Originally published May 17 2005
April 25 marks 50th anniversary of infamous pharmaceutical disaster
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
On the 50th anniversary of what one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in U.S. history -- the accidental paralysis of 164 healthy children and the death of 10 others from a tainted batch of the Cutter Laboratories (Berkeley) polio vaccine -- University of Pennsylvania pediatrician Dr. Paul Offit remembers the incident that threatened to put an end to the vaccination program that eventually eliminated polio in the U.S. with his account of the Cutter affair, published in the April 7 New England Journal of Medicine.One of those children who received the tainted vaccine in 1955 is now a wheelchair-bound college professor. "Having polio, or any physical limitation, changes what you do in your life," she said recently. "You reassess, and you end up doing what you're good at." The woman's parents sued Cutter and won, in a decision whose judicial impact is still felt today.
Anne Gottsdanker was a chipper 5-year-old Santa Barbara girl 50 years ago, when her family doctor gave her one of the first of the newly approved Salk polio shots.Manufactured by Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley, the vaccine came from two batches later found to be contaminated with live polio virus.
Today, she is a college professor who motors about in an electric wheelchair and shares her home with her husband, teenage daughter, two dogs, four cats and a snake.
The first cases of polio in children who received the tainted vaccine were reported to regulators on April 25, 1955 - two weeks after the nation began a drive to vaccinate millions of schoolchildren.
Before it was over, 164 people would suffer permanent paralysis from the Cutter vaccine or from the outbreak of polio triggered by it.
For a brief period, the "Cutter Incident" shut down the ambitious vaccination program and threatened to scuttle the effort that ultimately eliminated polio from the United States.
Gottsdanker's parents eventually sued Cutter, hiring famed San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli to represent their daughter.
The mother of daughters ages 16 and 21, she plays classical music on an upright Baldwin piano, travels on camping trips and, until recently, rode all-terrain vehicles in the surrounding hills.
The jury trial against Cutter Laboratories took place over 28 days in Oakland's Alameda County Superior Court.
The jury in January 1958 ultimately found that Cutter was not negligent in the production of the vaccine.
But the verdict broke new ground by awarding Gottsdanker $147,300 for breach of warranty, reasoning that the company met the production standard of the day but was liable for marketing a vaccine it claimed was safe when it clearly was not.
"Since proof of negligence was no longer required, it was easier for juries to find pharmaceutical companies liable," Offit wrote.
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