Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Jonas Salk 20150913

Good evening and welcome to todays meeting of the Commonwealth Club of california. This is a place where you are in the know. I know symantec Commonwealth Club. Org. Find us on facebook and on twitter and on the clubs Youtube Channel as well. My name is joe epstein. My pasture the Commonwealth Club word of governors and im going to chair todays program. This program is part of the clubs series underwritten by the bernardo share foundation. 60 years ago researcher jonas salk changed Human History by inventing the polio vaccine. His work has saved countless lives, helped shape the medical field as we know it today. Recently dr. Charlotte jacobs, Professor Emeritus at tampered medical School Published the First Comprehensive biography of this medical pioneer in tighter jonas salk a life. Today we are pleased to have got your jacob along with his work and the Lessons Learned from it. Dr. Jacobs will be in conversation with Janet Napolitano, president of the university of california, former secretary of the u. S. Department of Homeland Security and the former governor of arizona. But they now just a big order that each. A graduate of Washington University school of medicine in st. Louis, dr. Charlotte jacobs came to stanford as a fellow in oncology in 1975. She joined the faculty in 1977 and was promoted to full professor in 1996. She has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching and contributions to medical education. Dr. Jacobs also served for several years and senior associate dean for education and student affairs. 1997 dr. Jacobs was appointed director of the stanford Clinical Cancer Center and served concurrently as director of the Cancer Program for this stand for joint health care program. 2001 dr. Jacobs stepped down from a position to return to patient care. Dr. Jacobs is known for research in the head and neck there is ms held several leadership positions in the cancer arena nationally. Janet napolitano became the 20th president of the university of california in 2013 years she leaves the University System with 10 campuses, five medical centers in the three affiliated National Laboratory and the statewide agricultural and Natural Resources program. As you see president , ms. Napolitano has initiatives including Financial Stability for the university, focusing researchers resources on local and global food issues in achieving Carbon Neutrality across the system she hopes by 2025 and accelerating translation of research into products and services. Shes implemented the fair wage for your work plan which established a 15 wage for employees and contract workers. This is a first for a public university. From 2009 to 2013, president napolitano was the first woman to serve as the u. S. Department of Homeland Security in 2003 until 2009 served as the first governor including the third female governor and the first woman to win reelection. President napolitano graduated from Santa Clara University and received her jurist doctor from the university of virginia law school. Please welcome dr. Charlotte jacobs will be in conversation with you see president Janet Napolitano. [applause] well, thank you joe and all who were in attendance with us tonight for listening and for what i think would be a terrific hour of conversation. We agreed to call each other by her first names. So charlotte, i would like to start us off by asking, how did you come to choose jonas salk . I grew up in the time before the polio vaccine and so i remember how frightening it was to see pictures in the magazines or newsreels of children struggling with crutches or entombed in iron lungs. It was an enormous fear because no one knew which child, which town would be the cripplers next victim. In 1954 the National Foundation held a National Trial looking at the efficacy of jonas salks vaccine. They chose 200 a little over 200 towns around the United States in my hometown of kingsport, tennessee for select it as one of the sites and so i was in the original trial called the polio pioneer. A year later when the vaccine was called a success, salk became one of the greatest heroes of my generation so i was surprised as an adult to realize no one had ever written a full biography so i set out to write one. Lets work our way backwards a little bit in terms of salks life, his beginnings and perhaps you could talk some about his work prepolio, what he was doing, for example in respect to influenza, another great scorches in 1800 was brought into the field of polio. So i will scroll all the way back. He was unlikely to be a great physician scientists. He was born in east harlem to an immigrant family. He was bright but not brilliant. He wish i and yet his mother had told him when he was born that he was with a call, and amniotic sack over his face and that meant he was destined for greatness and he believed her. He really felt any us to pray as a child that someday he could form some noble deed. That drove them all the way to medical. Right after the training the war broke out and he had done some research, went to the university of michigan for Thomas Francis was rushing to make an influenza vaccine. An epidemic of those was threatening the truth and brought back this terrible memory of made in 18 when almost as many young men died of the flu as died in combat. They were rushing against time and the two of them concoct it and tested the First Successful influenza vaccine for which ms is salk did did not get a lot of credit. So then he got a little stymied by francis and took a