story by: Dr Peter l. Salk

I have been president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation since its founding in ​2009. As you can imagine, focusing my attention in that role on the legacy of my ​father’s many contributions to humanity — including his creation of the Salk ​Institute for Biological Studies, just up the road in La Jolla on a bluff overlooking ​California’s magnificent Pacific Coast — has a special significance for me.

My father, Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the first polio vaccine, was born in New ​York City on October 28, 1914, exactly three months after the beginning of World ​War One. From his earliest days, he was someone who wanted to do something ​to be helpful to humanity.

That impulse and drive may have come in part from an incident that was ​imprinted in his memory when he was a little boy. At the end of the war, on ​Armistice Day in 1918, he witnessed a parade filled with soldiers who had come ​home from battle. Some had been injured or maimed, walking with crutches or ​using a wheelchair. My father always had a sensitive side, and he was deeply ​affected by what he had seen.

As he grew older, my father considered going to law school and running for ​Congress. His mother, who had come over to this country from Russia, astutely ​advised him that this was not a good decision — especially since, as she put it, ​“you can’t even win an argument with me.” I think she wanted him to become a ​rabbi, which I don’t think was in my father’s character.

As it turned out, my father decided to go to City College in New York, and there ​his studies took an unexpected turn. In his first year, a chemistry course was ​offered, and this appealed to him. The problem was that the class met on a ​Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. His parents were very observant in following ​Jewish traditions and customs, which meant that my father had a difficult ​decision to make. In the end, he took the chemistry class, which was the starting ​point for what turned out to be a long and productive career.

“After college, having had such a positive experience training in the sciences, my ​father enrolled in the New York University College of Medicine. From the start, he ​knew that he wanted to go into research.

During a first-year micro-biology class, a professor spoke about vaccines. He ​explained that, though doctors could use chemically inactivated toxins to ​vaccinate against bacterial diseases such as diphtheria and tetanus, they could ​not use inactivated viruses to immunise against viral diseases such as influenza ​or polio because protection against infection with viruses required that the body ​experience an actual infection with the living virus.

That didn’t make any sense to my father, and when he asked his teacher why, the ​professor basically responded, “Well, just because.” That unsatisfactory answer ​set my father on a journey of discovery that would fulfill his dream to help ​humanity, in ways and to a degree that he could never have imagined. And it was ​a journey on which his family, including his three sons, would be carried along.

Following medical school, after a two-year clinical internship at New York’s Mount ​Sinai Hospital, my father went to work with Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., then the head ​of the epidemiology department at the University of Michigan.

My father had previously worked with Dr. Francis on influenza while still a ​student at NYU College of Medicine, and that had been a seminal experience for ​him. Working alongside his mentor at Michigan, my father made important ​contributions to the successful creation of an influenza vaccine, utilising a ​chemically inactivated virus, that was introduced for use by the Army at the end ​of World War II.

In 1947, seeking to head a laboratory of his own, my father moved on to the ​University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. There he took charge of creating the ​Virus Research Laboratory and, with his growing interest in polio, received a ​grant for polio research from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.

As all of this was going on, my father had married and started a family. He met ​my mother, Donna, while working one summer at the Marine Biological ​Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. They married on June 9, 1939, the day ​after he graduated from medical school with an M.D. degree. I was born five ​years later, the first of my parents’ three sons.

During my childhood, polio epidemics became an increasing global scourge. I can ​remember my parents not allowing us to visit a beloved amusement park when ​we were on vacation, out of fear of our becoming infected. On another occasion, ​our family accompanied my father to a polio meeting at the Greenbrier resort in ​West Virginia. There I saw a girl at a swimming pool who had been disabled by ​the disease. Because I was around the same age as the girl, that encounter had a ​lasting impact on me.

During all this time my father and his team were rigorously working to develop a ​vaccine that would be effective against all three immunologic types of polio.

The first human studies with the experimental vaccine were conducted at the ​D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children outside of Pittsburgh. These tests ​included children who had already experienced some form of paralysis due to ​polio.

Because they had already been infected by at least one of the three types of ​poliovirus, there was no danger they could become paralysed again if they were ​injected with the chemically inactivated virus of the same type. It turned out that ​when these children were injected with the inactivated virus, their antibodies ​against the virus were boosted.

Since antibodies in the blood stream were all that was needed to prevent the ​virus from traveling to the brain and spinal cord and killing the nerve cells that ​control muscle movement, when that information was confirmed, my father ​knew that the vaccine he and his team had been working on should be a success.

At one point early on, my father had tested the experimental vaccine on himself ​and his lab workers. And one day it was our turn, me and my two brothers, ages ​9, 6, and not quite 3 years old. As you can imagine, I was not very happy to be ​part of this joyful experience.

Our father came home with the vaccine, and he proceeded to sterilise the ​daunting glass syringes and the metal needles by boiling them on the kitchen ​stove. I was absolutely not a fan of needles — but what child is? I stood there, ​miserable and looking out the window, my arm held out and awaiting the ​injection. And then something miraculous happened: I didn’t feel the needle. It ​didn’t hurt, unlike every other shot I’d ever had. And for that reason, that day is ​burnt into my memory forever.

Two years later, on April 12, 1955, my father joined Dr. Francis at a press ​conference at the University of Michigan. Dr. Francis had been tasked with ​analysing the results of the vast clinical trial of the experimental vaccine, and ​now he made an announcement that would change medical history: The vaccine ​had been demonstrated to be up to 90% effective in preventing polio.

Pandemonium broke loose. Kids were let out of school, church bells rang, factory ​whistles blew. The pall of fear that had pervaded this country for so many years ​was lifted. I get goose bumps thinking about it even all these years later.

In 1955, more than 10 million children received one or more injections of the Salk ​vaccine. Within one year, polio cases and deaths in the United States had been ​nearly halved, a trend that continued and made a vision of polio eradication a ​possibility.

Today, that goal is getting ever closer to reality. Rotary International has been a ​champion in ensuring that one day — and, I hope, one day soon — that goal will ​be reached. Rotary helped found the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and it ​continues to put a major emphasis on getting the job done, as does the Gates ​Foundation, with its generous donations, and the other organisations that are ​part of the GPEI.

Everyone is working unbelievably hard, and practical work is being done on the ​ground where it’s most essential. Efforts are underway to remove obstacles and ​deal with societal issues that have impeded progress in some remaining parts of ​the world.

The contributions Rotary has made toward eradicating polio have been ​indispensable, and its indomitable spirit has been a driving force in this effort. ​I’ve had the great pleasure on many occasions of speaking to and with members ​of Rotary, and each time it has been an uplifting experience. The desire shared ​by Rotary members to help the world is inspiring and mirrors the driving force in ​my father’s life.

Dr. Peter L. Salk is president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation in La Jolla, ​California, and a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public ​Health.