If I could have 24 hours to spend talking with people from Americas past two of those people would be Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. These two men were responsible for developing vaccines that literally eradicated the threat of polio in the United States and around the world.
Their work made the threat of childhood polio a distant memory. That was an accomplishment they deserve to be lauded for. More over they did it without consideration for economic gain. The greed motivation wasn’t there. Had either man choose to patent their discovery they were likely to have gained billions. Neither of them did it. They were more concerned with eradicating this dreaded affliction than they were with personal gain.
There are two questions that I would pose to them, the first is why didn’t they exploit the profit opportunity and the second would be if they had it to do all over again would they have done the same thing. Both of these men developed their polio therapies in the first half of the fifties. Their discoveries took place during the early days of the rise of big pharma. What was it that made them put human welfare before individual profit? In this time of a global pandemic where big pharma is raking in billions I would love to have that 30 minute conversation.
THINK!!
EYES WIDE OPEN!!!