Salk Benefits

Francis Collins once said " I think history would say that medical research has, throughout many changes of parties, remained as one of the shining lights of bipartisan agreement, that people are concerned about health for themselves, for their families, for their constituents." The twentieth century was a time of great scientific advancements in medicine, especially those advancements of the mid-twentieth century. New surgical procedures and vaccines were being discovered which resulted in people having the ability to live longer than ever before. Doctors and scientist were trying to develop new creative ways of preserving the lives of their family, friends, and the population around them. But, with so many unknown diseases going around, that
Somebody like Drs. Enders, Weller and Robbins at Harvard who were awarded the Nobel Prize for developing the techniques that Salk used to grow the polio virus could be looked at as some of the most influential people of Salk's time. They were a huge part of the development, but still, the thing that made Salk stand out was his idea that a noninfectious version of the polio virus could be injected into a person and as a result they would be immune to the disease. This idea specifically is what went on to influence so many other scientists when studying vaccinology, and when developing vaccines that we use today. Watson
Fuhs 5 and Crick had a crucial scientific discovery when they developed a model of the structure of
DNA, and revealed that it was a double helix. Yes, their discovery was important, but that discovery was not a big issue at the time, and if they discovered it a few years later, it would not have been too big of a deal. Polio was having a direct effect on mass amounts of people worldwide, "New polio cases dropped from nearly 2 million to under 6,000 in 1957, the first
The vaccine made such a large impression after such a short amount as well, "[. . .] by 1962, the number of cases of polio had dropped to 910" (People and Discoveries). Within seven years, the vaccine developed by Salk almost completely eliminated a disease that was an epidemic less than ten years earlier. Salk's single invention created an enormous amount of success in a very small window of time. With his good timing, and revolutionary idea, Salk became the most important scientist of his time. The people being effected with this disease, whether directly by having the disease, or indirectly by knowing someone with the disease, were scared and had no clue what to do about the damage polio was making. With the work of many scientists coming together and discovering new things, Salk was able to use the resources he had and his own ideas to develop something that would be used in generations to come. Having this ability to preserve the lives of so many people is what made Salk a hero to the population in a time where they needed help. He put all his efforts into providing the medical world with new information, whether it was when he developed the polio vaccine, when he worked on a vaccine of AIDS, or when he started