WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SELFLESS INDIVIDUALS LIKE JONAS SALK?

'Easy to get' patents killed them all off

HOW ‘NO PATENT’ SAVED THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN FROM SUFFERING

The first effective polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk and a team at the University of Pittsburgh. Salk went on CBS radio to report a successful test on a small group of adults and children on 26 March, 1953; two days later the results were published.

Beginning 23 February, 1954, the vaccine was tested at Arsenal Elementary School and the Watson Home for Children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On April 12, 1955, Edward R. Murrow asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent to the polio vaccine.

‘Well, the people, I would say,’ Salk responded. ‘There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?’

By the time of his chat with Murrow, which aired on the day the polio vaccine was announced as safe and 90 percent effective, Salk was already more messiah than virologist to the average American.

Polio paralysed between 13,000 and 20,000 children annually in the last pre-vaccine years, and Salk was the face of the inoculation initiativ…