The Cutter Incident
eBook - PDF

The Cutter Incident

How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis

  1. 256 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Cutter Incident

How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis

About this book

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, thathas 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.

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Yes, you can access The Cutter Incident by Paul A. Offit in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

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