|
From
L to R: Dr. Jonathan D. Salk, sons Ben and Hugh, and
Dr. Selma Botman, City University of New York Executive
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. |
Celebrating
the 50th Anniversary of the Salk
Vaccine With Jonathan Salk
By Joan Baum, Ph.D
One of the best compliments
his famous father ever got, Dr. Jonathan Salk recalls, was
being told that people didn’t
know about him, polio or the vaccine. The point, of course,
is that infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis, “the most
notorious disease of the 20th century,” until AIDS, the
disease that crippled Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1926, was,
by the time of Jonas Salk’s death in 1995 practically
unknown, a viral threat that had been all but eradicated—a
spectacular tribute to the genius of the man who in 1955 ended
a national nightmare.
Only those of a certain
age remember the terror of the times, the epidemics, the
iron lungs, the quarantines. But on April 12, 1955, when Jonas
Salk, using donations from the March of Dimes, announced that
he had a cure (Jonathan was five at the time), not only could
parents sleep at night, as the papers reported, but science
and public health policy took an important turn, resulting
in life-altering initiatives such as the Vaccination Assistance
Act of 1962, which would protect school children for free
against one of the world’s greatest scourges. But as Dr. Jonathan Salk
emphasizes—he is board certified in both child and adolescent
psychiatry and an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
at UCLA—the significance of the Salk Vaccine had
even wider implications, which are not fully appreciated,
some of them touching on his own areas of interest in human
interaction and behavioral development.
The extraordinary success
of the Salk Vaccine, Jonathan Salk points out, and the campaign
launched by the March of Dimes, “dramatically” changed
perceptions of science and medicine. As his father would and
did say—the breakthrough was due to collaborative efforts—scientists
working with him and with hospital staff and volunteers—an
army of the dedicated who brought off the largest field trial
in U.S. history, the inoculation of over two million children.
Indeed, the 50s were the golden age of medical science. They
loved their father and knew he was a genius, Jonathan Salk
says for himself and his two brothers, who also went into medicine,
but the greatest gift Jonas Salk gave his children—and
the world—was an understanding that medical research
should “make a difference,” affect public health
and bring about social justice. The establishment of the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, CA, was an extension of this belief,
a place that Jonas Salk regarded as a center to “address
problems of humankind.” Thus it was, as Jonathan Salk
recalls, inevitable that he himself would go on for an M.D.—which
in his family was like getting a B.A. and that he would
regard the discipline of studying medicine as “good background” for
whatever else he may want to do. In fact, an earlier love of
Jonathan Salk’s was music—playing piano and writing
songs, many about social justice—an inheritance from
his mother, a talented amateur musician who was a psychiatric
social worker, and also from his famous father who encouraged
his children to have “vision” and to see its multiple
effects in the arts as well as in the sciences. In fact, Jonathan
notes, not many people know that the Salk Institute, which
was designed by Louis Kahn and is considered one of the masterpieces
of 20th century architecture was the result of a “partnership” between
Jonas Salk and the famous architect. His father was in on the
design. How fitting, therefore, that Jonas Salk was recently
honored at CCNY, from which he was graduated, the CUNY college
that can boast both a medical and architectural school. Of
course, in honoring the collaborative nature of scientific
discovery, Jonathan Salk does not mean, inadvertently, to diminish
the heroic achievements of his father, who faced adversity
with great courage. People, then, he points out, could not
see the “big picture” behind his father’s
research, the fact that a killed virus could be effective.
Thus, Jonas Salk’s story is a wonderful story of the
50’s, before attitudes about scientific research turned
cynical, skeptical, suspicious. In his own teaching—working
with psychiatric trainees and also with parents in his children’s
school, Dr. Jonathan Salk tries to carry on his father’s
rich and challenging heritage—to integrate research
and concern for human beings, to bring, maintain, and enhance
the human element in all inquiry.#