Jonas Salk essays

Jonas Salk essays Jonas Salk was the first born of Daniel B. Salk and Dora Press. He was born in New York, New York on October 28, 1914. He died in La Jolla, California on June 23, 1995. Salk attended Townsend Harris High School for the gifted and received his B.A. from College of the City of New York in 1934. He received his M.D. from New York University in 1930 and interned at Mount Sinai Hospital, where he studied immunology. He was recognized as an able scientist by his teachers. Also, during World War 2, he was a participant in the armys effort to develop an effective vaccine for influenza. Salk was restless and wanted freedom from the projects of his senior colleagues so he could try out his own ideas. He accepted a position at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School. And at that time, had no record of a basic search in medicine. Salk got the space he needed and quickly put together a team of laboratory workers to help him study Salks success in developing a vaccine for polio depended on discoveries of many other researchers in immunology and virology. Originally polio could only be grown in live monkeys. Attempts in the 1930s to use a vaccine prepared from the killed extracts of infected monkey brains resulted in deaths of several children. It was also thought that polio only grew in nerve tissues but infected humans produced large amounts of viruses in their feces, suggesting it also grew in intestines. IT was later found that polio consists of at least 3 different By 1954, all the difficulties were resolved. Salk then began the crucial human experiments to confirm the results taken on monkeys. He and his workers immunized themselves and their families and began field testing the vaccine. The first 7 million doses of the vaccine were given in 1955. Salk then gave a nationwide program from 1956 through 1958. ...