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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Offit, Paul A., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cutter Laboratories.

Poliomyelitis--Vaccination--United States--History.

Poliomyelitis.

Vaccines--United States.

Vaccines.

Poliomyelitis vaccine--History.

Poliomyelitis vaccine.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

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

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

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

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786611722104

9780300126051

9781281722102

1281722103

9780300130379

0300130376

OCLC:

952732295