Healers
Jonas Salk
Physician and Virologist
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Jonas Salk was an American physician and virologist who developed the first successful vaccine against poliomyelitis, using inactivated (killed) poliovirus injected into the bloodstream. Announced in 1955 after a nationwide field trial involving more than a million children, the vaccine sharply reduced polio cases in the United States within a few years. Salk chose not to patent the vaccine so it could be produced and distributed as widely and cheaply as possible; asked who owned the patent, he is widely quoted as replying, Could you patent the sun?
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Albert Sabin, Healers Developed a competing, later polio vaccine strategy (live oral vs. Salk's injected inactivated vaccine); this atlas already records the eradication-strategy tradeoff as an open question.
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Inactivated, injected vaccine, announced 1955.
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