With regard to our current fascination and questionable fear (terror?) of Ebola, I think this is an excellent time to mention Dr. Salk and his polio vaccine. He was born 100 years ago today (28 October, 1914) and I am very confident in saying he changed the world.

Polio is truly a horrible disease that not only caused a huge amount of suffering and economic costs but caused true panic among people each year (it was, more or less, a seasonal disease). There was no treatment, avoidance or prevention until the 1950's when this man and his team, in developing a working vaccine, virtually eradicated polio as a disease anyone had to worry about or suffer from ever again. Further, he worked exclusively on producing the vaccine as rapidly as possible in the sole interests of distributing it as widely as possible without any personal financial gain. In fact, he refused to patent the vaccine for that very reason, instead leaving it in the public domain; his response when asked 'Who owns the patent?' was: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" It has been estimated that a patent on that vaccine may have been worth $7,000,000,000. Dr. Salk lived until 1995 and the age of 80

So here is a big 'hats' off' to Dr. Jonas Salk, someone who really did make a difference. We have a holiday for Christopher Columbus who was merely diligent in executing an error (he did NOT bang into India on any trip he ever made....) yet little is remembered about Dr. Salk today. By the way, Dr. Salk lived until 1995 and 80 years of age, and he spent his last years working on, not surprisingly, a vaccine for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

And for today's trivia: F.D. Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down from polio he contracted in 1921. He started a charitable fund to find effective treatment(s) in 1938, the very organization that was to fund Dr. Salk's research the ultimately led to the vaccine that prevents the disease. It was named, rather obviously, "National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis" (Infantile Paralysis is the technical name for polio). It was a very successful charity, in fact, so successful that it provide the very reason for its own demise: the eradication of the disease it was formed to combat. But hey, why dissolve a perfectly good charity just because the reason for it no longer exists? So they changed the reason for the charity from treating polio to the prevention of birth defects, slapped a new name on it, "The March of Dimes", and it is still active and effective today.

Brian

...he refused to patent the vaccine for that very reason, instead leaving it in the public domain; his response when asked 'Who owns the patent?' was: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"...

With altruism like that, many of todays diseases could probably have been eradicated much the same way Polio has...

...It has been estimated that a patent on that vaccine may have been worth $7,000,000,000.....

Oh. That explains it...   

Too bad.  Even if the public could fund research, and have the money actually get to where it needed to be to fund research, and not someones retirement plan, there's still the fact that there is a lot of money to be made in treating disease.  WAY MORE than can be made curing them...

Jamie

With altruism like that, many of todays diseases could probably have been eradicated much the same way Polio has...

Oh. That explains it...   

Too bad.  Even if the public could fund research, and have the money actually get to where it needed to be to fund research, and not someones retirement plan, there's still the fact that there is a lot of money to be made in treating disease.  WAY MORE than can be made curing them...

Jamie

That's why I am always skeptical about donating money to "raise awareness" of the disease-of-the-week.  Cancer has changed from being a disease to being an industry. While not denying that billions spent on research may eventually lead to a "cure", there will always be more profits in treating things than ending them.  Dr. Salk may well have been the last (or one of the last) of the really altruistic researchers.

Sad part now, is Polio is a viable and dangerous disease, because all of that who were immunized in the late 50's, and had kids,or not,  passed the safety factor on... now, children have no immunity, because it has been bred out... and we have very little vaccine, but the gubmint is working to rectumfy that currently...
Let's not forget Albert Sabin, who alongside Salk, furthered this vaccine, and developed media to effectivly administer it orally to all of us kids... we first had the pincushion polio immunizations, and in later years, we got the sugar cubes, thanks to Sabin...most folks would never know who these doctors were, simply because of time... sad. I know because I was immunized, multiple times thru my youth.
 kids will never know these things, and they would have to get the lowdown from their grandparents today.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine
Weird as it sounds, my brother contracted polio, prior to my conception, and our Cleveland house had a quarentine sign posted on it , he pulled thru very well, healthy hungarian bloodlines, and never really suffered the debilitating effects many people in Cleveland had as a result of contracting the disease.

I think we should learn from this, and begin, and always continue, to produce and immunize current offspring, so this stuff never arrises again.
Semper fi

Don't ever forget smallpox, teburcoulosis, whooping cough, and many other seemingly extinct but devestating diseases, on a world scale, during their time of prevalence, they wiped out millions.... and we never had jetplanes, elevators, or huge public venues, which make this a spreadable and highly communicable possibility...

Its about time we begin again, using the original strains of immunization, to prohibit any questions of future demise of our children's children, to the hands of those waiting soo long to effect their so caled comeuppance upon our soil..


Sound like something out of Kubrick's  FIRST motion picture...Dr. Strangelove...?   Purity Of Essence.... P.O.E.  ?

Scared yet?
Just jokin.

Be very afraid:

Well, TB and whooping cough are back but have mutated.

And unlike polio the CDC holds multiple patents on the Ebola VIRUS itself.
I wonder why?