DR. JONAS SALK

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DR. JONAS SALK SCIENTIST

Dr. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, is one of the many doctors who are currently working worldwide to develop vaccines and medicines to prevent HIV infections, to stop HIV infections from developing into AIDS, and, ultimately, to cure AIDS.

Born in New York on October 26, 1914, Jonas Edward Salk obtained his M.D. at New York University in 1939. He was a virologist at the University of Michigan, then from 1947 he led the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Isolating three strains of the poliomyelitis virus, Salk injected a killed virus vaccine into monkeys, who developed antibodies and resistance to the disease. Successful field trials were next conducted on children from 1952 to 1954, and in 1955 the Salk polio vaccine was given to the public. Attempts by others to develop an oral vaccine followed, and one such trial, held in Africa, is linked by a few, marginal theorists to the outbreak of AIDS (see card 62). Dr. Salk had meanwhile gone on to head The Salk Institute in San Diego, California. The author of several books and the recipient of numerous awards, medals, and honorary degrees for his work with polio, he has now turned his attention to HIV, the virus thought to cause AIDS.

Like Dr. Luc Montagnier of Paris (see card 100), Dr. Salk says that within a few years an HIV vaccine will be ready for human trials. Such a vaccine would not cure AIDS, but it would provide immunity from HIV for those who have not yet been infected. HIV resembles Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV), so researchers were cheered when, in 1992, a Harvard team announced they had created a weakened virus vaccine that protected monkeys from SIV.

Next Card 103: RANDY SHILTS: Journalist