Heroes of Progress, Pt. 5: Jonas Salk

Introducing the pioneer of the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk.

Alexander C. R. Hammond — Apr 8, 2023

Today is the fifth installment of a new series of articles by HumanProgress.org titled, The Heroes of Progress. This bi-weekly column provides a short introduction to unsung heroes who have made an extraordinary contribution to the wellbeing of humanity. You can find the 4th part of this series here.

Our fifth Hero of Progress is Jonas Salk, the man who pioneered the world’s first effective polio vaccine.

Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that is most often transmitted by drinking water that has been contaminated with the feces of someone carrying the virus. The virus spreads easily in regions with poor sanitation. The symptoms include: fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness and pain in the limbs. Most infected patients recover. In one out of two-hundred cases, the virus attacks the nervous system, leading to irreversible paralysis. Of those paralyzed, between 5 and 10 percent die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.

Polio has a relatively long incubation period – it can spread for many months without being detected – making it extremely difficult to monitor. According to Max Roser from Oxford University, “Up to the 19th century, populations experienced only relatively small outbreaks [of polio]. This changed around the beginning of the 20th century. Major epidemics occurred in Norway and Sweden around 1905 and later also in the United States.”

The first major outbreak of polio happened in the United States in 1916, when the disease infected 27,000 people and killed more than 7,000 people. The second major outbreak of polio in 20^th century America happened in the 1950s. It is here Jonas Salk enters our story.

Jonas Edward Salk was born on October 28, 1914, in New York. Salk became passionate about biochemistry and bacteriology during his time at the New York University School of Medicine. After he graduated in 1939, he started working at the prestigious Mount Sinai Hospital. Salk’s focus shifted to researching polio vaccinations in 1948, when he was head-hunted to work at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis – an organization that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, himself a polio sufferer, helped to set up.

After a large outbreak of polio across the United States in 1952, donations began pouring in to the foundation and in the spring of 1953, Salk put forward a promising anti-polio vaccine. The foundation quickly began trials on 1.83 million children across the United States. These children became known as the “polio pioneers.” Salk’s foundation received donations from two-thirds of the American population and a poll even suggested that more Americans knew about these field trails than knew the then-president’s full name (Dwight David Eisenhower).

On April 12, 1955, Salk’s supervisor, Thomas Francis, announced that Salk’s vaccine was safe and effective in preventing polio. Just two hours later, the U.S. Public Health Service issued a production license for the vaccine and a national immunization program began.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Albert Sabin, a Polish American medical researcher working at the National Institutes of Health, introduced a polio vaccine that could be administered orally, thereby making vaccination efforts less expensive as trained health workers weren’t needed to administer injections. From a record 58,000 cases in 1952, the United States was declared polio free in 1979.

In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was founded to administer the vaccine worldwide. When the GPEI began its efforts, polio paralyzed 10 children for life every 15 minutes, across 125 countries. Since 1988, more than 2.5 billion children have been immunized and incidents of polio infections have fallen by more than 99.99 percent. That is, they fell from 350,000 annual cases, to just 22 new cases across 3 countries in 2017. Next year, Africa is due to be declared free of polio – that is, if no new cases are found in Nigeria, which is the last country in the region to report new polio infections.

Following his discovery of the vaccine, Salk received dozens of awards, a presidential citation, four honorary degrees, half a dozen foreign decorations, and letters from thousands of thankful fellow citizens. In 1963, Salk established the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies – a world-class research facility that focuses on molecular biology and genetics, neurosciences, and plant biology. Salk devoted his later years to researching a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. He died on June 23rd, 1995.

Salk’s work has saved hundreds of millions of people from crippling paralysis, and millions from death. Thanks to his vaccine, a disease that has plagued humanity since pharaonic Egypt is almost completely eradicated, and within a few years, the disease will (hopefully) be consigned to history. It is for this reason Jonas Salk deserves to be our fifth Hero of Progress.

