It was like a miracle. An answer to the worry of most parents. No child was left behind because they were poor.
I’m sure there were the crackpots out there denouncing science and another immunization. That “government” was taking away the free choice of parents to risk their kid getting polio. That life and illness were in “god’s” hands and not those of evil scientists. Others denouncing the squandering of public dollars on the children of poor people. But in the pre-Faux News era, those voices weren’t broadcast 24/7. People that could have fallen under the spell of such voices were protected from their own irrational thoughts and fears.
Thus, we lined up at schools. To get that not so painless shot. The prick that would prevent an illness that could kill or cripple us.
Maybe the science would have evolved more quickly if government funding had been available. But that was a no-go for FDR because the rightwing jerkwads of his day would have screamed and hollered that it was a special interest of the President’s. So, we Marched for Dimes. And those dimes turned into vaccines for all that were administered by public health employees, agencies, and volunteers. (There were glitches — there always are; but they don’t change the meta-narrative.)
Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other medical researchers didn’t become gazillionaires from their medical breakthroughs or live out the remainders of their years in mansions managing their money portfolios. They continued to work as scientists. To make the world a safer place:
On April 12, 1955, Edward R. Murrow asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent to the polio vaccine. “Well, the people, I would say,” Salk responded. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
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As I could have been one of those dead or crippled kids in the next polio outbreak or epidemic, the Salk vaccine came just in time for me and other Boomers. Science inspired a generation of people that wanted to do good or be miracle workers. Much of it paid for by public dollars as was the internet.
Public purpose. Public support. Not to line the pockets of “app” derivative developers, venture capitalists (looking for the newest buggy whip), hedge funds killing jobs here to create killing jobs elsewhere, banksters preying on the poorest and most vulnerable, and vice peddlers. How do we get enough of that back and quickly enough before we destroy the world through unending wars and environmental destruction?
A kid just a couple of doors from me got it and spent years in an iron lung. A girl a couple of years younger still has a dead spot in her facial nerves that twists her smile. I escaped too, but well remember them. The iron lung boy eventually escaped from his prison, but has great difficulty walking with what’s left of his withered leg muscles. Salk, et al were great heroes to our parents in those days. Now that I’m older and can comprehend those things, so are they to me.
“The work” is what was most important to researchers like Salk and Sabin. They had the privilege of doing their work without being forced to choose between the work and hunger. Would guess that for a high percentage of scientists today, the work is what matters most to them. Unfortunately a large number in all professions are chasing fame and/or fortune and the work is secondary. That further distorts the respect and value that all work done well should have.
George Washington Carver:
Although the vaccine came one year too late for me, I was pretty lucky to still have the ability to use me legs. What I remember about Saulk and the others that followed is that they were viewed as working for what was then referred to as “the common good”. I don’t here that term used in our culture anymore. All of use are poorer for that. It is also noteworthy that in many locations childhood diseases that were all but eliminated with the use of vaccines are making robust comebacks as this generation of parents choose not to vaccinate their kids for a variety of reasons.
Ah, freedumb!
Your comment made me teary-eyed. Suggested that instead of using the word “lucky” or “fortunate,” “privilege” might be more appropriate. I was privileged to have access to a polio vaccine — thanks to Salk and other researchers, the March of Dimes, and federal and local public health funding.
Freedumb! indeed. Without the commons in multiple areas of our increasingly complex human constructed economies and institutions, we will all to soon discover that our lives are less than.
Today that vaccine would cost thousands of dollars as some pharma company “maximized shareholder value”.
That was my point. Collective v. private. The former costs less and everyone benefits. The latter costs more and over a long period of time some of it does trickle down to some and those some then believe that a) they are exceptional and deserving and b) ain’t capitalism grand.
Yes, we need more government research. And we really really need to rescind that Reagan rule that companies can patent stuff they discover in the course of government-paid research. Those patents are works for hire and belong to the government (i.e. all the people).
And the big rewards for the original investment in the internet rightly belonged to the nation and not a few clever individuals that built applications on it. That is the rational for steeply progressive taxation. Use “the commons” and do well if you can, but if you do well, pay back into the public coffers for further advances.
Absolutely!
There’s also the difference in focus in private research, from social value (malaria vaccine) to commercial value (botox), and the de-emphasis of basic research too.
What the commercializers like best is for the research and development to be done on the public dime and to hand off whatever has commercial value to them.
My sister and I used to go live with my mother’s older sister and family in the Michigan farm country every August to escape the regular summer polio epidemic in Chicago. Thousands of kids didn’t have that escape. Two were in my school class.