Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine

In 1905, few Americans had ever heard of polio, the mysterious new disease that seemed to arrive so suddenly at the beginning of the century, but for the next 50 years it stalked the nightmares of every parent. Then, in the spring of 1954, several million people eagerly volunteered their children as test subjects for a new vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. PATENTING THE SUN makes real to us the people & events behind the development of Salk's vaccine. Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt's private battle against paralysis, PATENTING THE SUN describes how a small lab experiment became a huge national event. The testing of the vaccine was the largest field trial ever held, the greatest peacetime mobilization of civilians in American history, & the most eagerly observed & heavily promoted scientific program until the space launches a decade later. The announcement in 1955 that the vaccine worked became a landmark in 20th century history, one of the few public events that burned itself into the consciousness of the world because the news was good. Based on over 100 hours of interviews & 5 years of research into scientific & historical sources (including Salk's unpublished papers), PATENTING THE SUN is a chronicle of people--of the shifting alliances of scientists, politicians, businessmen, and volunteers who took the campaign against polio from Warm Springs Georgia, to the White House & on to the living rooms & classrooms of America. It tells the stories of Jonas Salk, a promising young scientist who became an overnight international hero, Dr. Albert Sabin, the senior researcher at work on a competing vaccine, and Basil O'Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The result is the suspenseful, supremely readable human drama that lay behind what many saw as the greatest medical triumph of their age, & a richly detailed narrative that communicates the immediacy & spirit of science as no formal account has done since the Double Helix.