Stephen E. Mawdsley. Selling Science

The history of polio is deeply interwoven with the history of biomedicine in the twentieth century, from establishing the threatened child as a figure of medical philanthropy to underwriting the expansion of early molecular biology to defining the needs of clinical trials and inspiring debates over the nature of rehabilitation and disability. Numerous books have chronicled this influence, but more often than not they have emphasized the emergence of vaccination as the critical moment in the polio story. However, why were so many thousands of parents willing to submit their children to the first tests of the Salk vaccine? In Selling Science Stephen Mawdsley approaches polio from a different angle, following the history of the purified blood fraction gamma globulin, an antibody. The immune-system boosting properties of gamma globulin were seen as providing a means of protection against infectious disease, and during the Second World War the American military expanded the production of gamma globulin. After the war, physicians familiar with the antibody suggested that it might also protect children at risk of summer polio outbreaks. However, the process of evaluating its efficacy proved contentious as well as difficult; a sizable population of parents, children, and doctors in the presence of a polio outbreak would need to be convinced to accept a treatment with no known effectiveness or safety, and a number of risks.

Antibody · Environmental health · Family medicine · Gamma globulin · Outbreak · Polio vaccine · Poliomyelitis · Population · Smallpox · Vaccination · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Science and Medicine · Immunology · Medicine · Virology · Pediatrics