Before beginning his political career, Robert Kennedy Jr, the current US secretary of health and human services, was a lawyer known for his stances on vaccination. The vaccination system as we know it, with numerous injections scheduled on a national calendar, would not exist without American Big Science. The unique alliance between the military, industries and universities gave rise to a series of innovations starting during World War II; 10 vaccines for military use were developed during the conflict. Biologist Jonas Salk (1914-1995) subsequently developed a vaccine against polio as well as the concept of "vaccinology." The first was the "Cutter Incident" in 1955, which occurred soon after the widely publicized announcement of Salk's successful polio vaccine.