A guest writer in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal repeated the oft quoted Jonas Salk statement about his Polio vaccine: “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Many use this statement as the moral impetus for refusing patents on medically important innovations (see Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story). Unfortunately, Jonas Salk created a myth that day by leaving out several crucial details.
As pointed out by Robert Cook-Deegan at Duke University, “When Jonas Salk asked rhetorically “Would you patent the sun?” during his famous television interview with Edward R. Murrow, he did not mention that the lawyers from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis had looked into patenting the Salk Vaccine and concluded that it could not be patented because of prior art – that it would not be considered a patentable invention by standards of the day. Salk implied that the decision was a moral one, but Jane Smith, in her history of the Salk Vaccine, Patenting the Sun, notes that whether or not Salk himself believed what he said to Murrow, the idea of patenting the vaccine had been directly analyzed and the decision was made not to apply for a patent mainly because it would not result in one. We will never know whether the National Foundation on Infantile Paralysis or the University of Pittsburgh would have patented the vaccine if they could, but the simple moral interpretation often applied to this case is simply wrong.”
While the debate on whether patents are the best way to incentivize medical innovation and commercialization continues, that debate should proceed without reliance on this myth regarding the history of the Polio vaccine.
It’s certainly difficult to put yourself in Salk’s head.
While that vaguely helps to support all of the utter B.S. we have gotten ourselves (humanity) into with TRIPS and bogus IPR, it is superfluous information. Salk went on record stating he believed in the cure, and he did his research at a time when we did not have the same preposterously greedy Research and Development / Patent Scheme we have today, where there needs to be a considerable amount of proof and possibly a full patent on the ‘gene’ ‘virus’ ‘bacteria’ ‘plant’ to even start the specialized research. I think it is embarrassing that many ‘scientists’ are working with TEAMS of lawyers and economists instead of doing great things for our species. Many scientists and inventors anymore, or curious and passionate…I feel many just want a job, and they have a degree.
Sorry for the tangents. But to write critically about Salk with correllatory proof seems a bit naft…
Regardless, the point can be made that in today’s world no drug company would have developed and distributed this without a patent. At that time US government funding and bright scientists made a very real and positive change in public health that has likely saved quality of life and taxpayer burden for invalid care, worldwide. Funding for academic research is being cut to the bone. Public funding should be directed towards initiatives that support science that make real progress in the fight against disease. But today it’s all big business, a race to patent everything under the sun, and these ‘charity’ organizations make me sick, there isn’t a single one that really wants to see a cure for anything come to light – their million dollar organizations would dry up. Donate to Science, these are the people who have dedicated to solving real problems and finding cures – because once they find it – there are other problems they can work on and would happily do so.
**who have dedicated their lives
is it all possible that the lesson learned from the quote is worth more than a speculative truth?