8

             

The Chosen

Battle plans against polio had been drawn up at Harry Weaver’s January 1948 round table. The first charge was to tally the number of different types of poliovirus. Four scientists would be working in the trenches: Louis Gebhardt at the University of Utah, Herbert Wenner from the University of Kansas, John Kessel at the University of Southern California, and Jonas Salk. Albert Sabin, David Bodian, and Thomas Francis agreed to oversee the project. These men constituted the Committee on Typing; this project represented the NFIP’s first attempt at directed group research.¹

Preparations for the typing project took a year, during which time Salk, anticipating March of Dimes funds, expanded his lab and hired staff. As he began to dismantle a conference room, a storeroom, a lounge, he showed consideration for inconvenienced hospital employees. Explaining his laboratory’s mission to be the prevention of polio, he made them feel they were playing a part in its defeat. The renovation almost completed, Salk thanked Dean McEllroy profusely, telling him the NFIP considered his lab the finest in the country for polio research, after which he asked for additional space to set up a hospital ward for baby chimpanzees. He thought the female dormitory for housekeepers and nurses’ aides ideal and included a sketch, saying he hoped McEllroy would agree to his request to help in “the earliest elimination of the problem of poliomyelitis as a dreaded disease.”² The dean secured another $20,000 from the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation. In the end, Salk’s laboratory space—originally forty square feet in the basement—totaled six thousand, spread over three floors of Municipal Hospital.

Salk hired Byron Bennett as his first research assistant.³ This forty-year-old, self-educated Texan, a former army officer who Salk insisted be addressed as Major Bennett, had been decorated for his work controlling typhus during the war. At Walter Reed Army Hospital, he had demonstrated skill in laboratory organization and field testing, making him well suited to be Salk’s chief technician. There was one drawback, however: Bennett drank heavily. Some days he came to work late, some days not at all. Instead of firing him, Salk considered his drinking a medical problem and retained him in his lab, where, as his secretary, Lorraine Friedman, observed, he was appreciated and understood.

Shortly thereafter, Salk hired a senior research associate, twenty-eight-year-old microbiologist Julius Youngner, who had worked on the Manhattan Project and at the National Cancer Institute. From the start, Friedman perceived a bit of reserve in their relationship as Youngner seemed to consider himself the superior scientist. Bacteriologist James Lewis brought experience from the drug-manufacturing world, where he had worked on vaccines. Adding four more research assistants, including Francis Yurochko, who managed the animal quarters, Salk had assembled quite a large team for a relatively young investigator. At this point, he still considered the typing project a means to support his influenza work.

In December of 1948, the Committee on Typing met at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where Sabin, Bodian, and Francis dictated how the typing project would be conducted. For years researchers across the country had isolated poliovirus strains from individuals, yet few attempts had been made to classify them into specific groups. Scientists at Johns Hopkins and Yale had determined that their strains fell into at least two distinct immunologic types, meaning they were so closely related that immunization against one strain provided protection against other similar strains. The Committee on Typing didn’t know how many strains had been collected in laboratories nationwide—maybe hundreds. They needed to test each one to see if it belonged to one of these two immunologic types.

To begin, the group selected two viruses known to be of different types—Brunhilde strain (Type 1) and Lansing strain (Type 2)—which they called “prototypes.” The Brunhilde strain, extracted from the stools of seven Baltimore patients, had been named for the chimpanzee in which it had been isolated. The Lansing strain had been obtained from a deceased polio victim’s spinal cord in Lansing, Michigan. The committee agreed that each investigator could choose his typing method: Morgan’s cross immunization or Sabin’s serum neutralization. Although he considered them equally good, Salk selected the latter. Using Sabin’s method, he would immunize monkeys with Brunhilde, the Type 1 virus, and after six weeks collect their serum, which contained antibodies against Type 1. Next he would combine this antiserum and the unknown virus and inject the mixture into the brains of uninfected monkeys. If the monkeys survived, the unknown virus had to be Type 1, as the antibodies for Type 1 had neutralized it. Should the monkeys become paralyzed, it meant that the unknown virus was not Type 1, and the experiment needed to be repeated with the Type 2 Lansing virus. If these monkeys survived, the unknown virus had to be Type 2, as the antibodies made against Type 2 had neutralized it. If these monkeys became paralyzed, Salk could conclude that the unknown virus must be of yet another type.

