Rent-seeking has a technical definition; earning money from things you invented does not meet it. While Salk is obviously an inspiring example, a wise society should happily incentivize the development of useful technology.
Other than economic logic, we have natural experiments to back this up: i.e. the steam engine patent granted to Watt and Boulton in 1772 and its chilling effect on engine duty improvement (and the explosion of progress after patent expiry), and the modern pharmaceutical industry developing most strongly precisely where chemical patents were not granted, in 19th C. continental Europe, and slowing down wherever patent protections were eventually introduced, at the request of rent seeking lobbyists.
https://fee.org/articles/do-patents-encourage-or-hinder-inno...
I was rather objecting to the misuse of a technical term, and the idea that we should expect all innovation to happen without reasonable incentives.
Edit:
> Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
This aligns neatly with my comment - gatekeeping a medical treatment behind artificially high costs to enrich yourself is the very definition of rent-seeking. I think you’re digging yourself in to a pretty deep philosophical hole here, solely out of some need to nerdsnipe people to reassure yourself of your own intellect.