Polio: An American Story
Polio: An American Tale Books
- ISBN13: 9780195307146
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Here David Oshinsky tells the gripping tale 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 mad rivalry between Salk and Sabin. He also tells the tale 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 furious epidemic described 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 tale and a provocative social and cultural history, Polio opens a fresh window onto postwar America.
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Only the Bush administration may possibly yield such a pack of lies. The Salk vaccine “safe?” Salk a genius?
The blunt facts are that pressure from the March of Times resulted in the Salk vaccine being marketed despite its contamination with simian virus. Moreover, as marketed by Cutter in the ’50’s it contained live virus and gave hundreds polio.
Sabin went on to develop the vaccine which gave me and millions of others protection–in Russia! The March of Times campaigned to forestall Sabin’s performing the necessary research here at home.
Read the full-part book, no longer in print, you’ll find at http://www.whale.to/vaccine/bayly.html
Rating: 1 / 5
I heard the author on the radio today. I have not read the book but probably will because of the historical and political coverage.
But I have researched this before in regards to the polio vaccine and I am not trying to down play the importance of it or the race to try and help those in the early stages. I have a relative who said he received a blood transfusion from someone who already had it to help him fight it off (before the vaccine). That’s how Dr. Denmark ongoing her cure for whooping cough.
I would highly urge to anyone to futher study the in rank out here and in other places:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Tocco/mary1.htm
Mary Tocco has been investigating vaccines for over 27 years. There were congressional hearings about this and the conclusion was that the vaccine was not responsible for eradicating the polio epidemic but rather the cleaning up of the drinking waters nearly the world, better hygiene, nutriion and education. Polio was already in fantastic decline nearly the world before the vaccines were released.
Polio is spread by fecal to mouth thus contaminated water supplies or swimming pools were highly suspect of spreading the disease. There were even documeted cases of live virus vacinated toddlers spreading it in nurseries to other children via poopy diapers.
She has the in rank on her website about the congressional hearings in regards to the SV40 virus that was in the original 1950’s vaccine and is a cancer causing virus (bone, tumor, etc)
Review all sides and then come to your own conclusion. Don’t just buy in to the book because of all of the hype and media coverage.
Same tale with Small Pox. The CDC takes credit for eradicating it but the facts from the Advisory Commitee on vaccination stated “Small pox would have died out on its own due to improved sanitation, improved water supply and improved nutrition.”
Rating: 2 / 5
One of the problems with downloading books rather than perusing a book in a book shop or library is the title sometimes carries hidden propraganda, misleading and sometimes yucky errors. The flu epidemic started AFTER the US entry in WWI, and was one of the human expenditure directly atributable to our entry into WWI. The “Spanish Flu” tore through overcrowed army camps before the virus expanded into the general populace. The lenthy description of FDR’s fight with polio is too long on politics, and too small on the scientific. Jonas Salk’s constancy problems were brought on by the factual reality that many of the most educated and inelligent men and women in the US had a like affair with Stalin’s Communism which in reality was no different than Hitler’s Facism.
In the areas where the author discussion simply about science, I started to wonder about his accuracy since he made so many errors regarding dates, political facts, and his private ideology.
As one of the children who were used as tests, I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about polio, and how it was defeated. I grew up in the 1950’s and still remember the dread that was part of my generation.
Rating: 1 / 5
The quest to find the cure for Polio is one of the most fascinating medical tales in history. How did a disease that was not a major risk compared to Bug, cancer or heart disease capture the nations attention and spend millions if not billions in a search for a cure. The resolution is miraculously in the private sector where the national foundation harnessed the resources of a nation to result in together top scientific talent. The real tale lies behind two scientists, Salk and Sabin, who would race to find a cure. Salk who would win the race with his dead virus vaccine was the vaccine that would be given to most of the nation initially. The newest in vaccine technology and the original research but was being done by Sabin whose vaccine in the end would be used up through the bestow day. This book does a wonderful job of showing the rancor between these two men and the scientists who lined up beside them. It shows FDR’s involvement in helping to launch the national foundation and the first March of Dimes which continues even into today. Highly urge for those who want to see how one disease affected this people and how the struggle to cure it launched our modern pharmaceutical industry.
Rating: 5 / 5
Oshinsky may be a Pulitzer Prize winner, but he has some erroneous in rank in this book. I lived in San Angelo, Texas during this epidemic. The year was 1939 – NOT 1949. I was 10 years ancient that summer and the swimming pool was closed. I remember the sickbay being filled with patients in iron lungs. The tuberculosis sickbay outside of San Angelo was also filled with polio patients. So, shame on you David Oshinsky for not getting your facts right. When I became an adult, I wondered why San Angelo. San Angelo was out in the middle of nowhere with the mesquite trees, cacti, sandstorms, horned toads and there was no pollution unless the wind blew the fumes in from the oil fields. The populace at that time was approximately 55,000 people.
Rating: 3 / 5