Jonas Salk on polio vaccine: ‘Could you patent the sun?’
https://themilitant.com/2021/04/10/jonas-salk-on-polio-vaccine-could-you-patent-the-sun/
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Vol. 85/No. 15
April 19, 2021
Sixty-eight years ago, Dr. Jonas Salk announced he had successfully
developed a vaccine for polio, which has saved millions of lives. Unlike
the big pharmaceutical companies that place patents on drugs they market
— to jack up the prices and reap superprofits, like they’re doing today
with COVID-19 vaccines — Salk simply made his vaccine available to all
of humanity.
After the announcement, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow asked Salk, who
owned the patent for the polio vaccine? “Well, the people, I would say,”
replied Salk, in light of the millions of charitable donations raised by
the March of Dimes that funded the vaccine’s research and field testing.
“There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
In 1952 alone 58,000 children in the U.S. were paralyzed by polio, as
well as hundreds of thousands more around the world. The impact of
Salk’s vaccine in the U.S. was dramatic, reducing polio virus infections
by about 95% between 1955 and 1962.
While researching and developing the vaccine, Salk was also being spied
on by the FBI. The federal cop agency’s director, J. Edgar Hoover,
gained access to Salk’s personnel file at the University of Michigan,
where he was a researcher and assistant professor in Ann Arbor, to
determine his “loyalty” and to see if his political views were too
“leftist.”
A few years later, Dr. Albert Sabin developed an oral polio vaccine,
which also was not patented. Its first test was in the Soviet Union,
which was successful, and 77 million youths there — everyone under 20 —
were vaccinated.
In 1962 the revolutionary government of Cuba used the oral vaccine to
carry out an unprecedented massive nationwide effort.
In Cuba, where there was not enough available refrigeration to store a
perishable vaccine, health authorities decided to vaccinate all the
children in the country in just a few days. And six months later they
did the same thing for the second dose. This deprived the virus of all
its potential carriers, eradicating the disease from the island.
Sabin traveled to Cuba in 1967 and met with virologists to discuss joint
work on future vaccines, efforts that were thwarted by the U.S.
government embargo against Cuba and its revolution.
Cuba’s int’l solidarity vs. US bosses’ drive for vaccine profits
There are two different class approaches to the vaccination efforts
against COVID-19 confronting workers and farmers around the world today.
One ensures the profits of the ruling capitalist families, who own the
giant for-profit pharmaceutical and medical insurance monopolies. The…
Tampa caravan: ‘End US embargo of Cuba!’
TAMPA, Fla. — Some 40 people, mostly Cuban Americans, joined a car
caravan here March 28, part of protests in the U.S. and around the world
demanding the U.S. government end its nearly 60-year embargo against
Cuba. The action was…
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Carl Sagan “It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance
between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all
hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great
openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some
tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes,
whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble. If you are only skeptical,
then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new.
You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the
world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now
and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on
the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being
skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and
either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and
progress. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility
and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot
distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones.” ― Carl Sagan
