Download The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease AudioBook Free
The epic and controversial story of a major discovery in cell biology that resulted in the conquest of rubella and other devastating diseases. Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children endured crippling birth problems if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there is no vaccine and little knowledge of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using structure extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean skin cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. 2 yrs later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day get rid of homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine as well as others made with those fetal skin cells have protected more than 150 million people in america, almost all them preschoolers. The new cells and the technique of earning them also resulted in vaccines that contain protected billions of folks throughout the world from polio, rabies, poultry pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus. Meredith Wadman's masterful account recovers not only the science of this urgent contest, but also the political roadblocks that practically stopped the researchers. She explains the terrible dilemmas of women that are pregnant exposed to German measles and recounts examining on babies, prisoners, orphans, and the intellectually disabled, which was common in the time. These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using individuals fetal structure in research, during the appearance of big business in campus labs, so that huge changes take place in the laws and practices governing who "owns" research skin cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the storyplot of yet yet another unrecognized female whose skin cells have been used to save countless lives. With another frightening virus imperiling women that are pregnant on the rise today, no medical report could have significantly more human crisis, impact, or urgency today than The Vaccine Contest.