Salk began contacting polio investigators nationwide to obtain viral samples. Sabin sent him six strains from a 1947 Cincinnati outbreak and three from patients who had died in Akron, Ohio. Strains usually bore the names of the patient from whom they had been isolated or the city in which they had been found, such as “Cincinnati Glenn,” “Jacqueline Bean,” and “Fofovich Pool.” Soon polioviruses were traversing the country: “VIRUS ARRIVED PITTSBURGH TWA FLIGHT 370,” read one telegram; “VIRUS LEAVING LOS ANGELES AIR EXPRESS THIS EVENING,” read another.⁴ Before long, the group had collected 196 strains to type.

Working together, the four investigators developed a camaraderie. Whenever circumstances became tense, Salk’s bantering put people at ease. “I envy you for loafing on the job,” he wrote Louis Gebhardt, who was waiting for strains so he could begin. “I wish you would send to me in dry ice instructions as to how you do that.”⁵ Once Gebhardt complained that the container of virus Salk sent had been packaged improperly and arrived with no dry ice, ruining the entire batch. Besides that, the padlock on the container had been removed and replaced with a different one without a key. He maintained he had never had such difficulty with any other lab. Salk wrote back, “I thought that the very next step in the dealings between our laboratories should be the recall of ambassadors and the severance of all diplomatic relations.”⁶

In November of 1949, the Pitt team was ready to begin typing the strains they had received. Each week Salk posted assignments: Bennett—receive and catalogue stool and serum specimens from polio patients; Youngner—prepare viral pools for vaccination; Lewis—inoculate monkeys; all staff—rotate examining monkeys for paralysis; Lewis and Youngner—bleed paralyzed animals and conduct autopsies. Before the days of computers and electronic spreadsheets, Salk kept the data on index cards, handwritten in pencil.

Working with monkeys proved problematic; one always seemed to be suffering from vitamin deficiency or dysentery; some arrived infected with tuberculosis, others already dead. Animal caretakers were often scratched or bitten. The typing group needed monkeys in such quantities that the supplier couldn’t keep up, causing delays. To obviate these problems, the NFIP established its own monkey conditioning center at Okatie Farms, in Hardeeville, South Carolina. They imported rhesus monkeys from India and cynomolgus monkeys from the Philippines, treated their diseases, and sold them to the investigators. Once, when Weaver got notice of a pending ban on the exportation of rhesus monkeys, he chartered all available space on planes leaving India. Soon Salk’s staff was struggling to care for 415 monkeys.⁷

Initially, the four investigators found that all the poliovirus strains fell into one of the two known types. Salk considered this great news with regard to future vaccine preparation. Then John Kessel notified the group about the poliovirus recovered from the brain and spinal cord of L. J. Leon, an eleven-year-old Los Angeles boy who had succumbed to polio.⁸ His virus paralyzed monkeys immunized against both Brunhilde and Lansing viruses. Kessel concluded that this strain, which he called “Leon,” represented a third type. Now they would have to test all unknown strains against three prototype viruses, which would substantially increase the workload and number of monkeys. Salk’s stack of index cards grew.

As expected, the work proved tiresome. “It was scut work,” Tom Rivers maintained, “and, for a scientist, almost doing day labor work like digging a ditch, but these boys realized that it was a ditch that had to be dug.”⁹ If Salk had to dig a ditch, he wanted a better shovel to hasten the work. He turned to the controversial mineral oil adjuvant he had used to bolster the immune response to influenza virus. When he added mineral oil to poliovirus, he found that it amplified the immunizing effect of the virus, facilitating the typing. And mineral oil allowed him to induce antibody formation with only tiny amounts of virus, meaning that the supply of Lansing virus could be diluted one hundred fold. This had major implications for human vaccination.

