Dr. Jonas Edward Salk

Dr. Jonas Edward Salk was a model global citizen because of the many things he did for the world in by helping it, but he was shaped by his parents and education. Jonas Salk was the son of Polish immigrants that moved here before he was born, on October 28, 1914. His parents were strong believers that he needed a full education before he could move on with his life. Jonas was a very bright kid and at the age of 15 he graduated from Townsend Harris High School. He then moved onto City College of New York where he studied chemistry. He originally wanted to be a lawyer but his mother urged him to be a doctor instead. When he went to medical school however he wanted to study viruses and bacteria and how the human body interacts with them. During his second year at medical school he studied biochemistry, but instead of switching majors decided to stay with medicine because of his original intention(Biography). “And at the end of that …show more content…
Poliomyelitis, otherwise know as polio, is the effect on the spinal cord that leads to the classic manifestation of paralysis. There are 3 stereotypes of polio each extremely different from the other and an immunity to one doesn’t mean you have an immunity to the other 2 and during Jonas’s time polio was a big deal and many people were working on trying to solve it. He worked on his vaccine for a long time and after he discovered a way to use an inactivated form of the viruses, he did this by putting the viruses in formaldehyde, he created the world’s first polio vaccine. The one problem with the vaccine, it was not widely accepted at first because of the controversial way of the vaccine being introduced into the body. Over six years however the incidence rate of polio the rate dropped by 95% (Biography). His work on the vaccine was important in furthering the advancements of medicinal