Cold War tensions and the polio vaccine Sabin vaccine from the Soviet side. However other Soviet virologists argued that the Salk vaccine could be considered safe, since the Americans tested it on their own people. They considered that the Sabin vaccine must be potentially dangerous because the Americans did not wish to test it on their own society. The documented achievement of the Sabin-Chumakov collaboration eventually trumped the ideological differences of the Cold War. Their oral live-virus vaccine became federally licensed in 1962, and used for over three decades to help eliminate polio globally, replacing the Salk vaccine. Using these vaccines, the threat of polio remains only
Jonas Salk Crick, codiscoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, was a leading professor at the institute until his death in 2004. The institute also served as the basis for Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's 1979 book "Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts". Beginning in the mid-1980s, Salk also engaged in research to develop a vaccine for another, more recent plague, AIDS. To further this research, he cofounded the Immune Response Corporation with Kevin Kimberlin, to search for a vaccine, and patented Remune, an immune-based therapy. He was unable to secure product liability Insurance. The AIDS vaccine project was discontinued