Dr. Jonas Salk
Dr Jonas Salk was a researcher who was interested in finding a way to prevent polio. He grew up in New York and studied flu viruses at the University of Michigan. There, Salk began to learn about how viruses worked. Salk then decided that he would rather work as a virologist than as a medical doctor. Polio was a very dangerous virus that was on the increase in the United States and the world. Many scientists tried to make a vaccine from live virus, but their results were not very encouraging. Dr. Salk was able to create a much safer vaccine using dead polio virus. When it was shown that his vaccine worked, Salk wanted to make the vaccine mandatory to stop the terrible and sometimes fatal results of polio. While Salk's vaccine was worth billions of dollars, he never patented it. Later, Salk did try to work on a vaccine for AIDS. He died in 1995 at the age of 80.
Tuskegee Institute
Tuskegee Institute became a very important place for the development of the polio vaccine. Tuskegee was a Black college in Alabama. It was famous for two scientific studies. First, it was the place where the controversial syphilis studies were done on African-American males. These studies would be considered racist, illegal and immoral in today's society. On the other hand, Tuskegee was also involved in very positive research. During the development of the polio vaccine young, African-American female scientists were responsible for growing HeLa cells to test the effectiveness of Salk's polio vaccine.
hela helps heal-1950's Polio Polio Po epidemic