In the 1950s, news of a polio vaccine mesmerized the public. Hansen (American history and the history of medicine, Baruch College) surveys how doctors, diseases, and medical advances were portrayed in popular media images in the late 19th and 20th centuries. A special focus is on Life magazine's role in the popularization of science. The book features images in the popular media (including comic books), and a listing of radio dramas of the 1940s and 1950s about historical medical heroes. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Advances in medicine have brought us the stethoscope, artificial kidneys, and computerized health records. They have also changed the doctor-patient relationship. This book explores how the technologies of medicine are created and how we respond to the problems and successes of their use. Stanley Joel Reiser, MD, walks us through the ways medical innovations exert their influence by discussing a number of selected technologies, including the X-ray, ultrasound, and respirator. Reiser creates a new understanding of thinking about how health care is practiced in the United States and thereby suggests new methods to effectively meet the challenges of living with technological medicine. As healthcare reform continues to be an intensely debated topic in America, Technological Medicine shows us the pros and cons of applying technological solutions health and illness.

For general readers, Woodward, a businessperson and writer interested in science, describes the work of 10 scientists from around the world who have saved the most lives in the twentieth century, some of whom are still living: ophthalmologist Al Sommer, who discovered the importance of Vitamin A supplements; Akira Endo, who discovered statin drugs to lower cholesterol; Bill Foege, who helped eradicate smallpox; David Nalin, who developed oral rehydration therapy; Norman Borlaug, who developed new strains of wheat; and John Enders, Paul Muller, Howard Florey, Frederick Banting, and Karl Landsteiner, who discovered the polio and measles vaccines, DDT, penicillin, insulin, and blood groups, respectively. Some have never been written about in popular literature. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 327-349) and index.

At a time when we are all gravely concerned about the cost of health care, medical technology, paradoxically, is expanding and evolving as never before. Experts agree that we are entering a Golden Age when many clinical treatments that today seem like science fiction will one day become part of a routine trip to the doctor. University of Pennsylvania Medical School Professor William Hanson offers intimate true-life stories that revise our understanding of mortality. From brainwave-operated wheelchairs, to electronic noses that diagnose disease, to surgery by remote-controlled robots and nanoscale machines that will identify and kill individual malignant cells, this is a startling and exciting account of innovations that will directly affect our health.

Martensen, a physician, historian, and ethicist, draws on decades of experience with patients and friends to explore the life cycle of serious illness, from diagnosis to end of life.

The 1964 murder of a nationally known cancer researcher sets the stage for this gripping expose of medical professionals enmeshed in covert government operations over the course of three decades. Following a trail of police records, FBI files, cancer statistics, and medical journals, this revealing book presents evidence of a web of medical secret-keeping that began with the handling of evidence in the JFK assassination and continued apace, sweeping doctors into coverups of cancer outbreaks, contaminated polio vaccine, the arrival of the AIDS virus, and biological weapon research using infected monkeys.

Offit, the chief of the division of infectious diseases and professor of immunologic and infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and professor of pediatrics at the U. of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, brings his expertise to this fascinating and deeply troubling account, which describes the 1955 tragedy when Cutter Laboratories produced a tainted polio vaccine containing the live virus that was subsequently used for innoculations, with lethal results. Offit then relates the court case against Cutter, the precedent the verdict set in the pharmaceutical industry, and the impact it has had on vaccine production in the U.S. since. The account is based on primary documents and interviews with scientists, public officials, victims, and others. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

1. Large print ed.
   
2. "Unabridged"--T.p. Verso.
   
3. Originally published: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004.
   

Kluger reveals the thrilling story of Jonas Salk's quest to conquer polio in this medical adventure full of rivalries and last minute reversals that culminated in one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century.

Jonas Salk's Polio Vaccine is regarded as a veritable medical miracle, for it largely eradicated one of the most feared diseases of the twentieth century. But the story of the vaccine has a dark side, one that has never been fully told before. Between 1954 and 1963, 98 million Americans received polio vaccinations contaminated with a carcinogenic monkey virus, now known as SV40. The government downplayed the incident, and it was generally accepted that although oncogenic to lab animals, SV40 was harmless to humans. But SV40 is showing up in human cancers today, and prominent researchers are demanding a serious public health response to this forgotten polio vaccine contaminant. In a page-turner in the tradition of The Hot Zone, this meticulously researched and powerfully written book takes readers on a side-by-side journey with some of today's most prominent cancer researchers and raises major questions about vaccine policy. Book jacket.