John Callaway Interviews; Dr. Jonas Salk

<v John Callaway>Flying. Man's quest for dominion over air dates from antiquity. <v John Callaway>When myth has it that Icarus tried to fly on wings of wax. <v John Callaway>In the 20th century, flying is a reality. <v John Callaway>And here, from the tip of a bluff in La Jolla, California, venturesome souls leap <v John Callaway>to test the air currents just as those who came here in earlier times explored <v John Callaway>the frontiers of land. <v John Callaway>Meanwhile, over in those stately towers, a modern pioneer is embarked <v John Callaway>on new quests. His vehicle, scientific research, his goals <v John Callaway>nothing less than to find the biological key to disease and to plumb the depths of the <v John Callaway>relationship between nature and man. <v Music>[intro music]. <v Announcer>John Callaway interviews Dr. Jonas Salk. <v John Callaway>Jonas Salk, born in 1914 to a New York clothing manufacturer and his wife, <v John Callaway>graduated high school at 16, college at 19, medical school at 24. <v John Callaway>During the 1940s, he specialized in research on viruses and immunology,

<v John Callaway>gradually moving in on a disease which was to make his name a household word. <v John Callaway>Polio, the crippling killing illness which had swept through the United States for years <v John Callaway>in terrifying summer epidemics. <v John Callaway>Jonas Salk led the team, which in 1953 announced it had developed an effective vaccine <v John Callaway>for polio. In the years that followed, while the vaccine was being tested and distributed <v John Callaway>to a clamorous public, the very private Dr. Salk was forced to live <v John Callaway>in the glare of publicity. <v John Callaway>He was lionized by the public, practically deified by the press, and yet was <v John Callaway>criticized as a publicity seeker by other scientists. <v John Callaway>But the vaccine worked. The clamor died down. <v John Callaway>And with the spotlight now dimmed, Jonas Salk used the prestige and financial backing <v John Callaway>he gained from the polio victory to pursue another dream, to set up an interdisciplinary <v John Callaway>research institute. He chose a spot which was, as he put it, at the juncture of the land, <v John Callaway>sea and sky, the Pacific Coast land at Jolla, California. <v John Callaway>But while others at the institute pursue keys to alcoholism, cancer, multiple sclerosis

<v John Callaway>and other mysteries, Jonas Salk spends fewer and fewer hours in the laboratory. <v John Callaway>He has turned instead to thinking and writing about the metaphysical significance of <v John Callaway>scientific discovery. <v John Callaway>And this suggests an irony that the man whose name today is practically synonymous <v John Callaway>with medical research may very well be remembered by future generations <v John Callaway>as a philosopher. <v John Callaway>Dr. Salk, when did you begin to turn from the <v John Callaway>study in pursuit of natural sciences to the study of man? <v John Callaway>How did that work? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, I probably was thinking those thoughts long before I <v Dr. Jonas Salk>thought of science or thought of medicine. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>As a matter of fact, all through elementary school <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and high school and right up to the time at college, I had intended to study law. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Then, for a variety of reasons, my thoughts shifted, my interests

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>shifted. And I sometimes think that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I shifted from an interest in the study of laws or rules <v Dr. Jonas Salk>created by man to the laws of nature. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It's quite natural for me to think about man, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to think about nature from which man has arisen, from which man arose <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in the course of evolution. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And so to me, all this is one. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It's, it's all of a piece. <v John Callaway>But was there a point in your life when you began to to emerge <v John Callaway>out of the very specific kind of science that you were doing? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. <v John Callaway>And come back to this more philosophical approach? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I think so. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I would associate that with the experiences <v Dr. Jonas Salk>arising out of the work with polio vaccine and the interaction <v Dr. Jonas Salk>between science and society at that time, interactions with my colleagues.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>So I began to become interested in, I think it was mind systems, human <v Dr. Jonas Salk>systems that began being intensely interested <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in creativity and human creativity. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And in fact, I think that the institute is an expression <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of that interest and is a manifestation of the way in which <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I reacted to the human impact, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the impact upon me of the experience that was associated with <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the work on polio. <v John Callaway>Because that interaction as it actually happened wasn't ideal, <v John Callaway>was it? <v John Callaway>That is when you were dealing with the communication, for example. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. <v John Callaway>Of what was going on with polio vaccine to a larger audience and at the same time trying <v John Callaway>to deal with science. <v John Callaway>Wasn't there, wasn't there a problem in that process? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There was an enormous problem.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>See, I was dealing with problems in science problems <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in medicine and that a situation <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in which the public population was wracked with fear, fear <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of this disease which visited every year and brought terror <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to people. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And even now, when people meet me and want to express <v Dr. Jonas Salk>some personal sentiments about that work, that event, it <v Dr. Jonas Salk>is always that it was the lifting of the fear <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that they appreciate so. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You're probably aware of the problems that I felt that I had with with journalists <v Dr. Jonas Salk>who constantly want to be present, be looking over my shoulder almost <v Dr. Jonas Salk>as if they want to be part of the process and they were. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There's a great deal of differences of opinion among colleagues. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There were the pressures of those who were interested in seeing the problem solved.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>Those who were interested in promoting its solution. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Those who are interested in seeing the solution and having the benefits of the solution. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And as I look back now, that was <v Dr. Jonas Salk>a very intense, very profound human experience. <v John Callaway>And it was perfectly symptomatic of the clash between <v John Callaway>the quick fix mentality, either of journalism or of those of us who <v John Callaway>were citizens who have problems we want solved and those of you who have to deal with <v John Callaway>processes. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That's right. <v John Callaway>And therefore, it seems to me the work you've done since in asking us to rearrange how we <v John Callaway>think has made good use of the pain that you may have suffered when you had <v John Callaway>those of us who have our cameras leaning over your shoulders, you've taken that which in <v John Callaway>itself is symbolic, isn't it, of how to how to use problems <v John Callaway>instead of being used by them? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes, I think that's well put. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I had reason to rethink my life <v Dr. Jonas Salk>as a result of the period when I had worked intensely

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>and I ?inauidble? might say problems that you could solve in the laboratory <v Dr. Jonas Salk>or that you would solve in studies with, with patients. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It was in the course of that time that I appreciated <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the connection between the processes <v Dr. Jonas Salk>with which I'd become familiar and living systems and the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>phenomena and the human interactions. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>If you look at the human population curve, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>you will recognize that it rises very steeply. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And then at a given point in time, it inflect, so to speak. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, that has been true in the developed world. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In the developing world, the population is still rising rapidly. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But the predictions are that this curve of human <v Dr. Jonas Salk>population growth will eventually plateau. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>This means that at some point in time, in the future,

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>we will have to be living in a much more balanced equilibrium. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, how do we transform <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the past into the future, from a past in which <v Dr. Jonas Salk>there was an exponential growth and everything was changing, a great rate into a future <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in which we look forward to a an equilibrium of numbers on the face <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of the earth? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, this implies to me that our value system <v Dr. Jonas Salk>will change and it will change out of necessity and not necessarily <v Dr. Jonas Salk>because we are, will have that much foresight and that much wisdom. <v John Callaway>Or that much will. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That's right. We may have the will, but it will be the necessity <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that will dictate that the changes that in values <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that are going to be necessary in the future. <v John Callaway>And what would those value changes be? Would we be global instead of national?

<v John Callaway>Would we be co-operative instead of competitive or those? <v John Callaway>Am I in the right direction? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That's exactly right. The kinds of things that will turn <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the world into a recognition that we are part <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of a community, a world community, and people <v Dr. Jonas Salk>will recognize that it is to their selfish advantage <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to be co-operative. <v John Callaway>Which may mean a change in the way, for example, that we order <v John Callaway>things economically in this country instead of my going into your country, say you're-. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. <v John Callaway>Someplace else. And I simply rape your country of all the oil I can get. <v John Callaway>I go in with a different. <v John Callaway>attitude. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I think our relationship to the other developed to the developing countries <v Dr. Jonas Salk>will change. It's going to be clear that it is going to be to the advantage of the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>developed world to help the developing world develop as rapidly <v Dr. Jonas Salk>as possible. It's going to be advantage of advantage to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>us to relate appropriately to our allies.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>It's going to be advan- advantageous for the powers <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that are now struggling with each other to reduce the struggle <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and then to begin to utilize their resources for their own people. <v John Callaway>Where, where in the scriptures of nature does it say it probably will be such? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We see both competition and cooperation in nature. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And evolution could not have reached this point in time were it not for the fact that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>both coexist. You know, about DNA. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You've heard about DNA. It's the letters for the chemical substance out of which the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>genetic material is made. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, the genetic material is the hereditary material that's passed on from generation <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to generation. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, this hereditary material contains the code that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>tells the cell what it's going to be. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That tells the organism what it's going to be. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And it's the decoding of that code that gives rise

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>to all of the functions of the cell and all of the functions of the organism. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The fact that we are able to speak together now <v Dr. Jonas Salk>is a reflection of the existence in the genetic code of the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>structures or the information necessary to provide the structures <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and our capacity to speak and also the capacity to think. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, this has all emerged in the course of evolutionary time. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But if you think of the genetic code as in a sense separate from <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the rest of the cell, of which it is a part, you have to recognize <v Dr. Jonas Salk>also that this hereditary material is responsible for the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>creation of the proteins and the enzymes that in turn are necessary <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to make the genetic material. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, that's a remarkable phenomenon. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>How this came into into being we don't know, and there are many <v Dr. Jonas Salk>people who are studying the origin of life and studying the origin and the evolution of

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>the genetic code. <v John Callaway>Right here. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Here. Indeed. And and elsewhere also. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But we have people here who are especially interested in that. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In fact, 1 of the- 1 of the 2 scientists who had <v Dr. Jonas Salk>discovered the structure of DNA is, is here at this institute. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The point that I wanted to make is the following, that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the genetic material has the code to make the proteins <v Dr. Jonas Salk>or the enzymes that are necessary to make the genetic code. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, it should be clear from that one example that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the, these two systems, the somatic system <v Dr. Jonas Salk>or proteins, on the one hand, the genetic system or the nucleic acid, on the other hand, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>had to enter into a co-operative arrangement, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>a collaborative arrangement, coexisting arrangement in which each was dependent, is <v Dr. Jonas Salk>dependent upon the other. Their existence separately and their existence

