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Priya Prakashan
Priya Prakashan covers beauty and fashion for India.com. Prior to this, she has also reported on the news and entertainment beats. When she isn’t sizing up models and critiquing movie stars for thei ... Read More
Google is celebrating 100th birthday of Dr Jonas Salk with a Google doodle. Dr Jonas Salk was the American researcher and virologist who first discovered and developed the polio vaccine. Google has shared a heartwarming pictorial representation Dr Jonas Salk in the Google doodle on its homepage. The illustration shows Dr Salk in centre with two children holding up a sign reading “Thank you, Dr Salk!”
This is a tribute to the medical researcher and virologist’s work against the most frightening public health disease in the post war US. Polio’s main victims were children, that is why the doodle has a bunch of happy kids and parents sharing gratitude for Dr Salk.
In 1947, he was appointed as the director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, wherein he further developed the techniques to discover vaccine for polio.
The virologist’s research soon caught the attention of Basil O’Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis , whose organisation funded Salk’s efforts to develop a vaccine against Polio. The epidemic was wide spread in the nation and was reported as the worst outbreak n the history of the nation. After he worked hard for the sole purpose of an effective vaccine for Polio and he was lauded as the miracle worker after the success was made public.
The trial set for the vaccine was an elaborate one, it included 20000 health officers and physicians, 220000 volunteers and a whole lot of 1800000 school children participated in the trial test. The vaccine was first tested on monkeys and then in patients at the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children, who already had polio. The trial test also included his laboratory staff, his wife and their children, were given the vaccine none of whom reacted badly to the experimental drug.
Although it was a massive project Salk chose not to patent the vaccine, thereby he did not earn any money from his discovery for helping mankind, had it been patented the vaccine calculated to be $7 billion. Read: Satisfied at polio-free India, but can’t be complacent: Harsh Vardhan
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