position at the university of pittsburgh and there he wanted to work in a universal influenza vaccine. He thought you could make a vaccine that would take care of all the different influenza in may 1947 when harry weaver was a talent scout for the National Foundation for infantile as invited him to join them on the attack on polio, he readily joined the effort. It is interesting because there are some names to our dimension that become recurring names throughout the biography. There are lots of very fascinating carrots verse in the book and many biography says that were included. I picked five. And maybe you can describe who they were and how they would fit into the ultimate tori of the polio vaccine. I will begin with harry weaver. The wwhiskey and why was he important . Harry weaver worked for the department of infantile paralysis. He facilitated Research Among scientists and had an eye for talent. He saw this young researcher who was not full of himself and would really work on exactly what the march of dimes wanted him to work on compared to many scientists who take their money and do what they wanted to do. So he was really instrumental in getting him into that brew crew working on the polio vaccine. But harry weaver wanted to see things move along. So he had appointed a group of senior scientists in the field of polio were going to rise them about the best approach to polio. But weaver thought they were going pretty slow thinking about we have to understand the basic science, et cetera. He saw jonas salk is a resource kind of chomping at the bit not because he wanted fame but because he could see beyond the microscope. He wanted to get out there and get the vaccine. He didnt want another summer to go by with children being paralyzed. Harry weaver was the stimulus behind. Polio was seasonal. Every year people knew there would be another polio summer and you didnt know where it was going to head and he was going to be there. So you mentioned Hazel Oconnor, one of my favorite biographies of this biography. He is my favorite as well. He was actually a law partner of Franklin Delano roosevelt and he was kind of a funky irishman from an immigrant family who saw himself working with fdr who was very classy and obviously from a very wealthy family. He made a deal with fdr that he would do all the work but they have fdr and allow for many and he became a successful lawyer. When fdr had this idea of having a place for polio but im, they have this idea of raising money to help polio but comes. When fdr died suddenly it all fell into his hands. Oconnor always horribly carnation, pinstriped suit in his work was lost. He ran the foundation width typeface and everything had to go his way. That is the National Foundation for infantile paralysis, which then started the march of dimes is a mechanism to raise money for polio vaccine. Interestingly, there is a 20 year difference between dale oconnor and jonas salk and they could have been more different. Oconnor was bombastic. He knew exactly what he was thinking. You were strong, outspoken. Jonas salk was a shy, retiring, very kind individual and coming back from a polio meeting early on, that time together on the queen mary and that is when this deep, deep friendship border and i love affair were just crazy about each other and they became lifelong friends. The little postcards, the nospaceon vacuum for us were very endearing and their whole friendship week through the entire book and i would say one of the saddest most poignant parts for me was when their friendship tell apart. That is towards the end over issues, et cetera. Basal oconnor had a daughter. He had a daughter called him up one day and said i think i have the disease. She survived and develop a nice friendship also with jonas salk. Many people by jonas salk was the son of basal oconnor never had. The scientists didnt like their friendship and some of them referred to jonas is chosen. We will get to that in a minute. You mentioned the march of dimes and medical research was funded very differently in this period in our history than it is today. So talk a little bit about the march of dimes and the whole connection of the public to try to find a cure. That was amazing. Someone working on a book now about the march of dimes which is an incredible organization. Itll probably never happen again. Petrov was carried out by the march of dimes, by volunteers. Not a lot of highpowered, welltrained research assistance. It was carried out by school principals, housewives. Housewives were involved in that enormous trial and collecting all of the data and the data sheet. It really was the public was so engaged in that through the march of dimes. It was a universal, National Effort focused on one disease. On one disease. Were going to get to the count in a minute because the whole discussion of the trial and what happened is an amazing story. Two other names though. Isabel spent Isabel Morgan is a minor character in the book but not in the world of science and she was part of the Johns Hopkins team that was working on polio. One of the first things that have to be done by this group that harry got together with to figure out how the different types of polio are there. Are the one like smallpox . Arthur 100 that change over time like influence which makes it difficult to make a vaccine. They were working and trying to figure out what techniques are all going to use so that they would all agree on how to test for the different polio types. Jonas salk this listing to albert sabin and Isabel Morgan talk but which technique and suddenly his