13. Jonas Salk and polio
In the mid-twentieth century, polio reigned as a frightening disease, often at outbreak proportions around the globe. The number of famous persons who contracted the disease is enormous. Actors Alan Alda and Donald Sutherland both suffered from polio as children; interestingly both later portrayed the same character, Hawkeye Pierce, in the television program and film M*A*S*H. Violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman suffered polio as a child, leaving him to walk with crutches for most of his life. Golf legend Jack Nicklaus recovered from polio as a child. People feared polio for its terrifying effects, its seemingly random nature concerning when and whom it attacked, and for the lack of a cure, or even effective treatment.
The 1952 polio outbreaks alone killed 3,145 people and left over 21,000 with some form of disability, the majority of them children. In 1955, virologist, Jonas Salk, produced an effective vaccine against poliovirus, following an extensive testing program including over 200,000 volunteers. Salk refused to patent the vaccine, which eventually cost him unknown millions of dollars. He obtained most of his research funding through the March of Dimes, itself created by polio survivor Franklin Roosevelt, and dedicated two and a half years of his life to develop the vaccine. Salk’s vaccine was joined by an oral vaccine developed by Albert Sabin and tested in the late 1950s. Together, the vaccines all but eliminated polio by the end of the 20th century.