Dr. Jonas Salk

Can you imagine a world where it isn’t safe to be in contact with people? Can you imagine a fatal disease that cripples children and adults? Thanks to Dr. Jonas Salk, you don’t have to. Dr. Jonas Salk was the inventor for the miracle cure for Polio. Thanks to him, we are all free from the polio disease.

Dr. Jonas Salk was born in 1914. Jonas Salk came from a family that wasn’t so educated, so he was determined to go to college. He entered the city college of New York and wanted to study law, but soon switched to medical science. He then started to work on influenza; which caused the flu that killed millions of people during World War 1. He succeeded and saved the armies from dying from flu. After he had found the cure, he saw an opportunity to kill the polio virus. After working on it for eight years, he succeeded and saved over a million children from the crippling disease.

this is a picture of him treating his patient

Jonas Salk is a hero because he saved millions of lives, and refused to take all the credit. You would think that a man that invented a miracle cure would become rich from it, but Jonas didn’t. He refused to patent the cure and said that he just wants to see it spread around the world.

"Risks, I like to say, always pay off. You learn what to do or what not to do." Jonas Salk said this while he was being interviewed. He meant that if you don’t take risks, then you won’t know if what you had in mind was right or wrong. This quote inspired me because I used to think that taking risks was a bad thing to do, but now a learned that it is a good thing to do.

Jonas Salk is a hero and an example of a person that cares for the health of the world. After he had developed the cure for Polio, he started working on a cure for AIDS, but was unsuccessful and died from cancer in 1995. Even though many scientists discouraged him, he continued working hard on the cure for AIDS and Cancer. Not many young people have heard of Jonas Salk, but he is my hero.