mind goes to Something Else that isabel market is talked about when she thought that her experiments in monkeys and she is a vaccine with kills virus that no one else is arguing about this approach and hes sitting there thinking yes, i can make a vaccine would kill the virus because that killed a virus that she used its daily commute. Thats important because at that moment in history of medicine most of the Scientific Community believed that only a vaccine made with a live weakened virus could impart immunity to prevent disease and that it indicates with smallpox for example, and with rabies. They all believed that ever all working towards having a live virus vaccine. Salk is sitting saying gosh darn it, im not going to tell them that im going to make a killed virus vaccine individual work. He credited Isabel Morgan with that idea. Shirleys research shortly thereafter because there was no role for a woman at that time. And became a homemaker and lived a quieter life and she might today unfortunately that was a slog of a lot of women scientists in the danish. Thats what i wanted to pull turning out. John enters . John enters was a pretty famous harvard professor in these important because everybody used to have to grow poliovirus in monkeys. Had to do it in live animals. He came up with how to grow poliovirus in cell culture which does have like very much to his buddy got a nobel prize for. Like the steam engine and was greeted or something. Many people said he shouldve gotten even more credit from the public. John enders that no interest in making a vaccine. Is a basic scientist. He wanted to work ahead of grow poliovirus, and he did. But he also did not believe you could use a killed virus and and that he opposed salk all the way along the way. He relies on ill come back to that. I attribute his determination as the reason for 1700 paralyzed kids in boston but weve come to that later. I want to get back to that. You mentioned a minute ago, but Thomas Francis. Thomas francis had been at nyu where salk was a medical student and salk was different from most. He knew he wanted to do research and not be a practicing doctor. He went in and as Thomas Francis if you can work in his lab because francis was working on viruses and francis said he was kind of a nice presentable young man who just want to tinker in the lab but he realized what they determined young man he was. So that when he went on to work on the vaccine, then went onto. He kind of exits that field. He became a very prominent epidemiologist. He wasnt engaged in making vaccines but when it came time to test the vaccine, a National Foundation, march of dimes, oconnooconno r, weaver, took the vaccine away from salk and said you cannot be the person who runs were analyzed at trial. At that point in time salk was starting to get some kind of bad vibes in the Scientific Community, number one. That the people would be suspect if he tested his own vaccine. And so actually the march of dimes, the ones would run the red cross ran the trial and Thomas Francis was selected to do all of the analysis and present the trial data in ann arbor, michigan, on april 12, 1955 interestingly, Thomas Francis what. Com he was kind of a study of he would not let anyone know what was going on. He would give no previous ahead of time. And so at ann arbor with this huge announcement was going to get it, jonas salk was to follow him in talking. Salk found out at breakfast the morning before they started to talk an hour before that the trial had been a success. I mean, it was an amazing the trial, now you have a polio is a set of national attention. The president has been a polio victim. You have the nations schoolchildren added what else raising times. Everybody is trying to find a vaccine. Everybody knows that theres going to be a trial. But its not a little human tropic there have been some small human trials before then in places like homes for children with disabilities, and prisons, et cetera. But the real trial, the one that anyone thinks of now is the 1954 trial. May be explained for the audience the scope of this trial. So this was probably one of the biggest trials in the history of medicine. Certainly in the United States. It was conducted solely in children, first, second and third graders at 211 sites around the United States, and over 1. 5 million children participate in this trial. Thats astronomical. They were actually two trials going on at the same time. The major trial was children were randomized between just a placebo or the vaccine and it was a double blinded so no one knew who got what. Amazing, housewives read this topic a with the ones responsible for randomization in determining who got what and collecting the data. Betty lee still just goggles my mind. The second part of the trial because oconnor had to some of the states they could do it that way, everybody in the second grade got the vaccine in those towns and they were compared to the first grade and third graders in terms of incidents a polio. Thats what happened in my hometown so i knew i got the vaccine. It was an incredible trial. And carried out magnificently. I just had this picture of francis and his team up statistics gatherers picking up these cards being sent in from all over the country assembling the data, analyzing it for months. There were no computers. This was all handwritten the step coming into ann arbor. And they select april 121955 to announce the result of the trial, which is a significant day for another reason. That was at the death of fdr. Francis said i selected that day because they give