Polio: An American Story [Hardcover]

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!

The 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Best History Book Polio: An American Story is so much more. Author David M. Oshinsky looks at the public health menace of polio but also notes it was the first disease to benefit from a good P.R. machine. While it was a menace more people died of other diseases in the same time frame. What made polio so important was that it had a surviving public face--those children and adults in iron lungs coupled with the fact that it was the first to have a mobilized force in the form of the March of Dimes to raise public awareness and public philantrophy.

Oshinsky gives thumb nail sketches of the political and public circumstances that drove John D. Rockefeller to give buckets of money to develop a U.S. equivelant of the Pasteur Institute. He also looks at the research, deadends and, ultimately, the rivalry between the three men key behind the race for a cure--Sabin, Salk and Koproski all of whom took slightly different approaches to achieve the same end. We also get a rare glimpse into the private feud between Sabin and Salk. The author paints these heroes of the modern age with their feet of clay intact including their petty arguments and jealousy about each persons accomplishments. The author provides an unflinching portrait of a desperate race driven as much by politics as science and the some of the snafus that effected it. This includes the 200 deaths due to contaminated Salk vaccine that was produced without proper supervision at Cutter Labs in Berekely, California.

We also discover little details for example how the direct-to-consumer advertising effected the anti-septic culture in a negative way we live in. Companies sent out advertisements using fear of disease to entice people to purchase items such as toilet paper, Listerine (which takes its name from Dr. Lister one of the earliest users of anti-septics in the surgery arena)to the use of DDT to kill germs and flies (who were believed to spread polio). It's a fascinating glimpse into a major event that formed our bacterial anti-biotic resistant culture and paved the way for further infection by reducing children's exposure to bacteria and viruses they might otherwise have developed resistance to over time.

Well documented, smartly written with a breezy prose style that doesn't short change the complex subject matter Polio: An American Story mixes history, science and the mystery of the cause of polio and cure all into a fascinating story about the world of the 20th century. Illustrated with photos that capture the climate of the era I'd highly recommend Oshinsky's book.

As part of the generation of Americans who has grown up without the fear and/or experience of having contracted polio, I found Dr. Oshinsky's research into this epidemic a very enlightening read. Imagining what a world without vaccines was like is very chilling.

Coupled with then-constructions about people with disabilities and medical technology limitations, the specter of polio captured the imaginations and fears of whole communities. During the summer months, people were advised to be very careful about where they swam unless they too had wanted to end up with polio. The March of Dimes inadvertently helped to publicize people with disabilities even while the thrust of their founding campaign against Polio was eradication of the disease through a vaccine.

The development of that vaccine brings us into 1954, approximately 10 years after Roosevelt's own death. Jonas Salk made America's first polio vaccine using a killed-virus sample, and this product remained a virtual favorite for many years afterward. Although Albert Sabin's live-virus vaccination soon became the preferred model, it says a lot that the Salk product has reemerged to finally conquer polio once and for all.

Because society naturally has a tendency to anoint public figures and thus remove them from having any flaw, I actually did appreciate his research into the personal character traits of the scientists. Although these men ultimately helped to save America, they were personally imperfect. I feel this humanizing approach makes them more accessible figures to me and other readers.

Presidential action from FDR was instrumental in encouraging the eradication of polio in America. Now as this highly-readable book is released, the United Nations has set an equally ambitious goal of eradicating the world of polio by 2008.