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>together depends upon this solving this kind of a problem, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>which nature has done. <v John Callaway>And that's to be found in man. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And that's to be found in man. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Has to be found in humans. <v John Callaway>Human beings, of course, have not been around very long, relatively speaking. <v John Callaway>Take this diorama in the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History showing a scene <v John Callaway>from the life of early man. <v John Callaway>By the time this family lived fifty thousand years ago, the world was already <v John Callaway>an estimated two and a half billion years old. <v John Callaway>And despite a few cosmetic differences, they really were not so unlike you <v John Callaway>and me. They bury their dead. <v John Callaway>They pursued artistic expression, but mostly they worked <v John Callaway>to survive to find food, shelter and clothing. <v John Callaway>They and we are a part of what Dr. Salk calls epic A in human history, <v John Callaway>a period of time in which the competitive, materialistic side of our nature <v John Callaway>has been dominant. What we're going into now, he says, is epic B when

<v John Callaway>spiritual coöperative values will prevail. <v John Callaway>But if you really want to understand Dr. Salk's thinking, you've got to understand this. <v John Callaway>A simple looking graph called a sigmoid or S-shaped curve. <v John Callaway>Statisticians use it to chart population growth. <v John Callaway>He uses it imaginatively as a thinking tool. <v John Callaway>Dr. Salk, why your fascination with the S curve? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, I think I'm fascinated with it because when I <v Dr. Jonas Salk>first began to look at the S-shaped curve and <v Dr. Jonas Salk>connection, for example, with the growth of a fruitfly population, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I try to imagine what the fruit flies were doing <v Dr. Jonas Salk>at each step along that curve and whether or not they had a town hall meeting <v Dr. Jonas Salk>at the time they got to that point of inflection and decided, okay, fellows, we better <v Dr. Jonas Salk>slow down because something isn't going right. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And then it became apparent to me that somehow nature had built into the system

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>a way of responding to the context, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the environment, the circumstances that were created <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in the course of the increasing number of food flies <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that appeared in the colony. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And at 1 point in time, it must have been that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>either they began to run out of space or they began to run out of nutrients, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>but they shifted from the mode of progressive acceleration and multiplication <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to progressive deceleration and eventually reached the plateau. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And then I recognized that the same thing was true in <v Dr. Jonas Salk>bacterial colonies, yeast cultures, the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>production process ceases. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It turns off. As if it's responding to some kind of feedback effect.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>It's not unlike a change in attitude about the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>use of energy without thinking about <v Dr. Jonas Salk>a finite resource reacting as if the resources <v Dr. Jonas Salk>were infinite. <v John Callaway>A kind of governor of sorts. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And this kind of a governor, as you call it, this kind of a control and regulatory <v Dr. Jonas Salk>mechanism must've been invented in the course of evolutionary time to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>serve the needs for survival and for evolution. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, when you look at the control and regulatory mechanisms that exist in living <v Dr. Jonas Salk>systems, you see that the S-shaped curve appears throughout. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, I began to analogize between <v Dr. Jonas Salk>what was happening in these living systems, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>so to speak, and the human population growth curve.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>And I was aware of the rapidity with which in the last <v Dr. Jonas Salk>several decades last century, the population growth curve was mounting rapidly, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and in the early 70s, late 60s, the 0 population growth movement <v Dr. Jonas Salk>was underway and a great deal of talk about <v Dr. Jonas Salk>how can we limit population growth. <v John Callaway>Small is beautiful. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That's another example of a reaction <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to excess. And the popular- and the the sigmoid growth curve <v Dr. Jonas Salk>is a reaction to excess. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It must be that there are different set of rules in the first half of that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>curve as the population is increasing as <v Dr. Jonas Salk>compared to the second half. And so that point of inflection appears to me to mark <v Dr. Jonas Salk>a change in signals, a change in values. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And I imagine, therefore, that there must have been a different set of values that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>prevailed in the first part of the curve period during the first part of the curve and

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>the second. And I see that- <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I imagined when I first began to see this, that there would be for not too long <v Dr. Jonas Salk>appear a, an inflection in that curve so far as human population <v Dr. Jonas Salk>is concerned. But this would come about not altogether by itself, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>but it would require now that we concern ourselves <v Dr. Jonas Salk>not with death control, primarily as we did in the past and <v Dr. Jonas Salk>disease control, but we would be- would be- begin to concern ourselves with birth control <v Dr. Jonas Salk>so that the way in which to control the expanding <v Dr. Jonas Salk>population and the expanding needs that this evoked in the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>face of limited resources would be the recognition and the realization that it would <v Dr. Jonas Salk>be to the advantage of the individual, to the advantage of the species to begin <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to level off the number of people that existed on the face of the earth. <v John Callaway>So while some people would call that artificial, you would say

