in a white coat, holding up a syringe, with a very large, very bright sun beside him. Salk kept those drawings, one by one, in a drawer of his office.

People of later generations said that Salk's greatest invention was not really the vaccine itself. The vaccine was cleverness; giving it away for nothing was kindness — cleverness saves for a while, but kindness is what travels.

In 1960, he came to La Jolla, California, and founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He invited the architect Louis Kahn to design it with him; every brick and tile was built to the idea that "science deserves the sea view before it." The institute opened in 1963 and later became a place that scientists from all over the world dreamed of going. He built it by the sea because he wanted the people who worked there to look up and see an open horizon. Many years on, young researchers stood in the institute's courtyard, doing experiments beside the ocean — and they all knew that the owner of this place had once given a gift worth seven billion dollars away, for free. In the second half of his life, Salk still spent his days in the laboratory, just as in the first — the light, always the last to go out.

On June 23, 1995, Jonas Salk died of heart failure, at the age of eighty. What he left behind was not a patent fee, but a world that no longer had to lock its swimming pools in summer. When the news spread, the children who had been vaccinated back then were already grandparents; they told their grandchildren about the man "who gave the sun to everyone." A man who leaves the sun to others will be remembered forever — that was what he deserved, and it was the last thing on his mind when he made his choice.

Some gifts are great not because of what they are worth, but because the person who gave them could have sold them for a mountain of gold — and chose to leave them for every child instead.