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Selling Science
Polio and the Promise of Gamma Globulin
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Stephen E. Mawdsley
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2016
About this book
Today, 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.
Author / Editor information
STEPHEN E. MAWDSLEY is the Isaac Newton–Ann Johnston Research Fellow at Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge in England.
Reviews
"Historians of science, scholars of science and technology studies and historians of medicine and public health will benefit greatly from this new addition to the polio story."
— Social History of Medicine"Mawdsley tells the riveting and forgotten history of a massive human experiment, conducted in the hopes of preventing polio. It provides a sober reminder of the limits of research ethics and scientific precaution in the face of a dread disease."
— Angela Creager, author of Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine"Mawdsley uses the enthusiasm for Gamma Globulin and the ultimate clinical trial as a vehicle to explore more broadly mid-twentieth-century attitudes towards risk, scientific transparency, double-blind clinical trials, and the power of fundraising and marketing over science. Selling Science is well-written, clearly argued, and extensively researched."
— Daniel J. Wilson, author of Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors"Drawing on oral history interviews, medical journals, newspapers, meeting minutes, and private institutional records, Mawdsley reveals the intertwined social, political, ideological, and institutional actors involved in the construction of public consent for experimental medical research in the Cold War era... Mawdsley's presentation of the untold case study of GG trials in the 1950s is an important contribution to scholarship focused on the sociological and political constructions of public consent and scientific success."
— Canadian Bulletin of Medical History"In Selling Science Stephen Mawdsley approaches polio from a different angle, following the history of the purified blood fraction gamma globulin, an antibody. As Mawdsley compellingly shows, the gamma globulin field trials marked the opening of a new chapter in the social history of biomedicine, one in which the methods of persuasion joined the methods of medicine in the structuring of clinical trials."
— The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences"An excellent new book."
— Bulletin of the History of Medicine"Mawdsley's book is a cautionary tale and leaves readers to consider the provocative assertion that 'the appearance of progress mattered.'"
— ChoiceTopics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Illustrations
ix -
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Acknowledgments
xi -
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Abbreviations
xiii -
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Introduction
1 -
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Chapter 1. Forging Momentum
14 -
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Chapter 2. Building Consent for a Clinical Trial
32 -
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Chapter 3. Marketing and Mobilization
53 -
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Chapter 4. The Pilot Study
76 -
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Chapter 5. Operation Marbles and Lollipops
98 -
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Chapter 6. The National Experiment
122 -
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Notes
143 -
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Bibliography
185 -
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Index
207
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 21, 2019
eBook ISBN:
9780813574417
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780813574417
Keywords for this book
vaccines; early 1950s; National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis; medical experiment; blood component; gamma globulin; paralytic polio; science; healthcare; politics; marketing; deception; oral history interviews; medical journals; newspapers; meeting minutes; private institutional records; ethics; scientific conduct; power of marketing; shaping public opinion; medical experimentation; the Salk vaccine trial; medical intervention; Stephen E. Mawdsley; First large clinical trial; compromise; coercion; federally sanctioned mass immunization; experiment; unethical
Audience(s) for this book
For universities and colleges of further and higher education
