Book Rec: Polio, An American Story

A review that is much more relevant than I would prefer

I read in shock last week RFK Jr’s lawyer was trying to get the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine. Upon reading, I learned that his law firm has made a similar petition for a dozen vaccines and has been doing so for years. It’s less a new story so much as new spotlight on something that’s been going on for a while.

Bonus for me: Kathryn Edwards is also the name of a scientist at Vanderbilt who specializes in vaccines and even though I have never met her, I do get a little joy when I see her name in print fighting good fights like this one. Kathryns, assemble! Her quote in the NYT piece is good too. Polio isn’t eradicated, which means, as she says “It’s an airplane ride away.”

I truly wish I could recommend this book under different circumstances when it was much less relevant or necessary, but I put it to you all the same: Polio, An American Story.

Here’s my affiliate link to the book, which is on my Kedits Reads shelf, better than high school history.

I’m not sure how much detail I need to give. Polio was a pretty terrifying disease in the 20th century. It spread through water, it was more likely to infect in rural areas than urban ones, it produced lifelong heartbreaking disability, it infected children at high rates…and we cured it!

But those four words take on so much; I get why Oshinsky subtitled his book “An American Story.”

Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin are in a race to find the cure first, but more interesting than the rivalry is the deep, deep anti-semitism that hounds them. Some of the most revelatory parts of the book to me were Salk’s spurning, again and again, by a WASPy science community. Keep in mind, he comes of age during the brutal quota period of American academia, where schools like Yale, Princeton, and Harvard would cap the number of Jews allowed in as students—things like, no more than 5 a year, even if they were half of all the applicants.

Then there’s the disease itself, which is much less threatening in raw numbers than other viruses and diseases circulating at the time. Even at its height, polio was relatively rare. But it was scary to a particular group of people—suburban middle class moms—and fundraisers and advocates were incredibly savvy at promoting awareness in a way that the US hadn’t seen before around public health. Beating polio becomes the American thing to do, the March of Dimes raises millions of dollars from millions of people, and the vaccine trial includes a million children who volunteer to be “Polio Pioneers.”

FDR of course has polio, he contracted it at a boy scout camp when he was about to turn 40. And even though he should be burnished as the first visibly disabled president, fostering a national conversation about disability and not just polio, it’s not talked about that way.

For what it’s worth, I also recommend this book because it is an easy, quick read. It’s not a doorstopper tome that weighs down your bag in a way that feels like it is judging you for not being a better reader.

Here’s my affiliate link again.

ps. Among my other recommended books is Janesville, which is ALSO subtitled “An American Story.” This has put me on the hunt for all books subtitled similarly and not for nothing I was less productive at work today than I thought I would be.