Talk:Jonas Salk
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[edit] Article too timid
So the section on "Controversy" includes the part about Julius Youngner and Roger Revelle. That's fine as far as it goes. There's always going to be professional jealousy. And someone who's exceptional on technical skills may be merely average on social skills, and may not do a very good job thanking people publically.
But, the real controversy might be the standards of the times for "informed consent" for the 1950s, and add to this that polio was a dread disease and people were afraid of it to a greater extent than the actual odds and the actual probability might indicate that they should be afraid of it. So it might be a role of a doctor, in real informed consent, to counsel caution with a new vaccine. Not that Jonas did anything different than any other doctor was doing, or that the medical establishment itself was doing. But he may not have done anything particularly better either. Medicine was still following the paternalistic, and at times the authoritarian model. It was still decades away from bringing the people in, calling upon the strength of the people and all that modern management stuff (which doesn't always work, nothing always works, and is often indifferently tried).
Okay, some numbers: "The worst polio epidemic year in America, 1952, saw 57,000 cases with 3,145 deaths and roughly 20,000 cases of permanent paralysis that could be mild to severe. That same year, by comparison, 24,000 people died of tuberculosis and 46,000 died of pneumonia and flu. In single years earlier in the century, diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and even measles had each caused more death and disability." VACCINE: THE CONTROVERSIAL STORY OF MEDICINE'S GREATEST LIFESAVER, Arthur Allen, Norton, 2007, p. 169.
Please understand, I am not saying we should only work on the worst problem of the moment and abandon everything else. You can actually accomplish a lot by pursuing what's genuinely interesting to you. What I am arguing is that each of us, and all of us together can accomplish more, in the long run, and in the short term, if we practice an I-Thou ethics, and get good at leveling with people, at telling them truth in a measured dose that they can understand, at engaging them in a conversation, and so on. Or perhaps not. Some people seem to believe that we could not have made the progress in vaccines that we made if we had practiced anything like modern ethics in the early days. Maybe. I would say that this is a very good topic for inclusion in the article's "Controversy" section.
Also, polio was a "blameless" disease. It struck with frightening unpredictability rich and poor alike. Something like tuberculosis back then might have been viewed the way we view AIDS today. Some people really hung up on blame, other people with a nagging suspicion that the victim had taken too many risks or had not taken good enough care of their health, maybe only a third of people able to practice real 'buddhist'-like compassion. I'm 44 years old. What I can remember very well myself is the 1970s. I can go back and read about the '60s and understand. With the 50s less of this sense of feel. So I don't know for sure how things were perceived in the 1950s. And regarding people who get AIDS, people who get it through sex are doing what are of us do, which is to pursue sexual partners and sexual activities interesting to us (maybe I should put an (s) after partner, I tend to be naturally monogomous, but not everyone is). Sex is part of being human. (And real sex ed, I wish it helped high school kids recognize positive energy, and negative energy, and if it's positive energy, you might want to go with it. If you can say 'Yes' in a meaningful way, you can also say 'No' and vice-versa.)
In fact, the book VACCINE, like many writers have done, attributes a lot of FDR's resiliency and optimism and connection to the common citizen to his struggles with polio. The book quotes one of his sons, "Then he got polio and he was determined to defeat it, and he worked 7 years and he never defeated it! That was a great lesson. It made him far more sympathetic to other people's problems." (p. 164)
Well, it seems like there's a lot of other ways of developing sympathy besides getting so severely sick!
So, I think some of this would make for interesting addition to the main article. FriendlyRiverOtter 00:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Roger Revelle
that guy is pretty mean.
- It appears that Revelle harbored some professional envy over the vast fame that Salk had. T.E. Goodwin 03:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
He is one of the person, whom I admire. I know nothing of his personality or character, but what he has achieved for the humanity is marvellous.
[edit] Humanist? Who decided to name his religion here?
Salk was born to Jewish parents. He should be considered Jewish. He may have harbored "humanist" philosophical ideas and concepts but his religion was Judaism by birthright. T.E. Goodwin 03:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
- A person is whatever religion they self-identify with. Also, "Jewish" seems to be used interchangeably for "religion" and "ethnic group", e.g. it is possible for someone to be ethnically Jewish yet an atheist. As far as Salk is concerned, here's a ref that says he was a Humanist: [1] but another that says he was Jewish: [2] so I'm going to mark the article with a 'fact' tag. -- Limulus 00:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
