[opensourcepharma] Jonas Salk's birthday

Wed Nov 5 14:03:45 UTC 2014

Nice- thanks for the texture, Mat!

From: Matthew Todd [mailto:mattoddchem at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2014 5:07 AM
To: Jaykumar Menon, Prof.
Cc: opensourcepharma at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [opensourcepharma] Jonas Salk's birthday

This Salk example is interesting. My view is that we need to be careful with it. I would agree that this medicine reached the market without a patent, and that we can use this as an example of a public good that arose without patent protection - I often mention it in talks. But I also wonder about these things:

1) Was this really an open source project (though it was crowdfunded, interestingly)? I would imagine very few people had access to the information needed to reproduce it or even participate in it, and I imagine the research was quite secretive not least because of technological limitations on data sharing.
2) As I understand it, the various players in the project, including Salk himself, had looked into patenting it and had decided against it but the reasons for these moves are still unclear:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/history_of_innovation/2014/04/the_real_reasons_jonas_salk_didn_t_patent_the_polio_vaccine.html

3) There has been lots of discussion about the down-playing of other people who contributed to the science, such as Sabin

http://www.technologyreview.com/review/404390/the-myth-of-jonas-salk/
So when I talk about this I sometimes mention Salk's famous "Would you patent the sun?" question, but then focus away from Salk individually and more towards this dry fact: a patentless therapeutic was successfully developed. If anyone knows more about this, please chime in since I think there is a precedent here that is useful to the idea of OSP provided we don't lay claim to too much.

Best,

Mat

On 1 November 2014 15:27, Jaykumar Menon, Prof. <jaykumar.menon at mcgill.ca<mailto:jaykumar.menon at mcgill.ca>> wrote:
As observed in a great facebook post from Samir.

j

[https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-1/e2/c8.0.50.50/p50x50/10314532_1443948072532860_6742023688249427204_n.jpg?oh=8c3cb9cedb25dfd9eb7ccdb299909ab5&oe=54D79E58&__gda__=1424459174_af1a41e304df76c67c30673e26ef6fa7]<https://www.facebook.com/samir.brahmachari.9?fref=nf>
Samir Brahmachari<https://www.facebook.com/samir.brahmachari.9?fref=nf>
October 28 at 8:04am<https://www.facebook.com/samir.brahmachari.9/posts/1499894946938172> ·

Today is Birthday of Jonas Salk who could have made 7b$ if he would have patented the discovery of Polio Vaccine.  India is free of Polio today thanks to Jonas Salk and the power of open source.
Like<https://www.facebook.com/samir.brahmachari.9/posts/1499894946938172>Like<https://www.facebook.com/samir.brahmachari.9/posts/1499894946938172> ·  · Share<https://www.facebook.com/ajax/sharer/?s=22&appid=25554907596&p%5B0%5D=100007530437565&p%5B1%5D=1499894946938172&share_source_type=unknown>

Jaykumar Menon, J.D., M.I.A.
Professor of Practice
McGill University Institute for the Study of International Development
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