Salk presented his findings at the January 1950 meeting of the Committee on Typing. “I believe that by a suitable combination of an initial subcutaneous injection with a small dose of … virus plus adjuvant,” he told the group, “it should be possible to immunize monkeys for your studies more efficiently and more effectively and with less virus in a shorter time.”¹⁰ The committee dismissed his idea; no one wanted to change the procedure. Salk proved his point when a physician from the Public Health Service called Weaver requesting urgent typing of several cases. Salk said he could get the answer more quickly by adding adjuvant, and Weaver gave him permission. Unbeknownst to Weaver, Salk had been adding mineral oil for some time. Soon Gebhardt wrote asking for details about the adjuvant, then Kessel, then Wenner. Before long, the committee agreed to add mineral oil adjuvant to the typing process. A year later, Weaver wrote to Salk that he had read with great interest his article “The Use of Adjuvants to Facilitate Studies on the Immunologic Classification of Poliomyelitis Virus.”¹¹ “I might parenthetically add,” he admitted, “that after reading this article, I am pleased to forgive you for all your past and even a percentage of your future sins.”¹²

At the same committee meeting, Salk offered a more economical method for typing. Currently they used the prototype strain for protection before infecting monkeys with the unknown strain. He suggested they consider the reverse system: if they immunized monkeys with the unknown strain, then tested their antisera, which contained antibodies, against the known prototype, it eliminated several steps, saving weeks of work. According to Tom Rivers, “If you had a thin skin, it was not a good idea to attend these conferences because no one was ever spared. Hell, if you presented a paper or got up to talk, you had to be prepared to be ripped apart. It didn’t matter who you were.”¹³ Nonetheless, Salk proposed his new typing method: Didn’t it make more sense to test the ability of an unknown virus to stimulate antibody formation? “Now, Dr. Salk,” Sabin replied, “you should know better than to ask a question like that.”¹⁴ In a deferential manner, Salk persisted, explaining that he had calculated it required fewer than fifteen monkeys to type each strain compared with forty required by the current technique. After no debate, the group voted to continue the project as planned. “It was like being kicked in the teeth,” Salk recalled. “I could feel the resistance and the hostility and the disapproval. I never attended a single one of those meetings afterward without that same feeling.”¹⁵

Salk began to construct a protective shield. He didn’t give up on his new typing method and wrote Weaver repeatedly, clarifying why he considered this approach better. Weaver finally relented and told Salk he could attempt to type several strains with his new method; the three other scientists would stay the course. After Salk proceeded to analyze seventy-four strains typed by them, getting the same results in record time, the group agreed to try his technique.

When Harry Weaver first met Salk, the young man’s eagerness and ingenuousness had impressed him. He behaved differently from most investigators the Foundation supported—ivory-tower scientists who accepted its money and then disappeared to do their own work, ignoring requests from Weaver. Salk worked tirelessly yet never forgot his manners or patronized those beneath him. He treated an NFIP secretary or telephone operator with the same regard as he did a distinguished researcher. And he had an endearing quality lacking in most scientists. He continued his habit of writing thank-you notes. Partway through the typing project, he wrote Weaver, “Working with you has been a fine experience, and I look forward to an equally satisfying and productive period ahead.”¹⁶ Although he was ready to please, Salk also had a tendency to ignore protocol. Weaver had to remind him, like a tardy schoolboy, when grant applications or progress reports were overdue. Salk apologized, although he still attempted to sidestep the rules and regulations. For a while, Weaver held the reins tight. When Salk applied for funds to test gamma globulin to prevent polio, Weaver replied that he must concentrate on the typing project. Salk thanked him, expressed concern about Weaver’s recent cold, and mentioned in passing that he planned to try a new tissue culture technique for growing virus.

However exasperating Salk could sometimes be, Weaver could always count on him. He often sent Salk extra specimens to type, such as serum from a surgeon’s wife who had contracted polio or samples from a New Jersey hospital where a number of polio deaths had just been reported. If the NFIP wanted one of their grantees to host a foreign scientist in their lab, they asked Salk. When Salk spoke at a fundraiser in Washington, DC, Weaver discovered the young investigator’s skill at communicating with the public and his impressive ability to help laymen understand the NFIP’s work. Conversant in the arts and current events, he easily mingled with guests, his remarks sprinkled with humor. His earnestness, coupled with his boyishness, charmed donors.

The more Salk did, the more Weaver called upon him. When Good Housekeeping was preparing an article on the NFIP’s activities, he asked Salk to speak with the writer. Before long a telegram arrived: “Would it be possible for National Foundation photographer to spend day with you taking background pictures on research.”¹⁷ Although seven scientists participated in the typing project, it was Salk whom Weaver asked to talk on Adventures in Science on CBS radio. In short, Salk was becoming the poster scientist for the March of Dimes. He was a magnet for the press. When Sarah Mellon Scaife of the Scaife Foundation wanted to donate one of Salk’s monkeys to the zoo, Salk himself transported little Frances from his laboratory to its new home. A Pittsburgh paper ran a picture of Frances, which helped dispel concerns about use of laboratory animals for research. Such publicity may have put him in good stead with the NFIP, but it was eroding the legitimacy he was striving to build within the scientific community.

For now, however, Salk held one of the biggest caches of polioviruses, which made him indispensable. He received numerous requests for samples, and he was generous. “As possessor of the largest store of anti-polio sera on this globe,” wrote Joseph Melnick of Yale, “will you be able to furnish us with some anti-Brunhilde and anti-Leon sera?”¹⁸ Pierre Lépine of the Pasteur Institute asked, “Could you bring to New York and give me the three monkey polio strains?”¹⁹ What had started as a mundane task had thrust Salk into the center of the polio research world. While providing samples, he developed a cordial correspondence with several esteemed scientists, such as Harvard’s John Enders, moving himself closer to the collegiality he sought. When Enders wrote to Salk, “Here I am again begging serum,” Salk replied, “Dear John, It is a distinct pleasure to be able to be helpful.”²⁰ A few months later, Salk received a note from Enders, vacationing at Camp Harmony Angling Club in New Brunswick, thanking him for sending a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. “I shall always carefully preserve it,” Enders wrote. “The sentiment expressed in it I value deeply although I know I am quite unworthy of it.”²¹

Salk also tried to establish a friendship with Albert Sabin. Early on, Sabin took a gracious stance, acting a bit like a mentor. He signed letters to Salk, “with all good wishes and kindest personal regards.”²² After a visit to Cincinnati, Salk thanked him for his kind hospitality at his home and laboratory. Sabin sent him a birth announcement for his second daughter, to which Salk replied, “I shall look forward to hearing how the siblings are doing. ‘Siblings’ is a technical word derived from the term sibling-rivalry about which you will no doubt gain first-hand experience.”²³ When Salk hosted a meeting for the Committee on Typing in Pittsburgh, Sabin congratulated him on the fine work he was doing. He invited Salk to an informal conference on diagnostic tests for polio where, he said, selected scientists would convene in a leisurely atmosphere, each bringing his “Pandora’s box of unpublished observations, his years of experience … as well as his critical mind.”²⁴ At meetings, the two often stayed up talking until after midnight.²⁵ Sabin appeared to be opening the door into the polio field’s inner sanctum. Yet having once felt Sabin’s sting, Salk accepted these offerings of friendship with caution.

Meanwhile, Salk knew that determining the number of poliovirus types was only one step toward making a vaccine. In order to supply large quantities of poliovirus for vaccine production, scientists needed to be able to propagate virus in a test tube, not just in animals. Viruses can’t survive in culture media alone, however; they must have living cells to support their replication. In 1949, John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins had made a major leap in the field when they succeeded in growing poliovirus in cultures from human embryonic tissue. The feat later earned the three a Nobel Prize.

Salk immediately perceived the implications of their accomplishment. He told Weaver he would like to try the tissue culture technique. Weaver replied he could contact Enders if he wanted, but the NFIP would not fund a tissue culture lab at Pitt. Not dissuaded, Salk wrote to Enders. After congratulating him, he said that Weaver thought he might be willing to send him some tissue culture material to study. “I do not want to intrude on anything you yourself might be doing,” he wrote. “I would like to offer, however, whatever help we can provide in determining its … immunizing capacity in monkeys.”²⁶ Should this interest Enders, he would be happy to plan a joint study. Enders replied he was studying the immunizing effect in their lab already and preferred to have these results in hand before including others. Five months later, when Enders asked for some Leon virus, Salk had an opening. He sent the samples with a note saying he had been thinking of growing virus by Enders’s technique and asked again if he might impose upon him for some tissue culture. Enders could not refuse; this eager young scientist who had befriended him would not be deterred. Besides, Enders, a basic research scientist, had no interest in making a vaccine. “I hope something will bring you to Boston during the coming winter,” he replied, “as it would be nice to have a chance to sit down and have a talk.”²⁷

Resolute in his determination to master Enders’s tissue culture technique, which he considered the next step in vaccine preparation, Salk appealed to Dean McEllroy for funds, and once again the dean came through with a $7,500 grant from the Spange Foundation. Salk hired a young zoologist, Elsie Ward, who became skilled at tissue culture techniques. A no-nonsense woman with short-chopped hair, Ward had a tireless work ethic and unflagging devotion. Once Weaver realized Salk was setting up a tissue culture lab, and that the Spange Foundation would get the credit, he acquiesced and funded it.

