It was like a miracle. An answer to the worry of most parents. No child was left behind because they were poor.
I’m sure there were the crackpots out there denouncing science and another immunization. That “government” was taking away the free choice of parents to risk their kid getting polio. That life and illness were in “god’s” hands and not those of evil scientists. Others denouncing the squandering of public dollars on the children of poor people. But in the pre-Faux News era, those voices weren’t broadcast 24/7. People that could have fallen under the spell of such voices were protected from their own irrational thoughts and fears.
Thus, we lined up at schools. To get that not so painless shot. The prick that would prevent an illness that could kill or cripple us.
Maybe the science would have evolved more quickly if government funding had been available. But that was a no-go for FDR because the rightwing jerkwads of his day would have screamed and hollered that it was a special interest of the President’s. So, we Marched for Dimes. And those dimes turned into vaccines for all that were administered by public health employees, agencies, and volunteers. (There were glitches — there always are; but they don’t change the meta-narrative.)
Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other medical researchers didn’t become gazillionaires from their medical breakthroughs or live out the remainders of their years in mansions managing their money portfolios. They continued to work as scientists. To make the world a safer place:
On April 12, 1955, Edward R. Murrow asked Jonas Salk who owned the patent to the polio vaccine. “Well, the people, I would say,” Salk responded. “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
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As I could have been one of those dead or crippled kids in the next polio outbreak or epidemic, the Salk vaccine came just in time for me and other Boomers. Science inspired a generation of people that wanted to do good or be miracle workers. Much of it paid for by public dollars as was the internet.
Public purpose. Public support. Not to line the pockets of “app” derivative developers, venture capitalists (looking for the newest buggy whip), hedge funds killing jobs here to create killing jobs elsewhere, banksters preying on the poorest and most vulnerable, and vice peddlers. How do we get enough of that back and quickly enough before we destroy the world through unending wars and environmental destruction?
