Book dossier

Selling Science

by Stephen E. Mawdsley

"In Selling Science : Polio and the Promise of Gamma Globulin, medical historian Stephen E. Mawdsley examines the untold story of the first effort to control polio prior to the development of the Salk vaccine. In the early 1950s, Dr. William McD. Hammon and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis launched a pioneering medical experiment on a previously untried scale. Conducted on over 55,000 healthy children in Texas, Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska, this landmark study attempted to assess the safety and effectiveness of a blood component, 'gamma globulin' (which is derived by a process known as 'fractionation') to prevent paralytic polio. Although the study was condemned by many prominent health professionals, harbored potential risks, and returned dubious results, it was perceived as a triumph and used to justify a national immunization program from 1953 to 1954"--