Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky

From the Publisher

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.

The New York Times - Jerome Groopman

David Oshinsky, a professor of history at the University of Texas, frames the conquest of polio within the cultural upheavals of the time. Polio: An American Story is a rich and illuminating analysis that convincingly grounds the ways and means of modern American research in the response to polio.

Publishers Weekly

A case of polio in Mecca during this year's hajj and the threat of the disease spreading received major attention in the New York Times. This is the year the World Health Organization has targeted for the elimination of polio worldwide, and 2005 is the 50th anniversary of the polio vaccine which publishers are celebrating, perhaps prematurely. PW gave a starred review to Jeffrey Kluger's Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio. Here are three more books on polio.POLIO: An American StoryDavid M. Oshinsky. Oxford Univ., $30 (432p) ISBN 0-19-515294-8. The key protagonists in historian Oshinsky's (Univ. of Texas, Austin) account of the bruising scientific race to create a vaccine are Jonas Salk, a proponent of a killed-virus vaccine, and Albert Sabin, who championed the live-virus vaccine. As revered as these men are in popular culture, Oshinsky records their contemporaries' less complimentary opinions (even Sabin's friends, for instance, describe him as arrogant, egotistical and occasionally cruel). Oshinsky (A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, etc.) looks at social context, too, such as the impact of the March of Dimes campaign on public consciousness and fear of polio. Tying in the role polio victim FDR played in making the effort a national priority, the precursory scientific developments that aided Salk and Sabin's work, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding human testing, Oshinsky sometimes bogs down in details. But all in all, this is an edifying description of one of the most significant public health successes in U.S. history. 46 b&w photos not seen by PW. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Ralph D. Arcari, MSLS, MA, PhD (University of Connecticut Health Center)
Description:The author has successfully written for lay persons a history of the effort to eradicate polio in the United States. Major subjects include disease mechanisms, prevaccination treatments, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and the Salk (killed virus) vs. the Sabin (live virus) vaccine competition.
Purpose:The book's purpose is to provide insight into the political, economic, and scientific factors that resulted in the development of polio vaccines. Providing a window into the personalities and ambitions behind the ostensibly altruistic goal of disease eradication is a worthwhile reality lesson. The author is objective and evenhanded in his portrayal of the rivalries associated with development of a polio prevention vaccine.
Audience:The author is a university-based historian who has written well-received books on non-medical topics. The author is qualified to write for a lay audience, which he has done with this book. He is not qualified to write for medical professionals or biomedical researchers.
Features:After providing background chapters on polio as a disease; its most famous victim, the 32nd president of the United States; and the machinations of polio-related philanthropic foundations, the details of the competition between Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin are fully explored. This book is a straightforward history with well-captioned photographs. A timeline for major polio events and a graph indicating the number of polio victims by year from 1900 - 2000 might have beenuseful.
Assessment:This book complements and updates Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine by Jane S. Smith (William Morrow, 1990) . Both books are written for the nonprofessional. The Smith book, however, as its title indicates, focuses much more extensively on Salk. For a general overview of polio with an assessment of the careers of both Salk and Sabin and an update on the efforts of the WHO to eradicate polio worldwide, the Oshinsky book is recommended.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This well-grounded account documents the quest for a polio vaccine. It reveals professional rivalries and clinical breakthroughs, describes a new era in approaches to public philanthropy, and re-creates the tenor of American culture during the 1940s and '50s, when every city, suburb, and rural community faced potential tragedy from annual outbreaks of the disease. The decades-long contentious relationship between doctors Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk provides the centerpiece of this story. Virologists were split into two main camps: those pursuing the development of an attenuated live-virus vaccine versus those focusing on a killed-virus vaccine, with adherents of the latter believing it would prove not only safer and more effective, but also quicker and cheaper to mass produce. Historical context is provided by detailing how Franklin D. Roosevelt raised public awareness, how his influence led to the emergence of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the March of Dimes, and the subsequent creation of the "poster child" concept as a way of creating grassroots fundraising. The writing dramatically captures both tensions and ethical dimensions inherent in moving from laboratory work with monkeys to human experimentation and, eventually, to implementation of a massive inoculation program reaching 1.3 million schoolchildren in the 1954 Salk vaccine trials. While this part of the story and the public adulation of Salk have been told elsewhere, Oshinsky amplifies the tale with data explaining why the Sabin oral vaccine became the one preeminently adopted internationally, and why the debate has continued. Sixteen pages of arresting black-and-white photographs are included.-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Rating

4 Stars! from Doody

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