Research Catalog
The Cutter incident : how America's first polio vaccine led to the growing vaccine crisis
- Title
- The Cutter incident : how America's first polio vaccine led to the growing vaccine crisis / Paul A. Offit.
- Author
- Offit, Paul A.
- Publication
- New Haven : Yale University Press, [2005], ©2005.
Items in the Library & Off-site
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | QR189.5.P6 O44 2005 | Off-site |
Holdings
Details
- Description
- xii, 238 pages : illustrations; 25 cm
- Summary
- "Vaccines have saved more lives than any other single medical advance. Yet today there is a critical shortage of vaccines - and only four companies make them. What events led to this growing medical crisis? This book recounts how a devastating episode in 1955 - when, at the height of the polio epidemic, a vaccine made by Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, California, inadvertently contained the live, virulent virus - resulted in liability laws that have discouraged companies from developing and producing vaccines to this day." "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 A. 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 infected with the live virus: 70,000 became ill, 200 were permanently paralyzed, and 10 died." "Dr. Offit explores how, as a consequence of this 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. He also considers the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, created by Congress in 1986 to help protect both patients and pharmaceutical companies, and builds a case for applying this solution to other areas of health care that are currently staggering under the weight of injury lawsuits."--BOOK JACKET.
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Popular Work.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-227) and index.
- ISBN
- 0300108648 (cloth : alk. paper)
- LCCN
- 2005040105
- OCLC
- ocm58919629
- SCSB-5230384
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries