Customer Reviews

Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio

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This is wonderfully compelling story of the race to cure polio, a disease that--if you're old enough to remember--lingered in the minds of terrified mothers and children everywhere fifty years ago. It also offers an indepth look into the life of Jonas Salk, a fascinating man whose drive to cure this disease was remarkable. Well-told, exciting--tough to put down. For fans of the The Great Influenza and The Greatest Generation.

"Splendid Solution" is a splendid book. From the opening page, the reader is swept into the world of Jonas Salk and the race to find a vaccine to prevent polio.

If you're a baby boomer, you'll remember getting the Salk or Sabin vaccine -- and marvel that our largest generation of children were protected by the efforts of Dr. Salk and his research team. If you're a parent of a baby boomer, you'll relive the horrors of summers in the 30s, 40s and 50s when the scourge of polio raced through the nation - striking at every level of society - even a future president - FDR.

Like "THE HOT ZONE" -- this is a riveting read! Highly recommended!

On page 318 of this book, Jonas Salk is quoted as saying, "When you're arguing for an unpopular idea, there are three stages of truth. First, your opponents say it can't be true. Next they say if it's true, it can't be very important. Finally they say well, we've known it all along." To me, Splendid Solution does an excellent job of telling the story of Salk arguing for his unpopular idea, the eventually successful Salk vaccine.

To me as on outsider, the world of science seems like it should be very fact-based and black and white. The more I read about the history of science, however, the more I learn how far that is from the truth. Some reviews complain this book doesn't have enough of the science of vaccination or epidemiology, but I think Kluger's decision to focus his story specifically on the politics of gaining acceptance within the scientific community for a brilliant idea makes a great book.

Kluger lays out the entire process of funding, scientific conferences, personality conflicts and personal hierarchy within scientific circles. It's brilliant in that it shows both the strengths and the weaknesses of the system. Further, I found reading the book caused me to take stock of my own preconceived notions and thought processes to think about what great new ideas I might be ignoring because they didn't fit my own preconceived notions.

A great book for anyone who is interested in understanding a little more about what goes on behind the scenes in scientific circles, or who would like to understand the process by which the Salk vaccine was vetted and developed.

Kluger writes a riveting account of the search for an effective immunization for an annual epidemic plaguing society through the first half of the twentieth century. He skillfully weaves the story of Salk's quest within its social background. Reading it brought me back to my childhood in the 1950's and my parents' anxieties each summer as newspapers published counts of local and national polio cases.

In 2005 the U.S. celebrates its 50th anniversary of the first national polio vaccination program which helped eradicate the disease in this country: it's hard to believe a generation is growing up without ever having known the ravages of polio. New York Times writer Jeffrey Kluger's Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk And The Conquest Of Polio is both a biography of Dr. Salk and his search for the vaccine and a social history of polio. Chapters based on exclusive interviews with his friends and colleagues and access to his private papers provides new details on Salk's life and career, setting this life in context of both his times and contemporaries.

i found the first chapter of this book quite boring, full of uninteresting detail, but it got better later, though it may be that i just got used to it. as it is, it still wasn't a particularly good book.

one of my complaints is how kluger completely idealizes Salk. for instance, at one point he refuses to tell his rival details about his work because "it seemed somehow wrong to share what he knew with one scientist before revealing it to all the others." come on. it was proffessional rivalry.

another thing that annoyed me was kluger over-analyzing various details that didn't seem to mean anything. he ascribed intentions to various unimportant acts that for one thing, he has no proof of, and for another, are boring to listen to. and we never really get any idea of Salk's personality, which makes the book rather boring, as salk is, after all, the main character. in his acknowledgements, Kluger calls him "a tectonic force in scientific history." bull. all he did was develop a vaccine with already-created methods.

and the details. the book would probably have been way too short if kluger hadn't put in all the details, but still. he spends pages talking about trivial things like how someone decided on the specific date for a conference. sometimes it's interesting details that make a book come alive... but these aren't interesting details.

so i guess the whole problem with the book was that it wasn't alive. the man it's about is a flat, unknown character, and the plot is too long-drawn out and not interesting enough. it wasn't *so* boring, i got through it easily enough, but when i was done i couldn't help thinking what a waste of my time.

Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio is the fascinating if sometimes overly exhaustive story of Jonas Salk's crusade to develop a vaccine against poliomyelitis. Author Jeffrey Kluger sets the scene with the terror and helplessness felt by parents in the face of this dreadful disease and then covers the drive to conquer it in the 1950s.

Polio, formerly known as infantile paralysis, is caused by an enterovirus and spreads most efficiently by way of the gastrointestinal tract--that is, through water and food contamination. Before the early twentieth century it spread freely and there was a natural pool of immunity in infants and young children; sanitation improvements reduced this immunity and allowed seasonal epidemics to sweep from south to north in the United States every spring and summer. These epidemics peaked in the U.S in 1952, when 58,000 cases were identified, with over 3,000 deaths and 21,000 left paralyzed to some extent. Polio season was an annual scourge.

The country's most famous polio sufferer was Franklin D. Roosevelt, though ironically it is now believed that his disease was something else entirely. Guillain-Barre syndrome's loss was polio's gain, because FDR founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) which raised millions through its March of Dimes campaigns for polio treatment and research.

Jonas Salk took over the directorship of the Virus Lab at the University of Pittsburgh in 1947, and began work on the typing of the polio virus. It was eventually determined that there are three distinct types of the disease, and a successful vaccine would need to raise antibodies to all three types. Salk's lab was first past the post with a successful, safe vaccine, but many scientists contributed to the race. Vaccines can be made from viruses killed with formalin, or from a live weakened strain; Salk favored the killed virus and in 1952 his lab produced a vaccine that performed well against all three types of polio in limited trials. After further work, in 1954 the NFIP conducted a huge "observed control" trial involving 1.8 million children across the U.S. Finally in April 1955, the NFIP announced that the vaccine was safe and effective, and massive production and distribution began.

The science in SPLENDID SOLUTION is very well expressed and accessible to non-virologists; I found the lab saga and the history of the disease to be the most satisfying parts of the book. Kluger devotes many pages to the political infighting among the scientists and within the NFIP, and to the family life of Jonas Salk. Interesting as it all was, the polio story is the star of the book. The epilogue briefly covers the licensing of Albert Sabin's live oral vaccine in 1961, the worldwide impact of both vaccines, the reason that the U.S. and Great Britain went back to the inactivated killed virus, and the World Health Organization's campaign to eradicate polio entirely. I'm sorry there wasn't room in the book for more coverage of these interesting topics; Atul Gawande's BETTER: A SURGEON'S NOTES ON PERFORMANCE has an excellent chapter on the WHO initiative.

There are many books about Jonas Salk and the conquest of polio. This is the first I've read, and it was fascinating. I recommend it if you are interested in the cultural landscape of the mid-twentieth century in the United States. The focused and well-funded race to save us from polio is a story worth the telling.

Linda Bulger, 2009

What stood out to me, while reading this book was the character of the man, Jonas Salk.
Not only was he a genius, but he was a true humanitarian, as well. There is no indication whatsoever
that he was looking to make money for himself.

He spent countless hours looking for a solution to this hellish epidemic. He did his research in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania surrounded by the finest men and women in the scientific community. Astoundingly, their dedication was as profound as his own. The people injected first themselves, and in the case of Jonas Salk, his family with the vaccine when he was first satisfied with its effectiveness and safety.

What drew me to read this book was Salks work at the Watson Home for Crippled children. I have reason to be interested in that facility, which is no more. The Watson facility is now a Health South rehab hospital. There is now a Watson umbrella that encompasses several educational facilities for children with different types of special needs . I found that i was so much more in the man as I read.

