Key points

Salk was a beautiful human being. He meant what he said in the quote. Suggestions that he was lying to cover up a desire for profit is likely false.

Private enterprise has a place in vaccine development, but it needs fixing to be properly balanced with society’s needs.

To balance these I think contributes to our society’s “teleological evolution,” as Salk called it.

Patenting the Sun quote

26 March 1955, researcher Jonas Salk publicly announced he developed a vaccine against polio. Shortly after that, when Salk was asked in an interview, “who owns the patent on this vaccine?” Salk replied, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” (CBS, 1955).

Every year I see a derivation of this meme that implies that the private industry of vaccines is no good. I fully agree that there is a wisdom in Salk’s words we would be wise to consider. And as warrior-scholar interested in the betterment of country and humanity, I admire his ethics, dedication, and devotion to his craft.

For us to honor his legacy, I think it’s important to know the footnotes behind this quote, and more importantly, not to use it as a banner to remove completely private enterprise from vaccine research and distribution. A better balance between private and public enterprise must be sought.

Polio and vaccine background

Polio is a deadly disease, and even if you survived before a vaccine, there was a good chance it would leave you partially crippled for the rest of your life. Prior to the Salk’s vaccine, from 1951–1954, there were more than 16,300 cases of paralytic polio and 1,879 polio deaths reported each year in the US (1). Cases drastically dropped immediately after the vaccine was introduced to less than 1,000 a year. After 1962 there were less than 1- cases a year, and indigenous transmissions of polio have been nearly eradicated in the western hemisphere (CDC, 1999). A cheaper, more effective oral vaccine was introduced in the 1960s by Bruce Sabin (Science History Institute, n.d.), which helped lower the disease’s prevalence even more.

Salk’s Character

Yes, the possibility off patenting the vaccine was looked into (see next section). But it isn’t that simple, and sometimes, this fact is used by cynical commentators (who clearly didn’t read the details) to attack Salk’s character.

There is no doubt Salk (and Sabin) saved many lives. Salk was also a man with his eye on the larger goings-on of humanity. He is quoted, “Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors” (Fahey and Randall, 1998).

And as he said in a 1991 interview, “I am interested in a phase that I think we are entering. I call it “teleological evolution,” evolution with a purpose. The idea of evolution by design, designing the future, anticipating the future. I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?… The idea of being constructive, creative, positive, in trying to bring out the best in one’s own self and the best in others follows from what I’ve just been saying. Again, I repeat my belief in us, in ourselves, as the product of the process of evolution, and part of the process itself. I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience. It’s the need to dedicate one’s self in that way, to one’s own self, and to choose an activity or life that is of value not only to yourself but to others as well.” (Salk, 1991).

Salk is clearly interested in the betterment of humanity. He had a larger purpose in life and had a devotion to his craft and ideals. As a warrior-scholar, I salute that. He meant what he said with his rhetorical question, “can you patent the sun?”

Patent footnotes

As a contributor to Slate noted, “over the last half-century, Salk’s rhetorical question to Murrow has become a rallying cry for those who campaign against pharmaceutical company profiteering. To many, it represents a generous view of scientific discovery distilled down to a beautiful simplicity… It represents an easy but wrongheaded way to avoid the messy work of constructing a system to incentivize medical breakthroughs and make them widely available in the context of 21st-century economic realities. That’s not to say Salk was a propagandist or a panderer—he probably meant every word he said. But his thoughts on the polio vaccine applied to a specific situation at a specific time in our history…” (Palmer, 2014).

There are two important footnotes to this quote.

First, before that interview, the lawyers for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis checked the possibility of patenting Salk’s vaccine (most likely to prevent pharmaceutical companies from making poor quality, unlicensed versions). But this was moot. The organization already committed to giving the formula to several companies for free. Also, the lawyers concluded the vaccine did not meet the novelty requirements for a patent anyways and never bother pursuing one (Smith, 1990)

Second, the American people funded the development and testing of the Polio vaccine, which was quite expensive. So the vaccine belonged to the people (Smith, 1990). However, not all vaccines are developed this way and rely heavily on private enterprise to develop them. After all, government funding for medical research is limited and varies from year to year.

The wisdom of his quote. We need a pragmatic balance between the public and private sectors.

