Stephen E. Mawdsley. Selling Science: Polio and the Promise of Gamma Globulin

Abstract

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?