Blog Post | Vaccination

Heroes of Progress, Pt. 11: Maurice Hilleman

Introducing the man who developed over 40 vaccines and saved more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century, Maurice Hilleman.

Alexander C. R. Hammond — Apr 2, 2023

Today marks the 11th installment in a series of articles by HumanProgress.org titled, Heroes of Progress. This bi-weekly column provides a short introduction to heroes who have made an extraordinary contribution to the wellbeing of humanity. You can find the 10th part of this series here.

Our 11th Hero of Progress is Maurice Hilleman, an American microbiologist who developed over 40 lifesaving vaccines. Of the fourteen vaccines recommended in the current vaccine schedules, Hilleman developed eight. Hilleman is credited with saving more lives than any other medical scientist of the 20th century.

Hilleman was born August 30, 1919, in Montana. His mother died two days after he was born. Following his mother’s death, his father was faced with the prospect of raising eight children alone. As such, his childless aunt and uncle agreed to raise Maurice on their nearby chicken farm. Hilleman attributed much of his later success to his work on the farm as a boy – since the 1930’s, chicken eggs were used to grow viruses for vaccines.

Due to the lack of funds, Hilleman almost didn’t make it to college. Thankfully, his eldest brother interceded and loaned him the money to pay the tuition fees. Hilleman graduated first in his class from Montana State University in 1941 and won a fellowship to do postgraduate study in microbiology at the University of Chicago. He received his doctoral degree in 1944.

Upon graduation, Hilleman joined the E R Squib & Sons – a virus lab based in New Jersey. Soon after he started working in the lab, Hilleman successfully developed a vaccine for Japanese B encephalitis. This infection, which is native to Asia and the West Pacific, had begun to spread to American troops who were fighting in the Pacific during World War II.

In 1948, Hilleman began working as the Chief of the Department of Respiratory Diseases at the Army Medical Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. In 1957, Hilleman discovered first signs of an impending flu pandemic that was spreading in Hong Kong. Hilleman and his colleagues raced to produce a vaccine and he oversaw the production of over 40 million vaccines that were immediately distributed across the U.S.A.

Although 69,000 Americans died after catching the virus, if it hadn’t been for Hilleman’s efforts, the pandemic could have caused millions of deaths. In recognition of his work, the American military awarded Hilleman the Distinguished Service Medal.

In 1963, whilst working at Merck & Co (one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies), Hilleman’s daughter, Jeryl Lynn, became ill with the mumps. Hilleman quickly drove to his lab to pick up the necessary equipment so that he could cultivate material from his daughter’s infection.

In 1967, the original sample taken from Jeryl Lynn’s throat became the basis for the newly approved mumps vaccine. It came to be known as the “Jeryl Lynn Strain.” Hilleman later combined his mumps vaccine with the measles and rubella vaccines – which he had also developed – in order to create the MMR vaccine.

Apart from the vaccines mentioned above, Hilleman also developed vaccines for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Hemophilus influenza type B. He also played a part in discovering the cold-producing adenoviruses, the hepatitis viruses, and the cancer-causing SV40 virus.

In 1984, at the mandatory retirement age of 65, Hilleman resigned as Senior Vice President of Merck Research Labs. Not satisfied with retirement, he began directing the newly created Merck Institute for Vaccinology only a few months later. Hilleman continued working at the Institute for Vaccinology until his death in 2005, at the age of 85.

Throughout his life, Hilleman received a stream of awards, including the National Medal of Science (the United States’ highest scientific honor), and the lifetime achievement award from the World Health Organization. Hilleman is often described as the most successful vaccinologist in history and it is for that reason that Maurice Hilleman is our 11^th Hero of Progress.

Blog Post | Vaccination

Heroes of Progress, Pt. 32: Benjamin Rubin

Introducing the inventor of the lifesaving bifurcated needle, Benjamin Rubin.

Alexander C. R. Hammond — Nov 30, 2019

Today marks the 32nd installment in a series of articles by HumanProgress.org titled Heroes of Progress. This bi-weekly column provides a short introduction to heroes who have made an extraordinary contribution to the well-being of humanity. You can find the 31st part of this series here.

