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The Story of Jonas Salk and The Polio Vaccine

By Health, History, InspirationNo Comments
Jonas Salk, Developer of the Polio Vaccine.

Polio is a disease were symptoms can include sore throats, raised body temperature, headaches, neck stiffness, abdominal pain, permanent paralysis and in extreme cases can lead to death. It can affect anyone of any age.

Polio has largely been eradicated across the world thanks to the polio vaccine. The World Health Organization estimates a 99% drop in the rates of polio infection since the 1980s.

The man responsible for development of the polio vaccine was Jonas Salk (photo left). This is his story.

Jonas Salk started his work on the polio vaccine in 1948 in America. It would take Salk and his team 7 years of hard work before they would see success.

The common thinking in the Scientific community was to use a live strain of the polio virus to develop a vaccine, but Salk had a different idea. He decided to use a inactive and weakened version of the polio virus, convinced that it was not only safer, but more likely to support the body to develop an immunity to the polio virus.

In 1955, after successful trials in both animals and children, Salk announced to the world that he had developed a vaccine for polio.

What is inspirational about this man, is not just that he developed the polio vaccine. But that he chose not to patent it. This meant that anyone could reproduce the polio vaccine without any payment to Salk.

At the time (and still to this day) America has an corporate obsession with patenting intellectual property, so that individuals can make money from their intellectual property. If Salk had patented his polio vaccine, it would have made him several billionaire dollars.

But Salk chose not to patent the polio vaccine. Instead, Salk wanted his vaccine spread as widely as possible, for the benefit of all people. Salk went against the capitalist culture of his country and focused on maximising the good the vaccine could do for humanity. It is for this reason, that I find this man truly inspirational.

Salk became a household name, but this was not something he wanted or welcomed. Salk stated in an interview in 1980:

It’s as if I’ve been a public property ever since, having to respond to external, as well as internal, impulses. … It’s brought me enormous gratification, opened many opportunities, but at the same time placed many burdens on me. It altered my career, my relationships with colleagues; I am a public figure, no longer one of them.

After the success of the polio vaccine Salk went back to work in his virology lab. Salk later worked on a vaccine for the HIV/AIDS virus, but was sadly unsuccessful in this endeavour.

I hope you enjoyed reading this inspirational story.

Blog soon,

Antony

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Tuesday 5 August 2025

Book Review: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

By Amazon, Books & Authors, ReviewsNo Comments
a-million-little-pieces-james-frey-book-cover A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is addictive like crack cocaine. Once you pick it up and start reading, you’ll find it near impossible to put back down.

From the cover:

Aged just twenty-three, James Frey had destroyed his body and his mind almost beyond repair. When he enters a rehabilitation centre to try to reclaim his life, he has to fight to determine what future, if any, he has. His lack of self-pity, cynicism and piety gives him an unflinching honesty – a fearless candour that is at once charming and appalling, searing and darkly funny.

(From: Frey, 2004)

Frey takes the reader on his rollercoaster of a journey to recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. It starts with him waking up on a plane with no memory of how he got there, what happened to his face or where he’s going.

A Million Little Pieces

is set during Frey’s stay in rehab; is well paced and has plenty of tension, conflict and resolution. Both internally and externally. He recalls memories of his dysfunctional and chaotic alcohol and drug using past.

Stylistically A Million Little Pieces lacked speech marks, but this was possibly deliberate. Not having speech marks was a noticeable stylistic change to the normal layout of a book. Frey was probably using this to subtly hint that his story wasn’t like the story of most people. Frey’s lack of dialogue tags was generally acceptable, but on the odd occasion where Frey had written a scene with a group of people, it did get difficult to establish who had said what.

Towards the end of A Million Little Pieces it began to feel fictional. As I was coming to the end of the book and had enjoyed reading it, I decided to look into other books that Frey had written.

After doing a Google Search, I discovered the story of A Million Little Pieces and understood why it felt fictional – because parts of it were.