This is not a read for everyone, but perhaps if you know someone who was affected by this disease before Salk's vaccine was able to make it a part of history, instead of current reality, you might want to read it. If you enjoy reading about great humanitarians, by all means, read this book. If you never feel compelled to read it, take a moment to silently give honor to a good, truly good man.

This tale of science, competition, personalities and politics provides one a splendid base for understanding of processes of the past in order to help in understanding the present.
With my knowledge of viruses as a health care professional, I found the intersection of science with egos and policy somewhat disturbing but not surprising. According to Kluger, Dr. Salk was a selfless scientist who prioritized work above family. The book nearly slanders Dr. Sabin. I have no basis for judgment other than this book, however. This is only one side of the story.
One may find himself extrapolating to the current threat of pandemic Avian Influenza. Splendid Solution provides insight into the process, which according to NIH officials may take up to five years, whereby we may have an Avian Flu vaccine.
Drs. Salk and Sabin (with their assistants) did more than protect us from Polio. In the end, it was the combination of their discoveries that conquered Polio. The book implies that Salk's vaccine may have conquered it alone or more quickly had politics not intervened. But we will never know. We do know that the combination worked.
They laid the groundwork for our protection from threats yet unknown. They are both true American heroes.

The discovery of the polio vaccine seems a musty tale to tackle in this post-modern, giga-bitten age. But Jeffrey Kluger, a staff writer at Time magazine and coauthor with commander Jim Lovell of Lost Moon (the inspiration for the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13), has a decent excuse: 2005 marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Jonas Salk's breakthrough. The World Health Organization has targeted this year to eradicate the virus from the planet (a few hundred cases have lingered in Nigeria, Pakistan, and India), and the Smithsonian plans a retrospective exhibition.

Kluger nicely sketches the background for a medical achievement struck many as a miracle, and make Salk a reluctant mid-century media celebrity. When he was a child of Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York City, in 1916, more than 6,000 Americans died of polio in a year. Many more permanently lost the use of limbs. Though the numbers rose and fell, they averaged much the same for the next 40 years. Black city vehicles wrested sick children from their families and took them away to quarantine. Holiday celebrations were cancelled when the plague swept cities. Ignorance fed wild rumors such as one that blamed cats, whereupon 72,000 of them were beaten, drowned, and otherwise slaughtered by the citizens of New York.

Salk was a brilliant but odd duck. He graduated from a high school for the gifted at 15, and entered medical school by 20. During the Second World War, he was part of the team that developed the first 'flu vaccine. Detail-oriented to the point of obsessiveness, he was more polite and attentive to waiters and repairmen than peers who could do him political good.

Though muted, the story has its suspenseful turns and thrills. Competitors swear by a weakened live-virus vaccine while Salk pursues a killed-virus approach-carefully murdering yet structurally preserving the virus cells to goose the body's immune response. Test vaccines by other researchers fail, leaving dead children and ruined careers in their wake. Drug companies "improve" the vaccine Salk's team has already perfected, with procedures that lead to more polio cases. As an army of 20,000 doctors, 40,000 nurses, 1,000 support staff, 14,000 school principals and 50,000 teachers organized the 1.8 million children who would undergo the national field test in 1954, Walter Winchell's national radio broadcast called the vaccine a deadly failure, and warned that thousands of little white coffins were being readied to receive the resulting fatalities.

Slices of parallel lives punctuate the tale nicely, from the future President stricken by the disease at age 39, after which he crusades for the funding and research to battle it, to the accounts of Kluger's still-living sources: John Troan, the science reporter for the Pittsburgh Press who carefully cultivated his relationship with Salk and was rewarded with inside stories and scoops, and several interviewees who were crippled as children and participated in the first field tests.

Splendid Solution is not a heart-pounding page turner. In tone and style, it's a rather old-fashioned historical tale. But in its quiet manner, it is a terrific account, and well told.