The time machine has not yet been invented, but until that happens, wars serve as unique and melancholic time travel mechanisms. Where there are long wars, a hole into the past opens from which diseases and epidemics thought to be extinct, suddenly emerge—cholera, the plague and, as the World Health Organization(WHO) recently announced, polio; which, reappeared in Syria as a result of the ongoing war that has entered its third year. The disease is now back, after last being recorded twenty years ago.

The time machine has not yet been invented, but until that happens, wars serve as unique and melancholic time travel mechanisms. Where there are long wars, a hole into the past opens from which diseases and epidemics thought to be extinct, suddenly emerge—cholera, the plague and, as the World Health Organization(WHO) recently announced, polio; which, reappeared in Syria as a result of the ongoing war that has entered its third year. The disease is now back, after last being recorded twenty years ago.

Ironically, the announcement coincided with the annual event of World Polio Day on October 24, held in memory of American genius Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine in 1952 and saved the lives of millions around the world. Salk famously answered the inquiries of astonished journalists about why Salk had not sold the patent or exploitation right to any company, as he could have made a fortune by saying: “Who has the right to monopolize the sun?”

During the American McCarthyism period in 1950s, communist aspects were pursued and statements like “the right to monopolize the sun” was deemed a ‘redline’ statement, but Salk, the son of Russian migrants, was an American hero, despite having been taunted in his youth for being Jewish and missing out on the opportunity to attend an Ivy League university like Harvard. He instead attended New York University and was able to stop the disease that affected 9,000 Americans at the peak of World War I.  In 1921, between the two great wars, US President Franklin Roosevelt was infected with the disease at the age of 39 and spent the rest of his life and presidency in a wheelchair. In the 1950s, polio came back more ferociously, infecting 52,000 people and killing more than 3,000, and leaving 21,000 children with the disease.

Thus, polio seemed an unbridled monster until Salk, who started out researching flu viruses and ended his life researching AIDS in 1995, was able bring an end to the cruel measures that infected children faced, including quarantines in special settlements and preventing their parents from attending their funerals.

Salk’s invention allowed the world to announce the elimination of 99 percent of the disease by the end of the 1980s, with the remaining rate concentrated in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and India, where it was finally conquered in 2012 before showing up again in Syria. Both UNICEF and WHO confirmed the infection of children in Deir Ezzour, east of Syria, where the ongoing war prevented the children from being vaccinated.

Among the reasons of the long confusion about polio is that it appears as a natal defect or a problem in the spine due to the flaccid paralysis that hits the limbs so their form or natural direction changes. Among the ugly family of intestines viruses comes Polio which causes Poliomyelitis.

The polio virus is a double-edged evil. On the one hand, it is easily contagious and is transferred through saliva, mucus, contaminated excrement or even contaminated food and drinks. It enters the body through the mouth or nose.  On the other hand, it is incurable once it gets hold of a patient or destroys the neural cells of the spinal cord, hence the so-called “treatment” involves two kinds of hope; the first is treating the long term, lifelong, treatment of the symptoms to alleviate the suffering. The second is, if the patient is lucky and the virus was limited to causing meningitis membranes enveloping the spinal cord, then it can be ‘treated’ and cured. Salk’s invention worked like other vaccines in that it provided the body with the inactive or dead polio viruses so that the body could recognize and produce antibodies when confronted with the real virus. This solution seems instinctive today, but it was a medical revolution then.

Following the statement of WHO, the Syrian government pledged to deliver the vaccine to every Syrian child. We can only hope that this promise will be fulfilled. The Washington Post said 68 percent of Syrian children were vaccinated against polio in 2012 compared to 91 percent in 2010. Horrific figures in a world that believed the ugly disease was eliminated by Jonas Salk. When recalled, the debate about Salk’s generous act about the patent is brought back. Some look at him as a role model while others believe this individual act must not be repeated, as not to harm pharmaceutical companies that spend millions on medicinal researche. Such generosity by scientists may lead to their bankruptcy on the long run, which will lead to the bankruptcy of science research as well.