Review Summaries

• Readers appreciate the balance between scientific detail and human drama. The wealth of supporting episodes—including photographs of Poster Children and FDR's role in founding the National Foundation—enhances the narrative, and several readers note the poignant final section on Post-Polio Syndrome as particularly memorable.

Reviews

• As a child of the 1950's, I lived through the fear polio created in our culture. The message came from parents, school and television. No child was safe and polio could, and did, strike out of nowhere. Images of little kids living inside iron lungs were terrifying. Small children on crutches with withered legs were a common sight. Patenting the Sun is a remarkable work. The true story behind the headlines shows the unknown conflicts, personality clashes, and unpleasant realities of developing a polio vaccine. The book was published in 1990. Reading it now in 2018, one is reminded how much and how quickly our world has changed. Monkey kidneys were, apparently, necessary for making the vaccine. But do we realize how many monkeys were sacrificed to get there? Do we ever think about the real work of dealing with all these live animals? It is not a pleasant thought. Jane S. Smith does not discuss the ethics of animal-based medical research in her book. But would she place more emphasis on it now in the day of animal rights? This begs the question. Considering the enormous work in bringing a polio vaccine to the public, could we make that happen now? Would we even let it happen? If we faced such a terrifying threat to our children, would we marshall the forces necessary to defeat it? Would modern parents be able to overcome their resistance to animal-based research? Would modern parents be able to overcome their worries, fears or misgivings about vaccinating their children? I have often wondered if modern parents who have never witnessed polio or any other deadly or debilitating disease we now control through vaccination would be less ambiguous about vaccinating if they knew the reality of those diseases. I remember polio and it was terrifying. I am a very senior citizen now and that is something I have never forgotten. I thank Jane S. Smith for her excellent book. It is a valuable history of a time that we should not ignore or forget.

• One of the finest books on Polio. The author tells a riveting, blow-by-blow, account of how Salk and others defeated this frightening, and deadly disease. I was unaware of how the WWII generation and their parents reacted to the news of a polio-stricken child (or adult), and how much terror was evident during that period. There has been nothing like this since. The March of Dimes and millions of Americans paid for the non-living virus that Salk and others provided to the population (today the March of Dimes is raising money to help Premature Babies live and thrive. Having been born in the worse summer of Polio, 1952, I had to ask my Mother (1932) how people reacted. My cousin got a slight dose of polio which paralyzed one side of his mouth, but I didn't know it was polio until I became a teenager. The work by Smith is far and above every biography around, including the new one just printed in May, on Jonas Salk: a Life, which is rife with sexual scandals, which have nothing to do with the science involved in stopping Polio.

• People seem to want to forget just how serious Polio was.

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