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Frasi di Jonas Edward Salk
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Jonas Edward Salk è stato un medico e scienziato statunitense, batteriologo e virologo, realizzatore del primo vaccino antipoliomielite.

Fino al 1955, anno dell'introduzione del suo vaccino, la poliomielite era considerata il problema più spaventoso in materia di salute pubblica negli Stati Uniti del dopoguerra. Le epidemie annuali erano sempre più devastanti: quella del 1952 fu la peggiore nella storia della nazione. Dei quasi 58.000 casi riportati quell'anno, 3.145 persone morirono e 21.269 restarono paralizzate in modo lieve o invalidante. La maggior parte delle vittime erano bambini. Gli scienziati si affannavano a trovare un modo per prevenire o curare la malattia. Il Presidente degli Stati Uniti Franklin Delano Roosevelt ne era forse la vittima più conosciuta al mondo e fondò l'organizzazione che avrebbe finanziato la realizzazione del vaccino.

Nel 1947 Salk accettò un incarico alla Scuola di Medicina dell'Università di Pittsburgh e l'anno dopo intraprese un progetto finanziato dalla National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis per determinare il numero di tipi diversi del virus della poliomielite. Salk vide in tale obiettivo anche un'opportunità di dedicarsi allo sviluppo di un vaccino contro la polio e, insieme al qualificato team di ricerca da lui scelto per affiancarlo, si dedicò al progetto per i sette anni successivi. Il banco di prova predisposto per testare il vaccino di Salk fu, come riportato dallo storico William O'Neill, "il più elaborato programma del genere nella storia, che coinvolse 20.000 medici e ufficiali della salute pubblica, 64.000 impiegati scolastici e 220.000 volontari". Oltre 1.800.000 bambini in età scolare presero parte all'esperimento. Quando la notizia del successo del vaccino fu resa pubblica, il 12 aprile 1955, Salk fu salutato come "l'uomo dei miracoli", e la giornata "divenne quasi un giorno di festa nazionale". Il suo unico obiettivo era stato sviluppare un vaccino sicuro ed efficace il più rapidamente possibile, senza nessun interesse al profitto personale. Quando in una intervista televisiva gli fu chiesto chi possedesse il brevetto del vaccino, lui rispose: "La gente, suppongo. Non c'è brevetto. Si può brevettare il sole?"

Nel 1960 fondò il Salk Institute for Biological Studies a La Jolla, in California, che è tuttora un centro di ricerca medica e scientifica. Continuò inoltre a condurre ricerche e a pubblicare libri: Man Unfolding , The Survival of the Wisest , World Population and Human Values: A New Reality , e Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason . Salk trascorse gli ultimi anni della sua vita ricercando un vaccino contro l'HIV. Wikipedia  

✵ 28. Ottobre 1914 – 23. Giugno 1995
Jonas Edward Salk photo
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Jonas Edward Salk: Frasi in inglese

“Know what is the purpose of life that you are inclined to serve, that you are drawn to. Do what makes your heart leap rather than simply follow some style or fashion. Not everyone can or should be a scientists. Not everyone can or should be any one thing. People need to know what kind of purpose they can serve.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“We were told in one lecture that it was possible to immunize against diphtheria and tetanus by the use of chemically treated toxins, or toxoids. And the following lecture, we were told that for immunization against a virus disease, you have to experience the infection, and that you could not induce immunity with the so-called "killed" or inactivated, chemically treated virus preparation. Well, somehow, that struck me. What struck me was that both statements couldn't be true. And I asked why this was so, and the answer that was given was in a sense, 'Because.'”

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Jonas Salk

There was no satisfactory answer.
Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“I was told I could, if I wished, switch and get a Ph. D. in biochemistry but my preference was to stay with medicine. And I believe that this is all linked to my original ambition, or desire, which was to be of some help to humankind, so to speak, in a larger sense than just on a one-to-one basis. Just as I intended to study law, to make just laws, so I found myself interested now in the laws of nature, as distinct from the laws the people make.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“There are three stages of truth. First is that it can't be true, and that's what they said. You couldn't immunize against polio with a killed-virus vaccine. Second phase: they say, "Well, if it's true, it's not very important. And the third stage is, 'Well, we've known it all along."”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“Some people are constructive, if you like. Others are destructive. It's this diversity in humankind that results in some making positive contributions and some negative contributions. It's necessary to have enough who make positive contributions to overcome the problems of each age.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“Since whatever we do has to be part of a team, part of a community, we have to attempt to bring together those who have the same conviction, see the same things. Then it becomes a matter of time, when one or the other will prevail. Fortunately, there is all this diversity, and if not for that, problems would not be solved.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“There is something about human nature that has to be understood, and so … I've shifted my attention from an interest in unity to an interest in creativity.”

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Jonas Salk

The Open Mind interview (1985)

“You have to develop a thick skin in life. Its not in this field only. You might think of the ideal of the scientists, the ivory tower, the idealist. That's true of some. And I wouldn't guess as to what proportion. But there are some who are of that character, and there are some who are not.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“It is courage based on confidence, not daring, and it is confidence based on experience.”

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Jonas Salk

On testing his vaccine against polio on himself, his wife, and his three sons (9 May 1955)

“I couldn't possibly have become a member of this institute if I hadn't founded it myself.”

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Jonas Salk

On the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the difficulties he has had with others involved in medical research because of his unorthodox approaches and attitudes, as quoted in a Brief biography at PBS.org http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bmsalk.html

“Risks, I like to say, always pay off. You learn what to do, or what not to do.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“As a bio-philosopher — as someone who draws upon the scriptures of nature, recognizing that we are the product of the process of evolution, and in a sense, we have become the process itself — through the emergence and evolution of our consciousness, our awareness, our capacity to imagine and to anticipate the future and to choose from amongst alternatives.”

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Jonas Salk

Responding to a question of whether he holds his views as a philosopher or as a biologist.
The Open Mind interview (1985)

“I already see enough evidence for this optimism … in recent years I find that perhaps what Im seeking is a scientific basis for hope, and I think I've found it.”

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Jonas Salk

The Open Mind interview (1985)

“You can have a team of unconventional thinkers, as well as conventional thinkers. If you don't have the support of others you cannot achieve anything altogether on your own. It's like a cry in the wilderness. In each instance there were others who could see the same thing, and there were others who could not. It's an obvious difference we see in those who you might say have a bird's eye view, and those who have a worm's eye view. I've come to realize that we all have a different mind set, we all see things differently, and that's what the human condition is really all about.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“As a child I was not interested in science. I was merely interested in things human, the human side of nature, if you like, and I continue to be interested in that. That's what motivates me.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“Why do I see things differently from the way other people see them? Why do I pursue the questions that I pursue, even if others regard them as, as they say, "controversial?" Which merely means that they have a difference of opinion. They see things differently. I am interested both in nature, and in the human side of nature, and how the two can be brought together, and effectively used.”

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Jonas Salk

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

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