Salk found Enders’s technique arduous and set out to simplify the procedure. First, Ward minced monkey testes or kidneys in a Waring blender and cultured the tiny pieces of tissue in a special mixture of nutrients, mixture 199, so called because it had taken Canadian researchers 199 attempts to perfect the combination of sixty-eight ingredients. After several days, long strands of cellular growth could be seen under the microscope. Now Salk had to introduce the poliovirus, which was no easy task. These viruses, which could fell the strongest man, proved impossible to maintain outside a living organism. Instead of growing them in a flask as Enders did, Salk put the tissue culture in test tubes, added poliovirus, and rolled the tubes continually to disperse virus among the cells. When the virus multiplied and infected the cells, their destruction could be detected under the microscope.²⁸ “There was so much excitement,” Ward recalled. “It was such pure joy to come to work in the morning. …  To look into the microscope and see what we saw was a great thrill. Dr. Salk was in the lab morning, afternoon, and night. He couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen.”²⁹

Leaders in the field began to take note. “I congratulate you on the fine job that you have managed to do in such a short time,” Enders wrote.³⁰ “Your manuscript has proved considerable help in getting started in the tissue culture work for which we are all so grateful,” wrote Bodian.³¹ Not everyone was as complimentary. Salk’s research assistant Ethel Bailey recalled a visit from Sabin. When she showed him the tissue cultures, he said, “Harrumph, you won’t be doing that much longer,” assuming Salk’s technique would never work.³²

The NFIP-directed typing project had continued throughout this time, and in 1951 the four investigators completed their work. They found that all the polioviruses fell into three distinct types. Of 196 strains tested, 161 proved to be Type 1, twenty Type 2, and fifteen Type 3.³³ The typing project had required twenty thousand monkeys and cost the Foundation $1.3 million. “I know of no single problem in all of the medical sciences that was more uninteresting to solve,” Weaver told the board of trustees. “The solution to this problem necessitated the monotonous repetition of exactly the same technical procedures on virus after virus, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year for three solid years. The number of monkeys utilized in this effort is legion. The physical effort expended by the investigators to cope with the struggles, dodges, and antics of this hoard of primates is almost beyond comprehension.”³⁴

Having spearheaded the project, Salk joined Sabin and Bodian in preparing a series of papers for publication. In the process, several of the traits that would dog him throughout his career became apparent—his unwillingness to conform to the conventional format for scientific manuscripts, his propensity for excessive wordiness, and his need to revise repeatedly, bordering on nitpicking. This should have been Salk’s chance to learn how to write clear, concise scientific papers from two of the best. Instead, he told Bodian, “I’m still the non-conformist that I was before we became involved in the cooperative.”³⁵ He did follow Bodian’s suggestion regarding authorship. Recalling how disappointed he had been when Francis put himself as first author on papers for which he had done most of the work, Salk added Youngner, Lewis, Bennett, and Ward as coauthors with his own name somewhere in the mix. Bodian told Salk he should be first author on his papers, saying, “You are leaning over backward too far.”³⁶ Salk took his advice, only to be accused later of failing to credit the contributions of others.

Salk was selected to present the results of the typing project in September 1951 at the Second International Poliomyelitis Conference in Copenhagen, marking his debut in the international scientific community. Opened in the presence of the queen of Denmark, the conference was attended by six hundred delegates representing thirty-seven countries.³⁷ Salk’s talk generated a great deal of attention. Identification of the three distinct types of poliovirus paved the way for a vaccine. As well, the typing project represented a milestone in scientific research: a group of investigators in four separate laboratories had collaborated on the project. And it signified a new approach—directed research, whereby a granting agency engaged academic scientists to perform a specific task. “It was a major triumph for the NFIP,” wrote Yale virologist John Paul, “to have engineered this cooperative endeavor among a highly individualistic group of research workers, some of whom had hitherto no doubt considered their laboratories to be sacrosanct.”³⁸