The frustration surrounding our current medical system in the US is understandable. But to use Salk’s quote as a rallying call to eliminating private enterprise from vaccine research and distribution may be unwise. This isn’t to suggest pharmaceutical companies are always ethical and charge fair prices, that would naïve and blindly ignoring the blatant flaws of today’s health care. It’s no secret too many procedures and medicines are so expensive they would make a loan shark gag.

But vaccines are a different ballgame. There is little profit in vaccines as compared to medical treatments. For example, rubella hospitalization is between 2 and 8 days and can cost $5,000 to $46,000 (2013 USD); tetanus will result in more than $100,000 with more than 2 weeks of hospitalization. This is nothing compared to vaccine costs (CDC, 2014). Big pharma and big medicine make more money from not vaccinating people, which by the way, is a compelling counterargument to anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists.

Still, private industry can make some money and help the community too. Private enterprise has helped fill the supply gaps of vaccines, especially in destitute areas; but there is a considerable risk of not balancing public and private interest (Lydon et al., 2015). Though the incentive of private enterprise has contributed significantly to vaccine development (despite low profits), the public and private partnership has eroded in many respects—resulting in unfortunately low vaccination rates in some demographics (US Institute of Medicine, 2015).

Balancing this partnership is critical, because public funding varies, and is sometimes slow with red-tape surrounding grant approvals. The US Institute of Medicine gave several recommendations in 2015, to include mandating vaccine insurance under all private and government insurance programs (or subsidy and voucher plans).

And here is the crux of all this:

It is clear (to me at least) that if we want to honor Salk’s vision of balancing wisdom and knowledge, to learn from our experience, the become better ancestors and take control of our society’s guided evolution with a purpose, then we must develop a wiser balance between private and public enterprise in medical research and health access.

COVID 19

Now the gorilla in the room. With the COVID 19 pandemic, there is immense concern that a vaccine (if developed) will not be made widely (and cheaply) available to the public because of private enterprise. I doubt this will happen, but as an oath keeper, I denounce any policymaker that would suggest otherwise. Private industry must team up with the public sector, and so far, the scientific community around the world has been reporting findings to each other. And I hope that the health of humanity at large will be placed ahead of profits.

Carpe Datum and Semper Sci

Sgt Scholar Actual, out.

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References

CBS (1955). Television interview, on See It Now (12 April 1955). Interviewer: Edward R. Murrow.

CDC (1999). “Achievements in public health, 1900-1999 impact of vaccines universally recommended for children — United States, 1990-1998.” MMR Weekly. April 02, 1999 / 48(12);243-248. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm

CDC (2014). Cynthia G. Whitney, MD1, Fangjun Zhou, James Singleton, Anne Schuchat. et al. VFC Publication: supplement. Appendix: Methods for the cost-benefit analyses presented in Benefits from immunization during the Vaccines for children program era — United States, 1994–2013 MMWR (16)352-5. Appendix retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/vfc/pubs/methods/index.html. Last updated 23 April 2014.

Fahey, L., Randall, R. M (1998). Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios p. 332.

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on the Evaluation of Vaccine Purchase Financing in the United States. Financing Vaccines in the 21st Century: Assuring Access and Availability. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2003. Executive Summary. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221816/

Lydon, P., Ticky Raubenheimer, T., Arnot-Krüger, M., Zaffran, M. (2015) Outsourcing vaccine logistics to the private sector: The evidence and lessons learned from the Western Cape Province in South-Africa. Vaccine 33 (29) 3429-3434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.03.042.

Palmer, Brian (2014). “Jonas Salk: Good at virology, bad at economics. He didn’t patent his vaccine, but that doesn’t mean others shouldn’t.” Slate, 13 April 2014. https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/the-real-reasons-jonas-salk-didnt-patent-the-polio-vaccine.html.

Salk, Jonas (1991), Interview with The Academy of Achievement, 16 May 1991. https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/#interview. Last updated 22 March 2020.

Science History Institute (no date). “Jonas Salk and Albert Bruce Sabin.” https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/jonas-salk-and-albert-bruce-sabin. (Last updated 8 January 2017).

Smith, Jane (1990). Patenting the sun: Polio and the Salk vaccine, the dramatic story behind one of the greatest achievements of modern science. W. Morrow. ISBN: 0688094945