University of Pittsburgh had developed a vaccine that appeared to be effective. That year witnessed
the worst polio epidemic in U.S. history. The virus infected more than 57,000 people, leading to more
than 3,000 deaths and 20,000 cases of paralysis. Over the next three years, Salk’s mentor, Thomas
Francis, directed the evaluation of a field trial of the Salk vaccine, testing it on more than 1.8 million
children with the help of 220,000 volunteers, 64,000 school workers, and 20,000 health care
professionals. On April 12, 1955, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Francis made an announcement that sent a
ripple of hope throughout the country: the Salk vaccine was “safe, effective and potent.” Within two
years, the vaccine was disseminated through the herculean efforts of the March of Dimes, and the
incidence of polio fell by nearly 90 percent. By 1961, there were just 161 cases in the United States.
The vaccine had similar effects worldwide.
Jonas Salk became an international hero. But at the historic 1955 press conference, Salk gave a
valedictory speech that jeopardized his relationships and his reputation in the scientific community.
He didn’t acknowledge the important contributions of Enders, Robbins, and Weller, who had won a
Nobel Prize a year earlier for their groundbreaking work that enabled Salk’s team to produce the
vaccine. Even more disconcertingly, Salk gave no credit to the six researchers in his lab who were
major contributors to his efforts to develop the vaccine—Byron Bennett, Percival Bazeley, L. James
Lewis, Julius Youngner, Elsie Ward, and Francis Yurochko.
Salk’s team left the press conference in tears. As historian David Oshinsky writes in Polio: An
American Story, Salk never acknowledged “the people in his own lab. This group, seated proudly
together in the packed auditorium, would feel painfully snubbed.... Salk’s coworkers from
Pittsburgh... had come expecting to be honored by their boss. A tribute seemed essential, and long
overdue.” This was especially true from a matcher’s perspective. One colleague told a reporter, “At
the beginning, I saw him as a father figure. And at the end, an evil father figure.”
Over time, it became clear that Julius Youngner felt particularly slighted. “Everybody likes to get
credit for what they’ve done,” Youngner told Oshinsky. “It was a big shock.” The snub fractured their
relationship: Youngner left Salk’s lab in 1957 and went on to make a number of important
contributions to virology and immunology. In 1993, they finally crossed paths at the University of
Pittsburgh, and Youngner shared his feelings. “We were in the audience, your closest colleagues and
devoted associates, who worked hard and faithfully for the same goal that you desired,” Youngner
began. “Do you remember whom you mentioned and whom you left out? Do you realize how
devastated we were at that moment and ever afterward when you persisted in making your coworkers
invisible?” Youngner reflected that Salk “was clearly shaken by these memories and offered little
response.”
Jonas Salk’s moment of taking sole credit haunted him for the rest of his career. He launched the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where hundreds of researchers continue to push the envelope of
humanitarian science today. But Salk’s own productivity waned—later in his career, he tried
unsuccessfully to develop an AIDS vaccine—and he was shunned by his colleagues. He never won a
Nobel Prize, and he was never elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.* “In the
coming years, almost every prominent polio researcher would gain entrance,” Oshinsky writes. “The
main exception, of course, was Jonas Salk.... As one observer put it, Salk had broken the ‘unwritten
commandments’ of scientific research,” which included “Thou shalt give credit to others.” According
to Youngner, “People really held it against him that he had grandstanded like that and really done the
most un-collegial thing that you can imagine.”
michael s
(Michael S)
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