Harry Weaver booked Salk to return home aboard the Queen Mary. Having traveled to Copenhagen on the Stockholm, the smallest North American passenger ship, he now boarded one of the world’s grandest ocean liners, unaware that it would provide the backdrop for a significant turning point in his life. Christened in 1934, the Queen Mary spanned a thousand feet with twelve decks, holding two thousand passengers as well as a thousand officers and crew. Amenities included two indoor swimming pools, paddle tennis courts, libraries, the Observation Bar and Art Deco Lounge, and kennels. Paneled staterooms with thick carpets and carved furniture bespoke luxury; the Grand Salon, a three-story, columned dining room for the first class, underscored its magnificence.³⁹

On board with Salk during the four-day transatlantic crossing was Basil O’Connor.⁴⁰ Although they had yet to meet formally, each had undoubtedly sized up the other. Salk admired O’Connor—the son of a tinsmith who had become a successful Wall Street lawyer, who dressed impeccably in tailored pinstriped suits with a white carnation on his lapel. Doubtless Salk had heard from those who worked for O’Connor that he was a bold, blunt, domineering boss who met conflict head-on and did not tolerate buck passers, vacillators, or those who refused to follow orders. And he presented a paradox: he enjoyed a moneyed lifestyle yet took no salary from the March of Dimes. Hell-bent on triumphing over poliomyelitis, he approached it like a complex legal case. “He was fascinating,” Salk recalled of his first impressions of O’Connor. “He was different from anybody else in the crowd. He was very much in command of the situation. … He had it within his power to cause almost anything to happen.”⁴¹

In Salk, O’Connor saw a nice young man, anxious to please, whom Weaver had plucked from the influenza world to do the Foundation’s bidding. And he had done it well. At Typing Committee meetings, O’Connor must have observed how Salk seemed to shy away from conflict. He seldom spoke, except to suggest a novel approach, and he ostensibly deferred to his elders, especially Sabin, when remonstrated. With quiet resolve, however, he maneuvered around barriers. If Weaver or the committee dismissed one of his proposals outright, he did not press his point publicly but waited for the opportunity to demonstrate its validity, letting his results speak for themselves. O’Connor recognized that Salk was not a conventional scientist; he moved quickly, found shortcuts, and did not adhere to the unwritten rules of academic research. He had made a good showing in Copenhagen, enhancing the NFIP’s credibility in the scientific community. Added to that, he appeared well groomed for a researcher and met the public with sincerity and humility. It didn’t take O’Connor long to realize how perfect this combination of attributes would be for the March of Dimes’ purposes.

Weaver informed O’Connor that two of the NFIP-supported scientists, Enders and Salk, were on board the ship and suggested they join him for dinner. Salk was seated next to O’Connor’s eldest daughter, Bettyann Culver, a courageous young woman who not quite a year earlier had called her father and told him, “Daddy, I’ve got some of your polio.”⁴² Her entire left side was paralyzed. After lengthy rehabilitation at Warm Springs, away from her family, she had recovered, left only with weak abdominal muscles. Her father had invited her along for relaxation. Watching Salk speak to his daughter with kindness and concern must have touched O’Connor. Perhaps that was when he realized that Salk, whose behavior some construed as obsequious, was indeed ingenuous; and when Salk realized that, far from being dispassionate, O’Connor had a tender side, revealed in his fondness for his daughter.

Salk later recounted the beginning of his relationship with O’Connor: “I stood immersed waist deep in a swimming pool aboard the Queen Mary having a philosophical conversation with Basil O’Connor whom I had just met. … He made me feel as if I could see more broadly, more clearly, and more deeply than I could when alone or with others. … I felt I had found a kindred soul.”⁴³ Almost sixty, O’Connor viewed the world with hard-boiled realism; at thirty-nine, Salk still embodied youthful idealism. Yet both aspired to improve the well-being of mankind—O’Connor in a practical, calculated way, Salk as an almost mystical calling. And both men were prepared to take great risks to achieve their goal—O’Connor as commanding general of the March of Dimes, Salk behind closed doors. Years later, O’Connor recalled his first impressions of Salk: “Jonas is in touch with the world. I don’t mean that he’s worldly. He’s not. In some ways he reminds you of a girl who’s never been in a bar before. But he is a human scientist. … He sees beyond the microscope. … These are the reasons, along with his friendly, modest ways and his unmistakable sense of honor and rectitude, that I liked Jonas. Before that ship landed I knew that he was a young man to keep an eye on.”⁴⁴