<v John Callaway>that it is natural selection that we can help along. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We are responding in a sense to signals that are natural. <v John Callaway>From nature. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In us to which to respond. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And these are signals from nature. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And it's for this reason that the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>arguments against birth control are unnatural. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>They're interfering with the natural process of limitation <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in numbers, in the face of a context, an environment <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in which it would be advantageous for the numbers <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to be limited. The same thing applies to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the use of energy. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>If the resources are limited, then clearly <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the feedback signal is that we have to change our pattern <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of behavior in relation to the use of energy.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>There is an appropriateness of a response, which is the same as saying that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>it's an adaptive response. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, this is being conscious and aware of ourselves <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and our environment. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Our context. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Our relationships. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>To ourselves, to others and to the species. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I speak of being, I'm implying that the human being <v Dr. Jonas Salk>possesses an aesthetic. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The aesthetic for life, the aesthetic that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>will tell us when we are doing something wrong or when we're do something right <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in evolutionary terms and not in moralistic terms. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>My preoccupation with an interest in the sigmoid curve is <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that it symbolically reflects <v Dr. Jonas Salk>what is happening. And I sometimes play games with myself.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>I put myself in a position that I call in outer space and out of time. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And I looked down on the sigmoid curve and I imagine what <v Dr. Jonas Salk>it must be like on that curve at different points in time, including the point of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>inflection. What's going to be like at some point in time in the future. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And that's why I sometimes refer to it as I use it as a thinking tool. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And then I come back and put myself on the curve, put myself back in <v Dr. Jonas Salk>time and in space, and my mood and my attitude is altogether different. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But then every now and again, I put myself into out of time and out of space, just to get <v Dr. Jonas Salk>perspective. <v John Callaway>But permit me to interrupt to ask you came to this way of <v John Callaway>thinking out of your own education and your own perspective. <v John Callaway>And yet you're suggesting, if I read you correctly, that the rest of us might <v John Callaway>well be advised to use this way of thinking as opposed, say, to <v John Callaway>the psychiatric approach or to the economic determinist

<v John Callaway>approach that we might take nature very seriously. <v John Callaway>Is that true? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I think so. I think that what I'm trying to say is that there's a great deal that we can <v Dr. Jonas Salk>learn from nature. The purpose of which, of course, would allow us to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>deal with problems of disease. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But I think it has more profound meaning. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I think it informs us as to how nature works. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It informs us, if you will, as to how nature thinks. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And if you see ourselves as having emerged <v Dr. Jonas Salk>from this long evolutionary past. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Just think how remarkable the process of evolution must be. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And just think of how remarkable the biological <v Dr. Jonas Salk>processes must be to produce <v Dr. Jonas Salk>an organism that has the capacity to think. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It has the capacity to reflect. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>To think about itself, the capacity to unravel the mysteries of nature.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>To think about our own minds and how we think and to be conscious <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of all of this, it is for this reason that I believe that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the future of man, human future <v Dr. Jonas Salk>is intimately linked to our capacity now to use our success <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in having survived to this point in time to learn how to evolve. <v John Callaway>So this is point B that you're talking about, we've gone past the survival point. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I think we have succeeded in surviving. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And there's no question about our surviving. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There are now more than 4 and half billion people on the face of the earth. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In fact, one might even say that the problems with which we are confronted now are the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>problems of success. <v John Callaway>The consequences of success. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Indeed. And so when we berate ourselves for <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the great advances that are made in science and technology and say

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>that all this is now produced horrible problems, which we must contend, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>we completely forget that we have arrived at this point because <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of our success in solving the problems that we've had in the past. <v John Callaway>Now, somebody listening to this conversation or watching it might say that we've left <v John Callaway>something out. So let me introduce it by quoting to you from, from your own book, The <v John Callaway>Survival of the Wisest. <v John Callaway>You said the role of political and religious organizations has been to enlighten <v John Callaway>and guide. Now, new means are needed for inner self regulation <v John Callaway>based on naturalistic rather than on arbitrary moralistic <v John Callaway>formulations. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. <v John Callaway>What does that say about reverence for religion? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You see, I believe that religion serves a very important purpose <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in human life. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But anything that serves an important purpose can also have the opposite effect, depends <v Dr. Jonas Salk>upon how it's perceived and how it's used and

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>what it's used for. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Religion comes from the Latin religio <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to tie together. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And religion is based upon a belief system. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>A belief in a certain way in which <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the world is put together, it came into existence and how it operates. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, to me, it is the existence of order that is <v Dr. Jonas Salk>fundamental to our existence, that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>we are manifestations of the existence of order. <v John Callaway>And we get up tomorrow, this table will still be here. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. <v John Callaway>The sun will come up. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. Now, some might say that my use of the term order <v Dr. Jonas Salk>is the same as the word God. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We're both describing the same phenomenon.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>The difference between the idea of order <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and the idea of an anthropomorphic God. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>A God that is in the form of a person <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that thinks like a person and a personal God that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>looks after me personally and individually. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, most people can think that way most <v Dr. Jonas Salk>easily. And that is the way in which they <v Dr. Jonas Salk>relate themselves to nature, to the cosmos <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and to each other. <v John Callaway>It's why they made a god out of you. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, that's why God was invented. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You see God was invented because of the necessity <v Dr. Jonas Salk>for having a form of order. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The reason that people react to me as they do is because they felt that