you a choice of five days and i was the longest want to give you more time to do the analysis. That sounds like francis. All the naysayers said no, it was for publicity. And they said salk chose that date for sure because he wanted the publicity. And salk had nothing t to do with it a compliment for a bunch of stuff that wasnt his fault. Ann arbor, michigan, everyone was paying attention. What was francis going to announce . This was a marvelous section of the book we just described that day in ann arbor. Can you give a little flavor of how organized it was and everything . First off, thats not the way scientific advances come you find out about them, right . What he known it would have done is written up the results, happy review, published and that afterwards he had given a talk about and maybe it wouldve made the news. But this was informed of a News Conference and it was at this beautiful auditorium at the university of michigan, and there were 150 reporters with all their cameras and equipment and whatnot all in the back of the stage. And they were promised that they could get the results ahead of time. They were upstairs waiting but they had to keep it secret. You can imagine the minute those packets of results came it was a free for all. Pages all sworn to the god was handing out continually got on the tickets and Everything Else and started Dave Carraway was the first and his excuse was it was just too good to keep secret. Upstairs chaos is going on and it starts downstairs. No one has heard anything. Thomas francis gave an hour presentation in a very measured scientific way going through the methods, et cetera. 45 minutes charge and everything as if youre getting a scientific 45 minutes into they said and now the results. And, of course, everybody went crazy. The minute that he announced that, in fact, they had reduced the incidence of paralytic polio by about 80 in the world went crazy. I think, people were honking courts. They were sirens going. They were prayer meetings held. People were out in the streets cheering, hugging each other, fighting thank you, dr. Salk all over their stores. It was as many people said, like the end of a worker at the jonas salk got up to talk, and you know, he was a publics darling. They just loved him. He honestly thought that the next that he would go home and go back into his labrador and start doing research. He really didnt have a clue idea just to become the worlds celebrity. Right. In fact, edward r. Murrow pulled him aside at the end of the morning and said basically apologized and said im sorry this has happened, that you discovered a cure for polio because now you have lost your anonymity. Another thing that happened in the midst of all this is, salk, he thanks the nfip methinks oconnor but he forgets to thank or acknowledge his team from he didnt acknowledge them by name. He said the ones who worked on it, and they were all fairly devastated, very, very angry. Affect most of them the discipline that afterwards. That was the other thing. Of only about five of them work you are the sole vaccine and that was incredible in itself. Just to show you how angry they are, i already got an angry letter from one of the son of one of the people that worked there. I had no idea what he was. No one knew, saying, you know, some pretty nasty things about salk. Salk afterward tried to retract. He felt very bad about it when he was given a president ial citation. Bekking, he tried to making them, but the damage in their minds had been done. Their names were not on the publication of the final results, and neither were salks. Can you imagine that . Francis and his statisticians but they were not and salk was nobody can ever all very angry at salk and still the only living relative is angry today. Talk about somebody who is angry and it comes across as an angry man throughout this whole book, sabin. May become its interesting because he and salk both have very similar backgrounds from poor jewish immigrant families in new york. I think sabin was a few years older than salk. Described the source of their animosity and the intensity that it had spent time as said by the way Robert Sabins daughter spent enormous amount of time talking with as the two of the salk brothers. I got it from both sides that they are all pretty much in agreement and the children have become friends. Thats kind of interesting. This was called one of the great medical views of history. That bothered trampling because it was about to get early on sabin acted as a mentor. They would send notes back and forth, as part of a card, hows your family . And meetings they would stay up late and talk to each other until after midnight. But that was when sabin but salk was going to do his bidding. Sabin believed as most scientistscientistthat you do ms vaccine that would work and salk didnt really tip his hand. He thought, he was right, everybody was right in lockstep behind sabin on the way to make this oral vaccine that would take several years. When one of their meetings salk announces contact is made a killed virus vaccine and is tested children and shown that they can have antibody. Well, that really drove sabin to distraction and then when they went on to test that as the vaccine, even make them more angry. Early on salk uses a, there wasnt a viable. They say there was a race. Salk wasnt in the race against sabin. He was in a race against polio that was killing and maiming people. And every years of delay was another 50,000 children. Salk uses of this isnt a rival about two people. This is a rival about two principles. But