ADMISSION TEST FOR PROGRAMME 2008-10

Viewed in retrospect, one might understand the opposition of biological research
scientists to Salk's methods. He made many transgressions against traditional research.
For one thing, the very efficacy of his vaccine toppled one of the most universally
accepted (though erroneous) tenets of orthodox virology - the notion that an active virus
could not be checked by its own dead viral bodies. That was precisely the path Salk chose
to develop his vaccine. For decades, traditional biologists had been waging what they
considered a deliberate, correct, gentleman's fight against polio with efforts focused on
treatment rather than prevention. By contrast, Salk fought the dragon like a man
possessed, seeking a final cure. He had grown up on the fringes of poverty and developed
an attitude more humanist than scientific, a man unwilling to abide senseless rules in the
face of a crisis. He flailed against the disease like a punch-drunk street fighter-and he
landed a knockout blow. Finally, his success proved the greatest transgression of all
against his fellow scientists. By the 1950s, researching polio was a very big business, and
overnight, Salk made further efforts redundant. It was unheard of that an outsider,
working independently; could accomplish what the nation's top scientists with their great
laboratories and countless millions of dollars could not. They expressed their bitterness in
rather petty ways, even refusing to accept Salk into the National Academy of Science.
The reason? Salk, they contended, was not really a scientist - only a technician.
The public never knew the depths of his colleagues' resentment. It was almost a
decade after his discovery before Salk himself would even discuss it. “The worst tragedy
that could have befallen me was my success,” he told an interviewer. “I knew right away
that I was through, that I would be cast out.”
But he was not through. With the polio dragon defeated, he launched a campaign
to raise funds to construct the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at Torrey Pines,
California. He worked there, surrounded by bright, young scientists until his death at age
eighty. Salk later became obsessed with finding a cure for the human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Almost until the day he died, he was trying to catch
lightning in a test tube one last time. Perhaps a man is allotted only one miracle in his
lifetime. Today, research scientists work in the laboratories Jonas Salk built, searching
for new weapons in the fight against dragons that defy destruction: cancer, AIDS,
Alzheimer's, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's. Among those scientists at
Torrey Pines, waging gentlemanly wars against the microscopic enemies of man, perhaps
a new maverick will emerge - a stubborn street fighter who will defeat the odds and
capture the lightning that eluded Jonas Salk.
38