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>a miracle had been performed. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And as if their prayers, their wishes, their <v Dr. Jonas Salk>hopes were fulfilled. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And so people need. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Someone or something to help them <v Dr. Jonas Salk>deal with the problems that they themselves cannot solve. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I believe that we can solve these problems <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that we ask God to solve. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I always remember my mother saying that God helps those who help themselves. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I remember as a child, I would pray to God. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But then I soon realized that I had to do something about it myself. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>A belief system is necessary. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The things that I've been saying to you imply a belief, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>imply a belief in a more hopeful future <v Dr. Jonas Salk>than in the minds of those who despair.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>And therefore, everything that I say to you is based upon my <v Dr. Jonas Salk>belief that humans are have <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the genetic capacity to solve the problems of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>human evolution. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>They have the capacity within themselves for <v Dr. Jonas Salk>their own salvation, if you like, as well as the capacity for their own destruction. <v John Callaway>As we make that move from destruction <v John Callaway>to salvation. <v John Callaway>Are we really involved in what is the equivalent, what theologians call the leap of <v John Callaway>faith? Have we got to go from A to B? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. One has to have faith. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And theologians utilize faith. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>They utilize hope. They inspire people. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>To believe and to hope. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Because without that then there's alienation and despair. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>One can grow and evolve with faith and hope.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>But one is destroyed by despair, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>by alienation. Now the word alienation means to lose contact <v Dr. Jonas Salk>with oneself. It's clear that we have within ourselves <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the necessity to be related to others. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We have the necessity to be related to a purpose. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We have a necessity not only for our own survival, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>but for the survival of the species. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We have a double loyalty, which sometimes puts us into conflict. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now it's that double loyalty that nature insists that we have, if you will. <v John Callaway>The necessary paradox. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Indeed. See, the necessity <v Dr. Jonas Salk>for the survival of the individual is the survival of the species. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The necessity for the survival of the species is survival of the individual. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There have been some authors who have

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>spoken about the selfish gene, the gene, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the implication being that the gene's only interest is in its self preservation. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But we may discern, we may find that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to be generous is to be selfish. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And I sometimes play in playing with words. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I speak about or think about selfish generosity. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, to me, that's not a difficult concept, and it may seem <v Dr. Jonas Salk>paradoxical. <v John Callaway>Let it be, let it be paradoxical. You get a bang out of giving. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But I don't think so. And you get a bang out of giving, as you say, because there is <v Dr. Jonas Salk>something in us that says it feels good. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And if it feels good, it must be good in a sense. <v John Callaway>Therefore, it really isn't paradoxical. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In that sense.

<v John Callaway>It follows as it- as the day the night. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Which is what I mean when I said before something about <v Dr. Jonas Salk>there is an aesthetic in us, a feeling of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>proportion, of balance. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>This is where in great works of art are appreciated <v Dr. Jonas Salk>universally because the proportion, the scale is just right. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, these are built into us. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And this has been inherited through evolutionary time. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And you see this in, in structures. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You see it in the spiral in, in a shell. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You see it in all of the structures that, that we study. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And you see the naturalness, therefore, of the human mind. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>So that the most important of all of the properties of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of man attributes and the most important <v Dr. Jonas Salk>?inaudible? Living systems in terms of the movement of the evolutionary process

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>is the human mind, which is in the process of evolution. <v John Callaway>Are we behaving in such a way that, that it would appear that <v John Callaway>we take that seriously, that that is our most precious resource? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I see many signs of that. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>For example, we see what has happened in the development of the educational <v Dr. Jonas Salk>system and the development of schools. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The sponsorship of the arts and culture. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>All this, to me, indicates that we are becoming <v Dr. Jonas Salk>more. We are appreciating more and more the necessity for <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the reliance upon what the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>mind, mind can do. <v John Callaway>So that you're seeing for every headline that journalists <v John Callaway>give you of bad news, your vision, however, is of a thousand acts of cooperation, <v John Callaway>unreported. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes, I look upon the newspapers, for example, or the news, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>as I would the pathology report that I would see

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>in the hospital when I was an intern. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>All the things that are going wrong. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But for all the things that are going wrong, there are enormous number of things that are <v Dr. Jonas Salk>going right for all of the people who are doing things that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>are destructive, you might say, and pathologica, there are enormous number of people who <v Dr. Jonas Salk>are organizing themselves and who are doing things to counteract those <v Dr. Jonas Salk>effects. <v John Callaway>In conversations like this, Jonas Salk seems to have left behind the pressured <v John Callaway>world of medical research where he toiled night and day seeking the polio vaccine. <v John Callaway>But a great achievement sometimes takes on a life of its own. <v John Callaway>In 1961, a fellow scientist, Albert Sabin, introduced another polio vaccine <v John Callaway>and started a controversy which flares even to this day. <v John Callaway>This Salk vaccine made from killed polio virus is given by injection. <v John Callaway>The Sabin vaccine from live polio virus is given orally. <v John Callaway>American doctors traditionally favor live virus vaccines, think they give stronger

