The Cutter Incident
How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis
1 of 1 copy available
Vaccines have saved more lives than any other single medical advance. Yet today only four companies make vaccines, and there is a growing crisis in vaccine availability. Why has this happened? This remarkable book recounts for the first time a devastating episode in 1955 at Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, California, that has led many pharmaceutical companies to abandon vaccine manufacture.
Drawing on interviews with public health officials, pharmaceutical company executives, attorneys, Cutter employees, and victims of the vaccine, as well as on previously unavailable archives, Dr. Paul Offit offers a full account of the Cutter disaster. He describes the nation's relief when the polio vaccine was developed by Jonas Salk in 1955, the production of the vaccine at industrial facilities such as the one operated by Cutter, and the tragedy that occurred when 200,000 people were inadvertently injected with live virulent polio virus: 70,000 became ill, 200 were permanently paralyzed, and 10 died. Dr. Offit also explores how, because of the tragedy, one jury's verdict set in motion events that eventually suppressed the production of vaccines already licensed and deterred the development of new vaccines that hold the promise of preventing other fatal diseases.
Praise for The Cutter Incident
"Offit . . . has written a fascinating and highly readable account of the development of the polio vaccine. He also offers a compelling plea for a strengthened law to provide relief to companies that produce vaccines so that our nation may be afforded the most cost-effective and long-lasting form of prevention against many infectious diseases—an effective vaccine." —Stanley Goldfarb, New York Post
"The best account you will ever read about the interplay between big drug companies and bigger government." —Peter Huber, Forbes
"The book is very well written and reads almost like a detective story, with a nice balance between personal anecdotes and new materials not discussed in other accounts of the Cutter incident. It draws on meticulous archival documentation and on interviews with public health officers, pharmaceutical company executives, Cutter employees, and victims of the partially inactivated vaccine. . . . An important and valuable contribution." —Nadav Davidovitch, Isis
"Well written and easily understood, yet balanced with enough technical detail for medical professionals to read informatively cover to cover." —Journal of the American Medical Association
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 24, 2022 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780300130379
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780300130379
- File size: 2085 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 5, 2005
After a wave of books celebrating the 50th anniversary of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, Offit's troubling account is the first to focus on a largely forgotten aspect—one with negative repercussions 50 years later. In a nuanced examination of a complex story, Offit, a professor of pediatrics and expert in infectious diseases, relates how Cutter Laboratories, one of several pharmaceutical companies licensed to produce Salk's killed-virus vaccine, shipped many lots of vaccine containing live virus, creating a mini polio epidemic: 40,000 children became ill, 200 were permanently paralyzed, 10 died. Offit carefully examines how Cutter was and was not responsible: tests for detecting live virus at the time were simply not sensitive enough, but Cutter departed from Salk's safe production protocols. And while the company knew there was a problem, it failed to notify the government's oversight agency. Cutter faced costly lawsuits that have resulted, according to Offit, in today's vaccine crisis: shortages (think of last year's flu vaccine) due to pharmaceutical companies' unwillingness to risk testing and producing vaccines and face possible litigation. In another example of the law of unintended consequences, Offit shows how "the Cutter Incident" led Salk's vaccine to be replaced by a less safe one: Sabin's live-virus vaccine. -
October 15, 2005
Pointing to recent shortages of flu and several childhood-disease vaccines as well as the dearth of new vaccines, Offit says that pharmaceutical companies are staying away from vaccine research and production in droves. He lays responsibility for this lamentable situation on the outcome of a court battle now 50 years old and the subsequent snowballing of legal and legislative reactions. Beginning with a tragic 1955 error at Cutter Laboratories--one of the first companies producing the Salk polio vaccine--that caused polio in thousands, Offit maps the way the courts have handled pharmaceutical liability, the way juries have awarded damages, the federal Vaccines for Children Program and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, and other influences on vaccine development. Those trends and agencies have so inflated the costs and risks relative to probable profits that vaccine production has been discouraged. Offit concludes that, because the U.S. has made risks high and profits negligible, many more children will suffer illnesses that can be prevented.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)
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