All who lived in the early 1950s remember the fear
of polio and the elation felt when a successful vaccine
was found. Now 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. Here is a
remarkable portrait of America in the early 1950s, using
the widespread panic over polio to shed light on our
national obsessions and fears. 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. Indeed,
the competition was marked by a deep-seated ill will
among the researchers that remained with them until
their deaths. The author 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. As backdrop to
this feverish research, Oshinsky offers an insightful
look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis,
which was founded in the 1930s by FDR and Basil
O'Connor. The National Foundation revolutionized
fundraising and the perception of disease in America,
using "poster children" and the famous March of Dimes to
raise hundreds of millions of dollars from a vast army
of contributors (instead of a few well-heeled
benefactors), creating the largest research and
rehabilitation network in the history of medicine. The
polio experience also 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 spectre of polio, like the spectre
of the atomic bomb, soon became a cloud of terror over
daily life.
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