<v John Callaway>immunity. American children, not surprisingly, favor a sweet tasting sirup <v John Callaway>to a needle in the arm. So the Sabin vaccine caught on quickly here. <v John Callaway>The Salk vaccine has remained popular overseas. <v John Callaway>Both vaccines have good immunization records. <v John Callaway>But neither has been able to wipe out polio completely. <v John Callaway>In the late 70s, Jonas Salk embarked on a quiet campaign to persuade the American medical <v John Callaway>establishment to reinstate his killed virus vaccine as the immunization <v John Callaway>of preference. In January 1981, physicians at Johns Hopkins University <v John Callaway>in Baltimore began a 3 year study to see whether a new, more potent formulation of the <v John Callaway>Salk vaccine will better the odds of immunity. <v John Callaway>And studies abroad have raised the possibility that the strongest immunity comes from <v John Callaway>using the Salk and Sabin vaccines in tandem. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In a way, I would say now that if the killed virus vaccine had not been <v Dr. Jonas Salk>developed previously, it would have had to be developed now. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And the reason I say that is that there are some problems associated with the live virus

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>vaccine, which everyone is aware that in very low frequency <v Dr. Jonas Salk>it does cause polio in either the individual vaccinated <v Dr. Jonas Salk>or the contact, but that's only 1 <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in many millions of doses administered. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There is now developing a supply of killed <v Dr. Jonas Salk>vaccine made with the new newly developed technology, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and it will undoubtedly come back and may very <v Dr. Jonas Salk>well be necessary to bring about the complete eradication <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of polio. <v John Callaway>Did the did the controversy teach you anything about yourself <v John Callaway>or the politics of science? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Oh, it taught me a great many lessons. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It revealed that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>there is a proper time for any

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>new idea. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In this instance, I think that the state <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of readiness was not, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>was not ripe for some of the ideas that were associated <v Dr. Jonas Salk>with either the preparation or the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>use of a noninfectious vaccine. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There is now available a body of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>data that is in the process of being reexamined <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I visualize that in the future there will be <v Dr. Jonas Salk>vaccines not only against, kill virus vaccines, not against polio, but many other viruses <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that would be incorporated in a single syringe in the same way as the vaccine <v Dr. Jonas Salk>for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough combined. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And in fact, the kill polio virus vaccine is combined with the diphtheria, tetanus

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>and whooping cough vaccine in many countries and is now being experimented <v Dr. Jonas Salk>on much more widely in some of the developing countries. <v John Callaway>And where do you stand with your old medical adversary, the man who said to you at a <v John Callaway>medical meeting early on in your career why you should know better than to ask that <v John Callaway>question? Dr. Sabin. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Oh. <v John Callaway>We invite you to the same podium at a scientific meeting, or do we keep you apart? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, as- we've never been kept apart. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Never had to be kept apart. We've seen each other from time to time. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We simply see things <v Dr. Jonas Salk>differently. But then that's in the nature of scientific progress. <v John Callaway>You think that science reporting and political response to sciences <v John Callaway>of a higher order than it was, say, in 1955? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes, it is. It's considerably improved. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And I see it improving increasingly. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I would say that television has helped enormously and educate, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>educating and informing the public about.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>Sound science, not talking now about science fiction and some <v Dr. Jonas Salk>gee whiz things, I'm now talking about a deep <v Dr. Jonas Salk>understanding of the way in which scientists' minds work, their motivation <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and recognition of a sense of responsibility on the part <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of scientists for what they're doing and that they're not all <v Dr. Jonas Salk>wild men and women acting without <v Dr. Jonas Salk>any sense of responsibility for the consequences of what they do. <v John Callaway>How are we doing on the old, the old clash between basic and applied research? <v John Callaway>It did. Could you give us an example of the process and the difficulty <v John Callaway>of, say, one of your cancer research projects going on at this institute today? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, let me make a simple observation about the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>control of polio, for example, and why I say that was relatively simple <v Dr. Jonas Salk>as compared to solving the cancer problem.

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>First of all, polio is a disease that comes from outside. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It's an infectious agent. It is transmitted from person to person. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And by immunization, you induce the formation of antibody in the bloodstream. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And the virus is then blocked from getting to the spinal cord where <v Dr. Jonas Salk>paralysis would ensue. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In the case of cancer, the derangement that occurs is some <v Dr. Jonas Salk>abnormality within the cell itself <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that results in its multiplication without respect for <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the order that normally existsin an organ <v Dr. Jonas Salk>or in a cell system, there is very likely a genetic factor that may <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that is involved in some instances in terms of the susceptibility. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And that's far more difficult to correct, to rectify <v Dr. Jonas Salk>than simply to inject a vaccine which produces antibody,

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>and that prevents the infectious agent that is in the environment from <v Dr. Jonas Salk>doing it, it's dirty work, so to speak. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But this involves the use of viruses, the use of chemicals, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the awareness, the studies at the genetic level. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And studies by immunologists. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>All of these are part of the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>panoply of technology that has to be applied in. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In trying to unravel this, this question, this <v Dr. Jonas Salk>question. <v John Callaway>I fear that this question is going to be the classic oversimplified question, but I'm <v John Callaway>going to try it anyway. I'll try it a couple of different ways. <v John Callaway>You had a pretty good notion, at least according to the accounts that I've read, of <v John Callaway>what the timeframe was in tracking down <v John Callaway>the vaccine for polio.

