Imagine a disease in the modern world today that primarily affects young children and causes parents to bleach the streets and sidewalks. Local officials quaran

Imagine a disease in the modern world today that primarily affects young children and causes parents to bleach the streets and sidewalks. Local officials quarantine blocks of neighborhoods when someone is found with the disease, because they don't know what else to do. Now imagine someone was selling a cure at the time. There would be riots, the seller would be strung up, and his drugs/methods would be copied. I think we have great difficulty today understanding what life was like in parts of America with epidemic breaks before there was a vaccine for polio. There were children in iron lungs for weeks. I can't imagine anyone developing a vaccine or a cure for something like that and not simply giving it away. The breakthrough with polio doesn't compare to anything else in patentable medicine. Salk's work stands alone.