as time went on after the vaccine had been approved and four years later, paralytic area was reduced by 90 in the United States, but the scientists still believe the salk vaccine which is a stopgap until they had an oral live vaccine. They all still believed that. Sabin tested one. He tested it in russia. It was safe, effective in the middle of the cold war. In the middle of the cold war. And in the early 1960s the Public Health Service Recommended switching and using a sabin vaccine backing cosby goes much cheaper and convenient. You can get in a sugar cube but there was a lot of basic scientists working beneath that come a lot of politics as well. Salk was the upset about that. He tried to get that decision reversed. He was worried again that would actually cause polio, and all the Major Medical decisiondecision makers, the cdc, the fda, the american medical association, everyone turned a deaf ear to me. And by 1968, no one made a salk vaccine in the United States anymore. So salk spent the rest of his life trying to get a sabin vaccine is licensed because impact people did get polio from the vaccine. It was a small number. The vaccine was entrenched. The Scientific Community was behind sabin and so salk just became tenacious in trying to reverse that decision. And that is where the rivalry really started to heat up. But it can salk never said a bad word about sabin. He was always very gentlemanly. The reverse couldnt decide. No. Sabin was bombastic and he was a leader, very well known in the Scientific Community. Very wellrespected and gave a lot of grief to salk. Right. The other side seem to line up on either side of that were not too many on salks side. They were all over on sabins site. And sabin, you know, he made some pretty big mistakes as well as in his own research. How would you assess the relative value of the vaccine debate in the sense of which ones are encourages . It has a very interesting history. Then as time went on, salk worked with a company in france to try to make a better, im newer version, better polio kill the vaccine virus. And that actually, the sabin vaccine because people got polio was not licensed but is but four years after salk die, that is vaccine which is the only one used in the United States and the most developed countries now. Its very ironic that we were probably get rid of polio someday because of both vaccines. Their pop both running over in their grave right now when they do that because they were not exactly friends towards the end of their lives. Because the oral vaccine is much easier to give and much less expensive, so in third world countries the oral vaccine is what is being used and has been responsible for many, many improvements. Interestingly though im if you look like in 2014 ever 414 cases of polio around the world. 55 of those were caused by the vaccine. So because they can revert to more virulent form. So clearly you cannot get rid of polio forever with the oral vaccine. So what the global polio eradication initiative, which is as wonderful, wonderful initiative to get rid of polio worldwide, they have a threestep process, and eventually after they get the last case of polio from the wild vaccine gone, then you going to switch back and all have the salk vaccine ever tire the sabin vaccine. So in the end it will only be to kill the vaccine, which is what most people, well everybody today in the United States there was an article in the New York Times last week about their down to one last case that they found in africa. But unfortunate theres still a few in pakistan and afghanistan. Better our reasons for that which we might be obligated but were going to pause. You are listening to the Commonwealth Club of California Program at our guest is doctor charlotte jacobs, emeritus professor of medicine at Stanford University and author of a new biography, jonas salk. I am just napolitano president of university of california and your moderator. You can your Commonwealth Club programs on the radio, catch up with us on the clubs Youtube Channel as well. So there goes the commercial announcement. But back to the salksabin dispute, feud, call it what you will, neither one won the nobel prize. No. I was just one less thing before i forget because i thought it was very telling. Jonas salk always said i hope someday that my biographer would not pose our rivalry as too little jewish boys from the blogs writing it out. The bronx. And you didnt. But john enders at harvard, he won a nobel right in the middle of the trial actually for discovering that you could grow the virus in nonnervous tissue. They didnt wait to try was actually it didnt matter. I mean, what you come in terms of cell cultures apply to lots of different viruses so it was a major step forward in science. In science, but in terms of polio so jonas salk never got the nobel prize. He was nominated multiple times and actually of course all of the information about the committees and the nominations was held under lock and key. But last year, maybe the year before, some of that information was made public and that was actually than a book written about the nobel prize come and the second about what happened to jonas salk or interestingly there is a five Man Committee to look at the nominations and there was a swedish scientist who was on the committee and always wrote up a salk. He didnt like jonas salk. He said he couldnt reproduce his results. And right after the salk vaccine cannot do wa there was conflict collect ancestral accident where quite a number of children actually got probably because the vaccine had not