<v John Callaway>Others, I read a book once which, which suggested that the Rosenbergs really couldn't <v John Callaway>have been guilty of espionage because too many people, too many scientists in the world <v John Callaway>really knew too much about what was going on in nuclear physics, that everybody knew, <v John Callaway>that everybody else knew. <v John Callaway>Assuming that that kind of knowledge is known <v John Callaway>by those of you who are on the inside. <v John Callaway>How are we doing? What's the timeframe and trying to avoid a word like breakthrough? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, I will never <v Dr. Jonas Salk>attempt to make any kind of prediction about time frame. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That would be doing a great disservice because it at any moment someone might come up <v Dr. Jonas Salk>with an idea and an insight. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But it will not be tomorrow. It's going to be unraveled in pieces <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and bits and pieces. There are too many different causes <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of cancer. There are too many different events that have <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to be understood. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>however, if one wants to do something about cancer, there are some cancers

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>about which something can be done, for example, that associate with cigarette smoking. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Now, this reflects one aspect of the problem, the problem of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>what the public does with knowledge. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>A cancerous, cancer inducing behavior, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>you might say where the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>preference is for scientists to come up with a pill or an injection or a medication of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>some kind. So that in regard to, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to the, the problem of cancer, I'm afraid it's <v Dr. Jonas Salk>gonna be with us for quite some time. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>But the pattern is going to change with time as we <v Dr. Jonas Salk>learn how to deal with one. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Then there will be another that will continue to prevail or that might emerge. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And so I think we may have to get become accustomed to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>this as a phenomenon associated with life.

<v John Callaway>But to go back to your positive view of evolution, would you guess <v John Callaway>that we will evolve towards being a people who will not smoke <v John Callaway>and who will not damage our stomachs, livers with alcohol and <v John Callaway>who will not create urban environments where smoke crams our throats? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, I think that in time we're going to learn what is to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>our advantage and what is to our disadvantage. <v John Callaway>Dr. Salk, aside from the questions being asked here at this institute about cancer and <v John Callaway>its causes and about the origins of life, what are some of the other areas that you're <v John Callaway>exploring? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>More than half of the institute is now in what we call the neurosciences. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Sciences that have to do with the brain and how the nervous system functions. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There is an interest, of course, in, in the chemical events that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>are associated, chemical factors are associated with with behavior <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and in the laboratory in which studies are done in an attempt

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>to elucidate the- and understand the nature of the chemical <v Dr. Jonas Salk>substances that communicate within the nervous system. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There's another laboratory that's concerned with understanding how the bla- <v Dr. Jonas Salk>brain develops. You might say in embryoal- in embryonic life, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>how do cells get from one place to another, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>places where they belong? And how do they connect up? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There, this may have some practical significance at some time <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in the future in understanding the repair mechanisms following stroke <v Dr. Jonas Salk>or other injury in laboratory that's concerned with the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>chemistry of behavior, you might say. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Studies on alcohol are being carried out. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>This is one of the centers in the country for studies on <v Dr. Jonas Salk>alcohol. The attempt that is being made here is to see in what way addiction <v Dr. Jonas Salk>occurs.

<v John Callaway>Anything genetically being studied there? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, yes, it does appear from some of the work that's been done <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that people who have a history of alcoholism <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in their family differs from individuals who do not have such <v Dr. Jonas Salk>a family history, suggesting that there probably is a genetic factor that may be <v Dr. Jonas Salk>associated with alcoholism. <v John Callaway>And are you studying something here at the Salk Institute relating to sign language? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. Matter of fact there is a laboratory that is concerned with <v Dr. Jonas Salk>understanding language acquisition in the deaf mute. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Then some insight is developed into the biological basis for language. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You see, there must be a biological basis for language since we have the capacity to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>speak, and the use of the sign language is in a sense, a laboratory <v Dr. Jonas Salk>tool for understanding how the brain is organized in that respect. <v John Callaway>There's a lot we don't know in that area, isn't there? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>An enormous amount. And in an adjacent laboratory, some very interesting things are <v Dr. Jonas Salk>being done with deaf people

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>in whom it has been found that the visual area in the brain, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the part that's back here, is much more highly developed than <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that in an individual who has normal hearing indicating that the brain has the capacity <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to compensate for limitations <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in one respect by expanding the capacity in other aspects. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>All of this suggests that the brain is a very plastic <v Dr. Jonas Salk>organ, plastic in the sense of being pliable, being capable of far more development <v Dr. Jonas Salk>than has ever been appreciated. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The institute covers a very wide range of activity. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It was intended to be an institute for biological studies, addressing ourselves to some <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of the most important issues of the day, not only the problem of cancer, the problem <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of myasthenia gravis, the cause of which was discovered in the sense here <v Dr. Jonas Salk>as an autoimmune disease, a disease in which an antibodies form against <v Dr. Jonas Salk>certain chemical substances at the junction between a nerve

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>and the muscle. We also have a laboratory that is concerned with <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the control or the regulation, shall we say, of fertility. <v John Callaway>And do they all kind of relate to each other? Are the scientists who are here able to <v John Callaway>talk with each other about their various disciplines or is it, do they find themselves <v John Callaway>kind of off in corners alone? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>As a matter of fact, the institute was created to see <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to what extent this could be the interaction, the communication <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and the collaboration could be enhanced. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And in fact, there's an enormous amount of work that was generated here by <v Dr. Jonas Salk>virtue of the proximity of individuals, even <v Dr. Jonas Salk>from diverse disciplines. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It's interesting now to see the way in which the neurobiologists and the molecular <v Dr. Jonas Salk>biologists are interacting and work is actually going on, that would not have gone on <v Dr. Jonas Salk>were it not for the fact that they were so easily available and accessible. <v John Callaway>What's your life like out here?

