1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910818252603321

Autore

Offit Paul A.

Titolo

The Cutter incident : how America's first polio vaccine led to the growing vaccine crisis / / Paul A. Offit

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, Connecticut : , : Yale University Press, , [2005]

©2005

ISBN

1-281-72210-3

9786611722104

0-300-13037-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (256 p.)

Disciplina

614.5490973

Soggetti

Poliomyelitis - Vaccination - United States - History

Vaccines - United States

Poliomyelitis vaccine - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages [225]-227) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Prologue -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Little White Coffins -- Chapter 2. Back to the Drawing Board -- Chapter 3. The Grand Experiment -- Chapter 4. How Does It Feel to Be a Killer of Children? -- Chapter 5. A Man-Made Polio Epidemic -- Chapter 6. What Went Wrong at Cutter Laboratories -- Chapter 7. Cutter in Court -- Chapter 8. Cigars, Parasites, and Human Toes -- Chapter 9. Death for the Lambs -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Vaccines have saved more lives than any other single medical advance. Yet today only four companies make vaccines, and there is a growing crisis in vaccine availability. Why has this happened? This remarkable book recounts for the first time a devastating episode in 1955 at Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, California, that has led many pharmaceutical companies to abandon vaccine manufacture. Drawing on interviews with public health officials, pharmaceutical company executives, attorneys, Cutter employees, and victims of the vaccine, as well as on previously unavailable archives, Dr. Paul Offit offers a full account of the Cutter disaster. He describes the nation's relief when the polio



vaccine was developed by Jonas Salk in 1955, the production of the vaccine at industrial facilities such as the one operated by Cutter, and the tragedy that occurred when 200,000 people were inadvertently injected with live virulent polio virus: 70,000 became ill, 200 were permanently paralyzed, and 10 died. Dr. Offit also explores how, as a consequence of the tragedy, one jury's verdict set in motion events that eventually suppressed the production of vaccines already licensed and deterred the development of new vaccines that hold the promise of preventing other fatal diseases.