been inactivated correctly. He blamed that on salk and he said the salk really didnt make a discovery of any mayor. For us to do with wait until the trial is over at an adjacent the trial was successful but maybe it couldve happened another way and it wasnt a major scientific discovery. Salk told robert gallo, the big aids veikkanen is that med kits nobody thinks i got the nobel prize. [laughter] but i think more egregious than more telling because i am not sure when i look at the definition for the nobel prize that he really was a candidate for the. The National Academy of sciences, he was blackballed from. That to me was just egregious. Those records are not available but i was able to interview people who are around at that time and what to the process and one person could blackballed and. They said they are sure that i blackballed him but to put a scientist who also did like jonas salk. So we never got into the National Academy. Effect it out relatively little recognition from the Scientific Community and i was actually one of the questions i had to be to write this book. Why . Well, one reason do you want your the reason . Im going offtrack. Because, you know, and all of it about politics, and i must say [laughter] between scientist would give you greater. These guys are intense. But go ahead. Well, so, you know, attended underlay their, their disdain or the kind of rejection of him, well, first duty was this young scientist. He wasnt a member of the scientific brother at that time, and detest a vaccine behind their backs and challenging so that was number one. Number two, they said he grabbed the limelight and took all the credit and he didnt mention the other scientists could not document the people in his lab at about the other big scientist. Salk date code mentioned in the can be made in the icon the polio soccer. The public didnt want to hear about jon enters into with enforcement. They want to hear about jonas salk. Thats what they cared about. He had been made a media star in a sense they really didnt like that. But the third and i think this ties into something that you said at the National Academy of sciences. He reached out to the public in a way scientist didnt do. He felt the public have funded this topic they were behind this trial and that he owed it to them. He tried to enter every single letter. He gave interviews to parent magazine, to good housekeeping. He went on television. That did not fit well with the scientist who built his big walls around academia, after he was kind of accused of academic, his decorum wasnt quite good. And the pandering to the media. But lets face it he garnered more celebrity than almost any scientist, physician scientist with the exception of maybe louis pasteur. So you cant discount jealousy. Is one of his friend, dont discount jealousy. Is amazingly strong in the field of medicine and science. My heavens, yeah. I should mention he never was made a member of the National Academy of sciences. Hes not inducted into the institute of medicine until the very end of his life because all they did was save at a minimum probably happened in children from getting polio. Thats all they did. Same dynamic i suppose. Arthur notes kept confidential as well speak with no, but when asked about the rollback the short know, he is to a member. It was just that he was 80 years old. Gets into, when we talk about the politics of the, whatever, hes also involved, right around the time televisions are becoming in every household, the media landscape is changing very rapidly. And youve had this huge media campaign. You can think of the march of dimes is what a huge, almost like a crowd sourcing campaign in a way to raise the money for the vaccine. And the other scientists can be seen to be kind of clueless about that and what it would mean for the future of medicine and medical research. Did you get the same sense as youre going through it if you assume a prescient in that regard . Entrance of immediate . Yes. He had a funny relationship with the media. He learned very early on how they could use the media when he needed to use of them. On the other hand, they drove him crazy at times. He would be walking across the street and someone would put a microphone in front of them, what did you have for breakfast . He you want to talk about his personal life. He had this lovehate relationship, although he was always kind and generous to the media. Very open to them. You just mentioned his personal life, so id like to switch a little bit to that. He was a workaholic. The members of his lab team were similarly working all the time. The race against polio was a huge deal, but can you describe how we actually had time for a personal life . Did he have one . They became celebrities by association. His wife never accommodated and they eventually ended in divorce. Subsequently it goes back to pittsburgh and is now an international celebrity. President president eisenhower is choked up recognizing him at a ceremony in the rose garden. This man led the allied forces in world war ii and he chokes up a Little Indian pit never saw eye to eye after he got back. He conceived this idea appeared he wants a new thing to work on. He wants a new project and he becomes interested in how you unite science and the humanities or Human Evolution writ large. And he moves out to california. Do you want to talk about what became known . They been talking about this ever since they met on the queen mary so wasnt fully a new idea. C. P. Snow had p. Snow headed p. Snow had a book, the two cultures that just part 10. So he wanted