A Vaccine From A Different Time
It is widely believed that Dr. Jonas Salk essentially gave away the Polio vaccine he discovered due to his moral stance of not profiteering off the suffering of children with the disability. Unfortunately, this popular myth is far from the whole truth.
In fact, his decision was largely a result of public pressure and legal obstacles, which essentially made it very difficult for Salk to profit off this discovery. In the pre-vaccine era, approx. 13,000-20,000 children were paralyzed by Polio each year. Due to the scale of this