The vaccine race : science, politics, and the human costs of defeating disease
(Book)

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Status
Livonia Public Library - Adult Nonfiction
614.52 WAD
1 available

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Livonia Public Library - Adult Nonfiction614.52 WADAvailable

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Format
Book
Physical Desc
436 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Language
English

Notes

Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 415-419) and index.
Description
Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using tissue extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine and others made with those fetal cells have protected more than 150 million people in the United States, the vast majority of them preschoolers. The new cells and the method of making them also led to vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles, and adenovirus. Meredith Wadman's account recovers not only the science of this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped the scientists. She describes the terrible dilemmas of pregnant women exposed to German measles and recounts testing on infants, prisoners, orphans, and the intellectually disabled, which was common in the era. These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using human fetal tissue in research, during the arrival of big commerce in campus labs, and as huge changes take place in the laws and practices governing who "owns" research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the story of yet one more unrecognized woman whose cells have been used to save countless lives.

Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Wadman, M. (2017). The vaccine race: science, politics, and the human costs of defeating disease . Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Wadman, Meredith. 2017. The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease. New York, New York: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Wadman, Meredith. The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease New York, New York: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Wadman, Meredith. The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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