Meredith Wadman (Author)
Viking
Physical Details: 448 pages
Language: English
“Riveting . . . [The Vaccine Race] invites comparison with Rebecca Skloot's 2007 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”—Nature “This is a story about the war against disease—a war without end—and the development of enormously important vaccines, but in telling that story, in showing how science works, Meredith Wadman reveals much more. I loved this book.” —John M. Barry, New York Times bestselling author of The Great InfluenzaThe epic and controversial story of a major breakthrough in cell biology that led to the conquest of rubella and other devastating diseases. Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using tissue extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine and others made with those fetal cells have protected more than 150 million people in the United States, the vast majority of them preschoolers. The new cells and the method of making them also led to vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus. Meredith Wadman’s masterful account recovers not only the science of this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped the scientists. She describes the terrible dilemmas of pregnant women exposed to German measles and recounts testing on infants, prisoners, orphans, and the intellectually disabled, which was common in the era. These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using human fetal tissue in research, during the arrival of big commerce in campus labs, and as huge changes take place in the laws and practices governing who “owns” research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the story of yet one more unrecognized woman whose cells have been used to save countless lives. With another frightening virus imperiling pregnant women on the rise today, no medical story could have more human drama, impact, or urgency today than The Vaccine Race.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Junaidi;
(2023)
Smallpox vaccination in Nias Island, Indonesia, 1854-1915
(/isis/citation/CBB724936721/)
Book
Kroker, Kenton;
Keelan, Jennifer;
Mazumdar, Pauline M. H.;
(2008)
Crafting Immunity: Working Histories of Clinical Immunology
(/isis/citation/CBB000800177/)
Article
Axelsson, Per;
(2012)
The Cutter Incident and the Development of a Swedish Polio Vaccine, 1952--1957
(/isis/citation/CBB001211096/)
Book
Slaviero, Giuseppe;
(2002)
Michele Buniva introduttore della vaccinazione in Piemonte: scienza e sanità tra rivoluzione e restaurazione
(/isis/citation/CBB000770255/)
Article
Jensen, Niklas Thode;
(2009)
Safeguarding Slaves: Smallpox, Vaccination, and Governmental Health Policies among the Enslaved Population in the Danish West Indies, 1803--1848
(/isis/citation/CBB000932122/)
Article
Gagandip Cheema;
(2015)
Rabies, Anti-Rabic Vaccine and the Raj
(/isis/citation/CBB650925322/)
Article
Bennett, Michael;
(2008)
Jenner's Ladies: Women and Vaccination against Smallpox in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001030395/)
Article
Rodríguez-Ocaña, Esteban;
(2007)
The Social Production of Novelty: Diphtheria Serotherapy, “Herald of the New Medicine”
(/isis/citation/CBB000820144/)
Article
Bresalier, Michael;
(2013)
Fighting Flu: Military Pathology, Vaccines, and the Conflicted Identity of the 1918--19 Pandemic in Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001252196/)
Article
Hawgood, Barbara J.;
(2007)
Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, CIE (1860--1930): Prophylactic Vaccination against Cholera and Bubonic Plague in British India
(/isis/citation/CBB000831622/)
Book
Wailoo, Keith;
Livingston, Julie;
Epstein, Steven G.;
(2010)
Three Shots at Prevention: The HPV Vaccine and the Politics of Medicine's Simple Solutions
(/isis/citation/CBB001031343/)
Article
Oscar Javier Maldonado Castañeda;
(2021)
Connective data: Markov chain models and the datafication of cervical cancer and HPV vaccination in Colombia
(/isis/citation/CBB001445188/)
Chapter
Emmanuel Betta;
(2021)
«L’ultima bufera antivaccinista». Il dibattito sulla vaccinazione in Italia tra XIX e XX secolo
(/isis/citation/CBB678542069/)
Article
Lugo-Márquez, Sara;
(2013)
Una perspectiva heterodoxa de la historia de los medicamentos. Dinámicas de inclusión-exclusión de los sueros antituberculosos Ravetllat-Pla en la España del primer tercio del Siglo XX
(/isis/citation/CBB001320246/)
Chapter
Paolo Riccardo Oliva;
(2018)
“I bambini di Gruaro erano un esperimento”. Storia e memoria di una strage (1933-2015)
(/isis/citation/CBB728533534/)
Chapter
Cristina Munno;
(2018)
La lotta al vaiolo e le pratiche antivaiolose nel Settecento e nell’Ottocento veneto
(/isis/citation/CBB610612636/)
Article
Brazelton;
(April 2019)
Engineering Health: Technologies of Immunization in China's Wartime Hinterland, 1937–45
(/isis/citation/CBB731103057/)
Article
Moon, Mira;
(2014)
A Comparative Study on Koii (Public Doctor) System and Its Effect on Public Health in Colonial Taiwan and Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB001422420/)
Book
Link, Kurt;
(2005)
Vaccine Controversy: The History, Use, and Safety of Vaccinations
(/isis/citation/CBB000650366/)
Article
Bennett, Michael J.;
(2009)
Smallpox and Cowpox under the Southern Cross: The Smallpox Epidemic of 1789 and the Advent of Vaccination in Colonial Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB000932120/)
Be the first to comment!