A Million Little Pieces was commercially hugely successful both in the US and internationally after being featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. But then The Smoking Gun revealed in an article titled ‘A Million Little Lies’ that some of Frey’s claims around his criminal past didn’t match up with court records.

Oprah had to respond to these revelations and interviewed Frey on a few occasions. The most recent, a few years after A Million Little Pieces was exposed as being in part fictional is available to watch below:

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I can understand while some people felt lied to, as A Million Little Pieces was promoted and marketed as a memoir.

But I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised that some of A Million Little Pieces was fact and some was fiction. Because that’s how it read. Who wouldn’t change some of their past if they had the chance? Don’t we all do that all the time? Change things to make them sound better or worse than they actually are with the aim of making our stories more interesting to our friends, family, co-workers, etc. Can we really blame Frey for doing the same for the reader?

Regardless A Million Little Pieces is still a great read. Worth reading if you are interested in addiction, crime, alcohol, drugs, rehab and recovery. Just hold on is a phrase often repeated in the book and was a phrase that I adopted when I was suffering from severe clinical depression.

My Friend Leonard is the follow up book and picks up where A Million Little Pieces ended. I’m currently reading My Friend Leonard and enjoying it just as much as I did A Million Little Pieces.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is available to buy on Amazon.

Review soon,

Antony

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Thursday 11 June 2015

Book Review: Henry Darger, Throw Away Boy by Jim Elledge

By Amazon, Books & Authors, History, ReviewsNo Comments
henry-darger-throwaway-boy-jim-elledge-cover I’m going to admit that I’d never heard of Henry Darger before I read Henry Darger, Throw Away Boy.

Henry Darger (1904-1973) was an Chicago-based artist, who was completely unknown in his lifetime. He created pieces of art that depicted children. In some of the art children were innocently enjoying life and in others they were being horrifically tortured. Darger also completed two fantasy manuscripts entitled The Realms and Crazy House. Many critics dubbed Darger as a mentally unstable individual who may have thought about harming children.

But as Jim Elledge uncovers in Henry Darger, Throw Away Boy that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Elledge has spent a decade researching and writing this book which gives a comprehensive insight to the life of Darger. It is well researched, which is indicated by the extensive bibliography and notes sections.

The book starts by describing the poverty, dangerous street life and Darger’s lack of supportive loving parents. Darger’s mother died in childbirth and his father was an alcoholic. It is suspected that Darger was sexually abused on a number of occasions throughout his childhood. This commonplace abuse, did make uncomfortable reading at times. His behaviour, even as a young child was feral which is understandable given the emotional trauma he experienced. His bad behaviour led to his father putting him in a religious mission and later an asylum institution.

Darger escaped the institution and became a Janitor in a hospital. He began to create his art and write his manuscripts, as a way to fictionalise his traumatic childhood experiences. In his manuscripts he wrote about a number of secret societies, all that have one mission: to protect children. He fell in love with a man (Whillie) and continued to work tirelessly on his art over the decades that followed. But after some early criticism, he didn’t feel able to share his work with the world. It wasn’t until after his death that his landlord discovered the work.

Essentially Elledge tells the story of a gay man filled with fear and shame because of societies attitudes towards children, child abuse and gay people. Glossy pages show some of Darger’s work, but more would have been welcome.

Elledge brings Darger’s story to life through his engaging writing style. If you’re into gay art – in all it’s forms, you’ll love Henry Darger, Throw Away Boy which is available to buy on Amazon.

Review soon,

Antony

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Saturday 22 February 2014

A Touching Story: “Oh sweet Lorraine” by Fred Stobaugh

By Music & RadioNo Comments

Green Show Studio (in USA) ran an online competition for singers and songwriters to submit their music videos. But when they got a letter from Fred Stobaugh, a 96-year-old man who’d written a song about his recently deceased wife, they had to do something with it.

Here’s a touching video that tells the story:

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They had Fred’s song professionally recorded (both music and lyrics) and released it on iTunes. A lovely story.

Take care,

Antony

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Sunday 1 September 2013
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