Selling Science: Polio and the Promise of Gamma GlobulinToday, when many parents seem reluctant to have their children vaccinated, even with long proven medications, the Salk vaccine trial, which enrolled millions of healthy children to test an unproven medical intervention, seems nothing short of astonishing. In Selling Science, medical historian Stephen E. Mawdsley recounts the untold story of the first large clinical trial to control polio using healthy children—55,000 healthy children—revealing how this long-forgotten incident cleared the path for Salk’s later trial. Mawdsley describes how, in the early 1950s, Dr. William 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 assessed the safety and effectiveness of a blood component, gamma globulin, to prevent paralytic polio. The value of the proposed experiment was questioned by many prominent health professionals as it harbored potential health risks, but as Mawdsley points out, compromise and coercion moved it forward. And though the trial returned dubious results, it was presented to the public as a triumph and used to justify a federally sanctioned mass immunization study on thousands of families between 1953 and 1954. Indeed, the concept, conduct, and outcome of the GG study were sold to health professionals, medical researchers, and the public at each stage. At a time when most Americans trusted scientists, their mutual encounter under the auspices of conquering disease was shaped by politics, marketing, and at times, deception. Drawing on oral history interviews, medical journals, newspapers, meeting minutes, and private institutional records, Selling Science sheds light on the ethics of scientific conduct, and on the power of marketing to shape public opinion about medical experimentation. |
Contents
Building Consent for a Clinical Trial | |
Marketing and Mobilization | |
The Pilot Study | |
Operation Marbles and Lollipops | |
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Selling Science: Polio and the Promise of Gamma Globulin Stephen E. Mawdsley No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
AJPH antibodies August August 25 Basil O’Connor blood fraction chapter clinical trial Committee on Immunization Coriell Cross Gamma Globulin DeKleine disease doctors Ducas enrollment Evaluation of Red experiment families field trial Folder GG for polio GG FT GG study Gudakunst Hammon and NFIP Harris County Harry Weaver health officers Houston Human ibid Infantile Paralysis injection clinics inoculation JAMA January Jonas E Jonas Salk Joseph Stokes Journal July June Kumm last viewed March of Dimes Measles medical research Meeting on Gamma MSCL National Foundation national program NFIP officials Oshinsky paralytic polio parents participation Passive Immunization pediatric physicians pilot study polio epidemic polio provocation polio researchers Polio Vaccine Poliomyelitis Prophylaxis protocol Provo Provo Daily Herald public health public relations Records henceforth Red Cross Gamma Salk Papers Science scientific scientists September Sioux City Stokes Jr trial administrators Utah County Virus volunteers William McD York