Paralysed with Fear: The Story of Polio PDF

Rating: Author: Gareth Williams ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF

Direct download links available PRETITLE Paralysed with Fear: The Story of Polio [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link For much of the twentieth century, polio inspired terror as the 'morning paralysis' which could break into any home and disable or kill a previously healthy person. The cruelty of the disease is epitomised by the iconic images of the crippled child and the iron lung.
This story of mankind's struggle against polio is compelling, exciting and full of twists and pardoxes. One of the grand challenges of modern medicine, it was a battleground between good and bad science. Some research won Nobel Prizes; other work was flawed or fraudulent, holding up progress and endangering patients' lives. Gareth Williams takes an original view of the journey to understanding and defeating polio, exploring the profoundly moving experiences of victims alongside the medical and scientific landmarks in the history of the disease.
Direct download links available for PRETITLE Paralysed with Fear: The Story of Polio [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE

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• File Size: 8693 KB
• Print Length: 376 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition (June 27, 2013)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00FJYJNZA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #566,748 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Paralysed with Fear: The Story of Polio PDF

We think of scientific advances, especially those that have a humanitarian bent like medical research, as being claimed in a harmonious effort between individuals and teams. A little conflict due to competition is accepted, but the participants do have a higher good in mind and work for the benefit of humanity. This may actually be the case for many research efforts; it was not the case in the search for the cure of polio. Let us take pride that polio is all but vanished now; it's a magnificent accomplishment. Victory, however, was not gained by idealistic heroes, but by self-interested and flawed rivals who used practices of shameful ethics and skullduggery to gain their points. "There are few gentlemen in the history of polio," writes Gareth Williams, a British doctor who besides medical texts has written about the conquest of smallpox. His _Paralysed with Fear: The Story of Polio_ (Palgrave MacMillan) describes the messy way the job of controlling polio got done. Most doctors these days will not see a case of polio; it was a disease that defined the twentieth century, and if we let it continue further into the twenty-first, we have only human folly to blame. Williams's book shows how long the journey took, and how often it was made longer by entrenched ideas, distrust among peers, and simple bad faith. Williams has amassed many details for a fascinating and amusing history of how a laudable achievement came about despite often disgraceful behavior on the part of researchers who should have acted a little more like dispassionate searchers after truth.

It was clear from the first that episodes came from a disease that was contagious, but the cause was not clear; it might have been blueberries or Italians or cats or flies or sugar.