Salk got funding for his lab from the billionaire Mellon family. The Polio vaccine is a prime example of how billionaires can help push civilization forward.

> Sarah Scaife's causes were family planning, the poor and the disabled, hospitals, environmental causes and various good works in and around Pittsburgh. Her most famous gifts, in the late 1940s, were to the University of Pittsburgh – $35,000 to equip a virus research lab. In that lab, Jonas Salk discovered his polio vaccine.

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