The Polio Threat in 1952.
On April 12, 1955, Edward R. Murrow had 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?"
Salk was the face of the inoculation initiative. Appearing on television to present the vaccine as a gift to the American people was a public relations masterstroke.
Salk was already more of a Messiah than Virologist to the average American.
In a new found continent, pristine in its nature, the Americans found this a shock especially when it targeted the young, limbs paralyzed. The Polio paralyzed between 13,000 and 20,000 children annually in the last pre-vaccine years.
Health officials were unsure how the virus spread and how to prevent it. Parents kept their kids clean and well-rested and took every other precaution to prevent the disease. Strangely enough, though, research showed that poor immigrant children who lived in unsanitary conditions were exposed to small amounts of the virus and became immune at an early age.
Children from clean, middle-class homes, on the other hand, were at much greater risk of paralytic polio.
The talk with Murrow, which aired on the advent of the discovery on the day of the polio vaccine it was announced as safe and 90 percent effective,
Salk needed seven years to develop the first polio vaccine in 1955, three years after a U.S. epidemic killed more than 3,000 in the worst polio outbreak in the nation’s history. The vaccine was declared safe and effective by test monitors on April 12, 1955 — 10 years to the day after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the most widely recognized polio victim of that era. Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine, which came into use in 1961.
Polio research revealed a paradox
Salk had responded. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Over the last half-century, Salk's rhetorical question to Murrow has become a rallying cry for those who campaign against pharmaceutical company profiteering. To many, it represents a generous view of scientific discovery distilled down to a beautiful simplicity. One critic of the big pharma called Salk "the foster parent of children around the world with no thought of the money he could make by withholding the vaccine from the children of the poor."
But diseases that show up suddenly, as polio did, coupled with the fact that no one completely understood the disease, caused a great deal of fear throughout the nation. Moreover, unlikely as it was, the fear of paralysis terrified many people.
Some people felt that the only thing worse than dying of paralytic polio was having the disease and not dying.
"Polio is almost eradicated from the world," said Headley. "To stay eradicated, people need to have their children vaccinated."
Jealous peers mocked him. His polio vaccine saved countless lives, but never won Nobel.
Among his colleagues he was not popular like any in his position. They made snide remarks and were jealous.
This video will reflect this camaraderie with his colleagues.
Word about his Origins
Jonas Salk, the eldest of three sons, was born in 1914 in New York City to Jewish parents who had immigrated from Poland. Though not deeply religious, he very much believed in the Judaic precept of “tikkun olam” – the obligation to help to repair the world. He wanted to make a difference and he bJealous peers mocked him. His polio vaccine saved countless lives, but never won Nobel. He believed that is what he was meant to do.
What Do the Words Tikkun Olam Mean?
Tikkun olam is a signature theme of Jewish tradition. Tikkun is often translated as repair. But in the Hebrew Bible and in the early code of Jewish law called the Mishnah, it has a range of meanings: improve, fix, prepare, set up, or just “do something with…” Tikkun could be used to describe straightening a crooked rod, maintaining a roadway, cutting fingernails, setting a table, or devising a parable to explain a difficult idea. “olam” in Biblical Hebrew connotes all of time. In later Hebrew, it came to mean the world.So tikkun olam.
Tikkun olam means to do something with the world that will not only fix any damage, but also improve upon it. literally means to do something with the world that will not only fix any damage, but also improve upon it, preparing it to enter the ultimate state for which it was created.
His parents were Ashkenazi Jewish; Daniel was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents and Dora, who was born in Minsk, emigrated when she was twelve. Salk's parents did not receive extensive formal education. Jonas had two younger brothers, Herman and Lee, a renowned child psychologist. The family moved from East Harlem to 853 Elsmere Place, the Bronx, with some time spent in Queens at 439 Beach 69th Street, Arverne.
This was nothing but a case of anti-Semitism in my view, that in 1955, Christians were not that aware and the implementation not so strict, just a few years after the WWII.
In this backdrop our attention will certainly divert to the attitude of Pfizer with respect to the vaccine for the COVID Virus. A Company that offset 1000% or more as profits, for a worldwide market with Pfizer as the sole monopoly, at one time. The terms were as much stiff. For the Latin American countries and under-developed Countries.
Pfizer has been accused of “bullying” Latin American governments during negotiations to acquire its Covid-19 vaccine, and the company has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases, according to an investigation by the U.K.-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
How could a Company going by capitalistic tenets, behave in a monopolist market, belonging to a Capitalistic Country professing dominance in Technology and in War, allow a Pharma Giant in that country so as to act so irresponsibly and unilaterally in that manner, especially when the Origin of the Virus is suspect, man-made,and when they had an involvement with their Associates in China at Wuhan, at the place of Origin of research in that Virus, which could mean complicity leading to legal ramifications, in times of Peace.
A glimpse of what the Pharma Industry is like in the USA in the present times, that reflects from the attitude of Pfizer and other dominant nations led by the white, white-collared race, especially when the Nations' of the World allowed themselves to be led by, treated for their Medication for Pandemics and their concomitant mutants or variants and consequential diseases such as ulcers that follow upsetting not just the health but economy as well.
Much of these probably started with AIDS Virus when the Pharma developed a drug, patented and released it to the Developed world and then to the Developing world as a generic drug.
A wanton display of an utter disrespect for the Citizens of the Third World shows itself painting an ugly picture of greed, skipping of procedures, corruptible practices, fudged data and what have you.
It forced the Indians to review and lead the Pharma industry, more often by a compulsive choice, create their own systems, fire-walling it as much as possible with the likes of Pfizer, Ranbaxy etc. and operate insularly.