Polio: An American Story
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Written By: David M. Oshinsky
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 614.5490973
EAN: 9780195307146
ISBN: 0195307143
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2006-09-01
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Reviews for Polio: An American Story
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Here David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. He also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a family.
Oshinsky offers an insightful look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was founded in the 1930s by FDR and Basil O'Connor, it revolutionized fundraising and the perception of disease in America. Oshinsky also shows how the polio experience revolutionized the way in which the government licensed and tested new drugs before allowing them on the market, and the way in which the legal system dealt with manufacturers' liability for unsafe products. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Oshinsky reveals that polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed by the media, but in truth a relatively uncommon disease. But in baby-booming America--increasingly suburban, family-oriented, and hygiene-obsessed--the specter of polio, like the specter of the atomic bomb, soon became a cloud of terror over daily life.
Both a gripping scientific suspense story and a provocative social and cultural history, Polio opens a fresh window onto postwar America.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Haunting for those of us who remember...
Comment: This is a very interesting work on a topic my generation remembers with dread. If you were one of tens of millions of schoolchildren who were lined up in a cafeteria to await a sugarcube with a little dot on it--you'll want to read this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Tale of Men and Microbes
Comment: Microbes shaped our destiny since the precambrian era or earlier. Our DNA is the historical evidence.
We have not changed much genetically in the last couple of millennia, but we have had a rapid cultural evolution that enabled us to come up with virology as a medical science.
The book is a snapshot of American social and medical history around the middle of the last century. "There were no shopping malls or motel chains or felt-tip pens. Tobacco companies placed cigarette ads in medical journals."
A prominent victim, President Roosevelt, played a major role in the fight against Polio.
Prejudices surface up when plagues hit home. Some ethnic groups were targeted.
We learn about the biographies of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin , the two heroes whose feud over killed-virus versus live-virus vaccines continues even after their death.
There are plenty of factoids on philanthropy, fund raising, grant policy and McCarthyism.
For example, Harry Weaver introduced the percentage payment of the indirect costs involved in grants as an incentive for research grants.
There were also the ethical questions of testing vaccines on crippled children. When Koprowski ( another hero in the search for vaccine )
" published his results in 1952, his use of the word "volunteer", which included two children so helpless they had to be fed the vaccine through stomach tubes, prompted the British medical journal The Lancet to note:
One of the reasons for the richness of the English language is that the meaning of some words is continually changing. Such a word is "volunteer". We may yet read in a scientific journal that an experiment was carried out with twenty volunteer mice, and that twenty other mice volunteered as controls."
The world is not yet free from polio. Cultural barriers and prejudices in certain Third World regions
prevent the total eradication. The WHO set a goal for 2008.
This is a recommended reading for every concerned global citizen. The next viral pandemic will certainly come, probably a more eminent threat than global warming, terrorism or nuclear war.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent History of the Era and the Disease
Comment: I remember the polio scare when I was a kid in the fifties. This book is a very readable and entertaining history of the drive to discover a vaccine for the dread disease.
The politics, the scientific jealousies and the professional drive to succeed all are woven together. This reads like a triller, even though we know the eventual outcome.
I highly recommend this book. If you are interested in history, this is a detailed narrative of all the players. If you are also interested in the science, there is enough scientific detail for a reasonably intelligent lay person to understand. I was motivated after reading this to learn more about virology.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Remarkable 20th Century History
Comment: This book earned the pulitzer prize for (American) history, which it well deserved. Polio is an informative and entertaining book covering all the bases of one of the 20th century's great crusades. Sharp prose. Salk comes across as the hero, though a pretty flawed one at that, and the author makes no attempt to cover up the warts. Sabin makes his important contributions as well. I walked away feeling like I got a good handle on the history of Polio - the book achieved its purpose.
Customer Rating:
Summary: great historical book about the outbreak of polio and its eradication in the US
Comment: The Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and their March of Dimes campaign was started by FDR and managed by his law firm colleague Basil O'Connor. O'Connor continued the movement after Roosevelt's death in 1945 and financed the reseearch into a vaccine. The competition between Salk and Sabin was very interesting and the large number of cases that hit in the early 1950s was the impetous for Salk's accelerated assault on the disease using the dead form of the virus. Sabin believed in a live virus and there were many debates about how to proceed woth scientific research and when to announce findings. Also the ethical issues as to when and how to do vaccine experiments on humans was a major point of contention.
The book is extremely well-researched by Oshinsky and covers the facts, the research and the myths that surrounded the virus along with the fears that hit and the damage that was caused by this disease when it would flare up in the hot summers. All the major contributors are discussed and some biographical backgroubd is given for the key players.
In the summer of 1953 at age six I contracted a mild case of the disease. I knew nothing about it, felt so sick when it first struck that I thought I was going to die. I can relate well to the suffering described. My family was lucky as among the three children I was the only one to get it. I was placed in St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson Long Island, a Catholic hospital that specialized in treating polio and I recovered after 3 months of treatment with only a weakening of my stomach muscles.
The book is detailed and covers how people reacted to the perceived epidemic. It was interesting to me that 1952 was the year that polio cases hit their peak in the US and 1954 was the year of the Salk vaccine trial. My illness occurred in 1953 while the disease was still rampant but just before the vaccine came out.
I think we owe a great debt to Jonas Salk and he was certainly deserving of a Nobel Prize in medicine. It is a mystery to me that the Nobel committee did not select him for the award! Perhaps it is as the author suggest, that the feuding between Salk and Sabin prevented both from being elected although they were undoubtably nominated. Some may argue that a few bad batches of the Salk vaccine due to the rapid mass manufacturing by the pharmaceutical company Cutter caused illness and death that would not have occurred if it was done more careful quality control. But I think a greater good was served by getting a viable vaccine out to prevent more children from getting the disease. It is truly amazing how fast polio was eradicated in the US just after the initial experiment with the Salk Vaccine. The vaccine was successful in the 1954 clinical experiment and there was an urgency to get children innoculated before the next summer's polio season. The rush was due to poor planning by the Federal Government that left the production of the vaccine for the first year solely up to the licensed companies. This problem did not occur in Canada and was not something that Jonas Salk could be blamed for. Also no problems occurred with the batches produced by the other manufacturers. Saban's vaccine came out in 1960 after experimentation proved very successful in the Soviet Union. I don't beleive that Sabin would have produced his vaccine as quickly or tested it on large populations if Salk hadn't cleared the way first with his 1954 trial.
It was clear that iin the end Salk was proven to be right about the lilled virus vaccine being safer and when perfected it was as safe and effective as the Sabin vaccine. However because of the Cutter fiasco confidence in the Salk vaccine was shaken and Sabin's came around in time to be mass delivered and easier to take. However, by the 1980s when Polio had nearly been eradicated in the US thanks to the Sabin vaccine, practically all the new cases were atributable to the vaccine. At this point the new Salk vaccine was safer and there was a good case for switching to it. But action was only taken by the CDC around 2000 when they moved to a combination of two Salk injections followed by two oral vaccines.
This book certainly deserved the Pulitzer Prize that it was awarded!
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