Wall Street Wants the Best Patents, Not the Best Drugs

It’s probably unfair to start a column about the new drugs that are curing Hepatitis C by referencing Jonas Salk and the discovery of the polio vaccine, but I’m going to do it anyway. It’s worth remembering what the world used to look like as we contemplate what it looks like now.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there was nothing that scared American parents more than polio, a disease that (a) caused partial paralysis, (b) was easily transmitted, and (c) primarily affected children. Salk, who had worked on flu vaccines during World War II, joined the University of Pittsburgh in 1947 and soon began working on a possible polio vaccine. In 1953, he announced — on a national radio broadcast, no less — that he had developed a vaccine that prevented the disease; two years later, once its efficacy had been proved, the country undertook a national inoculation program, paid for by the federal government.