This week our hero is Benjamin Rubin, the American microbiologist who invented the bifurcated needle. Rubin’s bifurcated needle was instrumental in the World Health Organization’s 1980 campaign that led to the full eradication of smallpox, the only infectious disease to achieve that distinction. In the mid-1970s, Rubin’s bifurcated needle administered more than 200 million vaccinations annually. It is estimated to have saved more than one hundred million lives and prevented hundreds of millions more people from contracting smallpox.

Benjamin Rubin was born on September 27, 1917 in New York City. As a child, Rubin was fascinated by science. In 1934, he enrolled in the City College of New York to study biochemistry. Rubin received his Bachelor of Science in 1937. IN 1938, he was awarded his Master of Science in biology from Virginia Tech. After several different laboratory jobs, Rubin relocated to Yale University in 1944 to work as a research assistant and study for his PhD.

In 1947, Rubin was awarded his doctorate in microbiology from Yale University and began working at several different laboratories and universities. In 1954, Rubin became a professor of public health and preventative medicine at Baylor University. In 1960, Rubin took a job at Wyeth Laboratories in Pennsylvania and it was there that Rubin created his world-changing invention.

During the 1960s, smallpox killed more than two million people every year. With no cure available, if a person became infected with smallpox, nothing could be done to treat the disease. Before Rubin’s bifurcated needle, specially adapted jet-injector guns were used for mass vaccination efforts. However, the guns were expensive to maintain, required specialist training to use, and were often unreliable. That meant that hundreds of millions of people, predominantly living in poorer and sparsely populated places, remained vulnerable to catching smallpox.

Rubin created his bifurcated needle by working on the eyelet of a machine sewing needle. He ground it down until it became fork-shaped (i.e., with two prongs). As such, the bifurcated needle is a narrow steel rod that is approximately 2.5 inches (6cm) long, with two prongs at one end. When the bifurcated end of the needle is dipped into a vial of freeze-dried smallpox vaccine, the correct amount of vaccine is then contained between the two prongs. The needle is then used to puncture a patient’s upper arm fifteen times in a small circular area.

Unlike the jet-injector, Rubin’s needle was very cheap (i.e., it cost less than $5 for a thousand needles). Moreover, after sterilizing the needle with boiling water or by passing it through a flame, the needle could be continually reused. Furthermore, the patient’s skin did not need to be disinfected beforehand. Finally, the bifurcated needle used substantially less serum.

Whereas a jet-injector could deliver about 25 vaccines per vial of smallpox vaccine, using a bifurcated needle meant there were more than 100 doses per vial. The technique to vaccinate someone using the bifurcated needle could also be learned by anyone in just a few minutes, rather than relying on a trained medical professional. All these factors meant that the bifurcated needle was quickly adopted as a cost-effective alternative to the clunky, expensive, and often unreliable jet-injectors.

The bifurcated needle was the primary instrument used in the World Health Organization’s smallpox eradication campaign between 1966 and 1977. During the final years of the campaign, it is estimated that the bifurcated needle was used to deliver more than 200 million vaccinations every year. In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared that smallpox had been defeated, meaning for the first time in human history, humanity had successfully eradicated a deadly disease. The World Economic Forum has estimated that the bifurcated needle has saved more than 130 million lives since its invention in 1961.

In 1984, Rubin became a professor at the Philadelphia College for Osteopathic Medicine, and after contributing to more than 150 science journals throughout his career, he retired in 1995. Throughout his life, Rubin rightfully received numerous academic awards. In 1992, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. Rubin died on March 10, 2010, at the age of 93.

Thanks in part to the work of Benjamin Rubin, smallpox, which was a disease that haunted mankind for millennia, is now eradicated. For saving the lives of over one hundred million people and for fundamentally changing the world for the better, Benjamin Rubin is deservedly our 32nd Hero of Progress.