Dr. Jonas Salk’s son reflects on father’s role in creating polio vaccine in Pittsburgh

Polio in the 1950s.

“People would keep their kids inside. They would not let them go to swimming pools,” said Tingle Barnes.

Epidemics were reported in the summertime.

“It was just every parent’s worst nightmare,” said Dr. Don Burke.

The very contagious virus could lead to paralysis. Some with breathing issues were put in an iron lung.

But Dr. Jonas Salk and his team changed the course of history for polio by developing the polio vaccine right here in Pittsburgh.

“He was tapped on the shoulder by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which had been formed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had had polio himself,” Dr. Peter Salk, Dr. Jonas Salk’s son, said.

Peter was a child when his dad started working on the vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh. He was part of one of the first groups of kids to get the vaccine his dad was testing.

“My father brought the vaccine home, sterilized the needles and syringes on the stove, and then proceeded to put us through what we hated as kids: getting needles stuck into us,” Peter Salk recalled

Tingle Barnes was part of the trial, too. She remembers going to the now Watson Institute in Sewickley on Saturdays.

She shared a story about her brother who picked up an illness and wasn’t getting better. He went to Jonas at his pediatrician’s recommendation.

“And what he (Jonas) realized was Dick had been infected, but because he’d had the vaccines, it had protected him against the worst of polio,” said Tingle. “Jonas said, ‘Because of you, I was able to tell that the vaccines were working.’”

The polio vaccine trial expanded to 7,500 Pittsburgh schoolchildren and then to a national trial of 1.8 million kids. By 1955, Jonas’ polio vaccine was declared safe and effective.

“That just created such a wave of relief around the country,” Peter Salk said.

“I think he saved a generation of children,” Tingle said. “You can’t say enough about that, whether it’s Pittsburgh or across the nation.”

“The whole community got behind this,” Dr. Don Burke, dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, said. He says the community saw this as an opportunity to prevent polio moving forward.

Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine is still used to vaccinate babies today.

Burke is keeping Salk’s accomplishments at the forefront by helping to curate an exhibit dedicated to Jonas at Pitt’s School of Public Health. The Salk family donated many items, as they also want Jonas’ legacy in Pittsburgh and across the world to be remembered.

“To continue to expand what my father wanted to see in terms of making the best use we can of the resources at our disposal as humans to shape a better future,” Peter Salk said.

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