Leona Baumgartner as the cornerstone to the creation of a healthy community, beginning with her work as district health officer in planning classes and clinics. Baumgartner was also an early advocate of the vaccine developed by Jonas Salk as a method of immunization against polio and the fluoridation of water as a bulwark against dental disease. Baumgartner was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969. She was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. Her other awards include the Sedgwick Medal, the Albert Lasker Public Service Award, the Elizabeth Blackwell
Jonas Salk artists have joined the scientists to achieve an understanding of man in all his physical, mental and spiritual complexity. Such interchanges might lead, he would hope, to a new and important school of thinkers he would designate as biophilosophers." Salk told his cousin, Joel Kassiday, at a meeting of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future on Capitol Hill in 1984 that he was optimistic that ways to prevent most human and animal diseases would eventually be developed. Salk said people must be prepared to take prudent risks, since "a risk-free society would become a dead-end society" without progress. Salk describes