Customer Reviews

In Search of the Polio Vaccine (History Channel) (A&E DVD Archives)

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I bought this video for my health class at a university. The students loved it and they said it helped them understand the H1N1 vaccine issues and to be better informed about being a health consumer. Nice blend of history and basic info on how vaccines are developed.

This would be a great work for both science and history enthusiasts. They speak of the problem of polio and how a cure was found. It talks about the creation of the March of Dimes and the Salk Institute. It emphasizes the pivotal role that FDR, a polio victim, played in the effort. (This reminded me of Michael J. Fox and his work on Parkinson's.) The documentary showed white and black polio victims and children getting vaccinations. This is important as during the segregated 1950s, blacks were often not given resources and multiracial images were discouraged on TV as it might upset Southern leaders. Though this work interviews men and women, the only polio victims interviewed were women. This, unfortunately, may make it look like only females got the disease or that only females lived to tell about it decades later. As that is incorrect, some male presence would have been helpful. The work is narrated by a voice that sounds like it's from the times when the news was showed before movies in old-timey theaters. As much as I appreciated learning of the pioneering efforts of Dr. J. Salk and others, they sure did a lot of stuff that would violate biomedical ethics today.