That day a friendship began that would link the two men for life. Some thought that in Salk, O’Connor had found the son he never had, but that seems oversimplified. Some considered O’Connor to be Salk’s patron, though Salk never enjoyed the freedom of creativity such an arrangement implies. Others characterized their alliance as reciprocal manipulation by two opportunists. Salk had found a means to obtain research funding; O’Connor had spotted a good-will ambassador to enhance the March of Dimes’ popularity. Self-interest certainly played a part, but that could not have sustained the depth of their friendship, which lasted for twenty years. Whatever the underlying attraction—perhaps simply a mutual admiration—a courtship had begun. Over the next two decades, Salk and O’Connor would help each other realize their dreams and sustain each other through their darkest hours.

Salk left for Copenhagen a young virologist from a mediocre medical school. He returned a rising star in the field. He had stood on the edge of polio’s scientific inner circle, and on the trip home aboard the Queen Mary, he formed a bond with the power broker for polio research. Before long, those vying for NFIP funds considered Salk “the chosen.”⁴⁵

While Salk was participating in the typing project, he continued his influenza research in his lab and at Fort Dix, still hoping to make a universal vaccine. Half his correspondence related to influenza, half to polio. “I’ve been on the go almost continuously for the past six weeks,” he wrote a colleague in early 1952.⁴⁶ He began to relinquish teaching obligations; his seat at medical school meetings remained empty; memos began, “I’m sorry but …” He came home long after the boys had gone to bed. Trying to spend time with his family, he rented Hatch Cottage at Oberlin Beach, where thirteen bungalows sat perched on the cliffs above Lake Erie. The only telephone hung on a pole several cottages away. Donna likely thought she and the boys would have a chance to reclaim Jonas’s attention. While they went to the beach, however, he stood at the telephone pole talking.⁴⁷ Although Peter saw his father occasionally play Jotto or Scrabble with their neighbor, Bob Tufts, Adlai Stevenson’s speech writer, he spent most of his time lying in a hammock, working.

Back home in Pittsburgh, Donna and Jonas did not attend the theater or symphony or movies. Total responsibility for the household fell to Donna. When she wasn’t tending to her sons, she read novels or played the piano. She often took the boys to Uncle Herman and Aunt Sylvia’s nearby farm, where they romped with their two cousins among the horses, dogs, and assorted animals. At times Salk joined them, although he always seemed preoccupied. Sylvia recalled once when he had asked about her. As she began to talk, his attention seemed to be drifting. “Then I went to the doctor,” Sylvia said, testing him, “and the doctor told me that I have only six months to live.”⁴⁸ Her brother-in-law continued to smile and nod.

Salk needed to find more time. Tired of losing an hour or more each day commuting, he persuaded Donna to give up their country home in Wexford and move into a three-story brick house with pillars on Squirrel Hill, closer to the hospital. That didn’t help, however; he still felt overwhelmed. Finally Salk conceded: his workload was simply too great. He could no longer fight on two fronts, conducting research on both polio and influenza. “It has been difficult for me to accept the obvious fact that I must do something about lessening … the many responsibilities I have,” he wrote to Thomas Francis in early 1954. “I have come to the conclusion that it would be best to take a leave from the influenza program. It has been a difficult decision but one that I know you will understand.”⁴⁹ Twenty-two years would pass before Salk returned to influenza, a disease he believed he could prevent but for which he had run out of time.

Meanwhile, Salk turned his full attention to polio. Its specter loomed every summer, and Salk didn’t want to stand in line behind the cadre of senior scientists, low on the pecking order, waiting to help develop a vaccine on their timeline. He had told Weaver in 1948 that he planned to have a vaccine in five years. Now that he had just jumped two major hurdles, identifying the three types of poliovirus and mastering viral growth in tissue culture, Salk thought he could make that target. “There was nobody like him in those days,” Weaver told historian Richard Carter. “His approach was entirely different from that which had dominated the field… . He thought big… . He was out of phase with the tradition of narrowing research down to one or two details, making progress inch by inch. He wanted to leap, not crawl. His willingness to shoot the works was made to order for us.”⁵⁰