to create an institute where scientists and humanists work sidebyside. He called it in viewing the science but then. Hazel oconnor bought into it, provided enormous sending. Louis kahn designed the magnificent institute that they placed in la jolla overlooking the ocean. Fabulous. He was able to attract outstanding scholars and almost all nobel prize laureate. Everything is wonderful in the face nothing but problems. He had an architect who had more french remain in drawing. He tried to run the institute himself and his own skills were so lacking there i was on the brink of bankruptcy. He had a falling out with Hazel Oconnor which was exceedingly painful. The president that i can raise more money with salt dead than alive and he heard that. Depose labatt says scientist for new heat up the shangrila. The most painful thing in the end was the science is trumped humanities and it became just a scientific institute. The fabrics entered by the scientific institute. He later said archie are happy. He said im only half happy. Always thinking ahead. He strikes me as someone who rarely rested. I dont think he ever watch television or went to the movies. He just worked. He worked and socialized with women. Okay, i yeah. I wasnt looking for this and i was talking to john or rather wonderful history of dates and out of police estimate how are you going to do with the skirt chasing. I set the what . The skirt chasing. When carter wrote a book on the history of polio he said i cant mention it. So i let it ride for a while and then i saw on the internet a woman talking about all the time she spent with salt and how it wrote her heart. And that led from one person to another person to another person in a begin to hear stories. What they were all about in salk in later life became much more of a philosopher. He had a lot of ideas he wanted to get across that he couldnt really express himself in ways accessible to the public so we started looking for people who would be as torchbearers and they happen to be young, very bright, very attract women. So what started out on an intellectual plane at some point would into a physical relationship. I really didnt know whether to include this or not. Of course i pestered my husband, two of my friends in the audience would have dinner. But then i heard so many biographers criticized for withholding parts of peoples lives and this is a full life. I thought what they really showed its jonas salk was humane. He was an essay that he was portrayed by the public and he was a very solitary, lonely man searching for some special connection with someone and he never seemed to be able to find it. He did tell one of his friends who was a close friend of his wife perhaps an explanation. I learned very early on he said that everybody has to get into their pants one leg at a time. In other words, i am human, too. It also struck me having been basically not like bald but shunned by the scientific establishment, the awards are all the civilian side, not the scientific side. He was always looking for approval or validation where he could find it. I do a lot of interviews with a friend of his later in life who is younger hall is a psychiatrist. He had a lot of theories because he knew about the liaisons he had and whether this was a way of him showing a Scientific Community you have fewer wars but ive got this lovely lady on my arm. That doesnt sound like salk to me. His son who is a psychologist that his father was always looking for a special connection and never connect with people and thats why he kept on working. Another one of my favorite biographies. A french artist, besides her art she became quite well known because she published a popular book which details her years as the mistress. Salk now a free man after his divorce matter at the end to end she had no interest in him initially and realized the great interest in art and architecture so he pursued her and she told me the story when he proposed and she said were both older. I dont see a reason to get married and im not sure on all the things that have to help in the evening to make it work. So he left the room and came back a few minutes later and he let god in and said i can do all of these things. She didnt tell me what they were except one that she could then six months a year painting mostly alone because she was a very career driven and accomplish. Friends were shocked that he married her to begin with. They looked happier and healthier than ever having started doing things besides working in the laboratory. He had longer hair, he wore a silk ascot, got into yoga, all of that. His sisterinlaw said she french inside him. What happened is for some reason over the years they became more intellectual than affectionate. I thought it was really telling. Friend saw is very straightforward. She cuts to the chase and tells it like it is. Jonas is kind of horrified and said how did she wind up with two of the most famed men in history and she said lions meet with clients. Salk was just humiliated. Later in life when she was interviewed that was one of her famous quotes. Francoise was being entered into and they asked her how she enjoyed you not to sub two in la jolla and she said if it werent for my husband i would spend five minutes in la jolla. Of course the press did not like her. But they stayed together. They were together until his death. They had their deal as couples do. The other thing is salk in the joya as an architect, a brilliant architect but slow and expensive. Hes got Basil Oconnor cut them off. Hes constantly having to raise money. The whole