<v John Callaway>What's a day like? How do you live? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I guess my life is pretty well absorbed in my work. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It's- my life is very complex, as you might imagine, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>not only because of the work that was associated with the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>creation of the institute. I have nothing to do with administration, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>running it. This is done by the president. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I have a laboratory that I have some concerns for, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>guide its work. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I am very much interested in writing which I try to take time to do. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Many people want to see me or a good deal of correspondence <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that I neglect for the most part. <v John Callaway>You look in good shape. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There are times of the day, of the week that I walk on the beach <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and I guess I don't

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>suffer from boredom. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>If anything, I would say that I have a problem of time bankruptcy. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I've tried- I've tried for far too <v Dr. Jonas Salk>long to do more things than I <v Dr. Jonas Salk>have enough time in which to do it. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>At this point, I'm going through a reexamination of what <v Dr. Jonas Salk>are the important things for me to do, trying to reestablish my priorities <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and see what my next career ought to be. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I probably will spend a good deal of time <v Dr. Jonas Salk>in the period ahead writing as well as maintaining an interest in <v Dr. Jonas Salk>my scientific work and keeping an eye on what I can do. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>To help in further development of the institute <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and to contribute in other ways <v Dr. Jonas Salk>that might be helpful and useful in ameliorating the human predicament. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I have the opportunity to do

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>so in clarifying my visions and perceptions of the future. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That's what I would like to be able to do. <v John Callaway>Is there anything that we in the public can do to help you and your colleagues? <v John Callaway>Is there anything we can do together? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Yes. <v John Callaway>To help? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Well, there's a great deal that we can do together. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>In fact, we can't do it otherwise. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>You see this a great close partnership between scientists, people, people <v Dr. Jonas Salk>who work in institutions such as this and the public. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>We are public servants, really, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>even though we may not all think that way. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>This institute was created with the funds that came from, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>at that time, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, the so-called <v Dr. Jonas Salk>March of Dimes. And the March of Dimes continues to support the institute <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to a certain extent, but it is because <v Dr. Jonas Salk>of the March of Dimes and the contributions of the public to the March of Dimes

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>that the institute came into existence. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>It is for that reason that the institute belongs to the people. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And I suppose one might look upon this as a, a <v Dr. Jonas Salk>national resource, national treasure, if you will, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to which the public is invited to continue to participate. <v John Callaway>Dr. Salk, what does everything we've been talking about have <v John Callaway>to do with the architecture of this <v John Callaway>place and the design of this place? And then, if you would, the content of this place, <v John Callaway>how you have organized learning and studying here? <v Dr. Jonas Salk>The idea that I had in mind was for it to be a place where not only <v Dr. Jonas Salk>science would be practiced, shall we say, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>so that when I thought about the institute <v Dr. Jonas Salk>at its beginning, I thought of it as a place that would <v Dr. Jonas Salk>keep abreast of human evolution and would even contribute to human evolution

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>through the utilization, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the cultivation of human creativity. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And I felt that for that purpose, the institute should be <v Dr. Jonas Salk>situated in a very special place and that the <v Dr. Jonas Salk>ambiance should evoke and inspire <v Dr. Jonas Salk>creativity. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And it was for this reason that great care was given to the architecture, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to the creation of an ambiance that would be analogous, if you will, to <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the ambiance of a temple. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I felt that that kind of respect should be given <v Dr. Jonas Salk>to the kind of work that I hoped would be done here. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And so the statement that was made was a statement of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>respect to the human spirit, to human potential <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and to the

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>capacity that I believe exists within us. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>To do for ourselves what we sometimes <v Dr. Jonas Salk>pray to God to do. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>Therefore, when scientists are looked upon as the new priesthood, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>when science is sometimes thought of as a religion, <v Dr. Jonas Salk>as a belief system. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>There is some truth to that, because scientists have <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the capacity, the knowledge, the ability to perform <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the kinds of miracles that we've seen performed in our lifetime. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I was born just at the beginning of, or soon after <v Dr. Jonas Salk>the beginning of the First World War. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And when I look back at my childhood and during the period that <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I grew up in over the last several decades of my professional career,

<v Dr. Jonas Salk>and I'm in awe. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>I'm very much aware of the miracle of life <v Dr. Jonas Salk>and very much aware of the miracle of <v Dr. Jonas Salk>man. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>And for me, that's where that's where God is. <v Dr. Jonas Salk>That's where creation exists <v Dr. Jonas Salk>now. <v Announcer>To obtain a transcript of John Callaway interviews, send 3 dollars to PTV

<v Announcer>Publications, post office box 701 Kent, Ohio <v Announcer>44204. Be sure to list the name of the interview desired. <v Announcer>Please allow 4 weeks for delivery.