| Abstract |
The epic and controversial story of a major breakthrough in cell biology
that beat back German measles and other devastating diseases. 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 massive 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 masterful 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.
With another frightening virus imperiling pregnant women on the rise
today, no medical story could have more human drama, impact, or urgency
today than The Vaccine Race.
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