unity between the humanities and sciences are not working out. He still has a lap and was he successfully able to do that . Your own cancer which show he knew nothing about modern molecular biology. It was such an embarrassment that they cannot be shut down his laboratory. He worked on multiple sclerosis and was wellregarded in the multiple sclerosis world. But he kind of had a blind alley doing a therapeutic and cause the allergic reaction. After he retired or was retired, he was sad. He thought that was the end of a scientific career. He was busy writing philosophical books have suddenly this terrible disease is hitting young men and its almost like he put on his armor and got out on a charged right into the arena. It was amazing some of the people going really, this old guy trying to regain us to glory. Other people thought a dead son incredible work. He formed a company and made a vaccine, a therapeutic vaccine to delay the time between infection with hiv and fullblown aids. Actually the vaccine is still under evaluation or a more modern version of it. But he couldnt do science the way he used to do it. Now there were all kinds of regulations and the fta watched over everything. He was kinder than a time warp, which was very, very difficult for him and he was arguing with the fta with the child the vaccine when he died. And he was 80. That he was still at it. He was still trying to do good, which is something his mother had filled from childhood. In todays modern medical research establishment, this goes with some of the questions from the audience, do you think there is still the opportunity for a scientist to do but salk did in the late 40s and the these . I doubt it. I tried to compare a one point if you are trying to make a vaccine today, he would have to do the basic science work. Theres no godmother. You would have to write our one grant. They make 16 probably less than that. He wouldve been cut off right then and there. Had they been able to get the money from donors although it takes an enormous amount of money, he wouldve had to go through an investigational drug application. He would have had to go through the animal child and then and there the minute he was working on monkeys, out of Animal Protection people wouldve been breathing down his neck. He would have never been able to figure it do its work because you cant do secret Research National funding anymore. And then he wouldve had to go through phase one, two and three in children, really . The protection for children in Clinical Trials is enormous. Its an investigational drug application entity that participated that was about 20 pages long compared to one paragraph for his initial trial. He wouldve faced all the people against vaccination and my husband who is in the biotech world and would take 500 million to go from beginning to end them probably take about is your salk vaccine in greenhouse men and from the time they started working in the child was completed in license that very day was three and a half years. So the answer is i doubt it. Well, its a different world. Different better . Better probably. You cant do what he did now. Once deluded minds, protection walls went up and they should. There has to be a way to expedite research when its critically important for the National Good to some extent it was ebola which moved things along a lot more quickly. This was one of the dispute beyond the microscope quote that you referenced earlier is not just about the science. Its getting in preventing children from getting polio and getting to that point as quickly as possible. What are the Lessons Learned . He spent close to a decade working on the biography. A lot of lessons i guess. The individual and this whole relationship and the role of politics, the rules of academia and how does have to be they have to be more fluid to allow someone with a very unconventional scientist in order to thrive. That is one of the major ones and the other is someone that is the translational science, et cetera. He was a translational person from bed to bed sad like that within a few months. The facilitation of that, i think those are some of the major Lessons Learned. Where would you place in the history of medicine . Where would you rank him . It is hard to rank what are your basic scientists are criminal scientists, but he made one of the major contributions in the history of medicine. There is no doubt about that. He was responsible for the prevention of polio and the ones that which we did touch on very much and despite anything no one can take that away and not his place in madison. He made the simple vaccine and very pompous scientist and you go but he sure did one of the greatest things. In the end, we tell the tale of the tape. I think that is probably a good place for us to stop this great conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it and theres so many things get married even more discussion than we have time for this evening. Thank you so much for devoting your time to explain to us in language that is very accessible to the life of this very, very man. Thank you. [applause] so our thanks to that charlotte jacob, professor of medicine emeritus at stanford and off their jonas salk a life. I want to thank the audience hear on the radio for those of you watching on television and over the internet. Tonights program has been part of the clubs good lit series underwritten by the Bernard Gaucher foundation. And Janet Napolitano and this meeting of the Commonwealth Club of california is now adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations]