Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant. There was no vaccine and little understanding of the disease itself. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, USA, using tissue extracted from an aborted foetus from Sweden, produced the biological environment needed to create vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would effectively wipe out home-grown rubella. The cell lines that these scientists derived and the methods they pioneered have since been used to vaccinate billions of people around the world, protecting them from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus.
Meredith Wadman’s masterful account explains not only the science behind this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped it. She describes the terrible dilemmas of pregnant women exposed to German measles and explores the ethics of testing on infants, prisoners, orphans and the intellectually disabled.
These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using human foetal tissue in research, during the arrival of big commerce in campus labs, and as huge changes take place in the laws governing who ‘owns’ research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the story of yet one more unrecognized woman whose cells have been used to save countless lives.