Status Updates From The Vaccine Race: Science, ...

The quote heading the chapter incorrectly (and amusingly) states that "The principle of medical and surgical *mortality*, therefore, consists in never performing on man an experiment which might be harmful to him to any extent..." though it should say "morality" rather than "mortality" lol

This book is jumping around too much for me. The description focuses entirely on rubella, but when you start reading it seems more to be a life history of Hayflick, then it morphs into a history of the Wistar Institute, then of Koprowski and how he managed that Institute, now it's back to being anyone connected at all to the Wistar, and we've spent more time talking about polio and rabies than rubella.

Again, the inconsistency: the author is appalled that safety tests for WI-38 cells were performed on dying cancer patients in a hospital ward, but discouraging abortion after the pregnant mother may have contracted rubella (in a time before accurate testing) is morally unacceptable. Abortion is very clearly seen as the correct option by the author. It's just this weird dichotomy?

Again, befuddling why this is shady. Actively perishing cancer patients in hospital being given embryonic cells to test if the cells could cause cancer is bad just because, I guess??? The author seems to think that the aborted fetuses had it coming, but cancer patients can't possibly give meaningful consent? Henrietta Lacks deserved oodles of compensation but not the fetuses' mothers? I'm just not getting it.

More pearl-clutching & I don't see why? There is nothing in the account here that indicates Koprowski was underhanded in dealing with the parents or going behind their backs; if there were, the author should have included it. As it is, the account states that he asked the parents of the institutionalized children before administering a vaccine he himself had also ingested. Why is this considered shady?

Little too much pearl-clutching happening for my liking....