CV and mad panic behaviour

[LP]

Interesting article about the history of the polio vaccine(s): How a debate over two competing vaccines gripped the medical community — in 1961, Salon Click HERE.

I didn’t know there were 2 polio vaccines. I’m glad I received the flavoured Sabin sugar cube rather than the Salk jab as I hate needles and they would have needed a footy team to hold me down.

Fascinating that Sabin’s live attenuated vaccine eventually mutated to cause infections.

Just the story of the hostility between Salk & Sabin makes it worth the read. Reminds me of one of the more famous scientific fights to the death between Newton and Leibniz over who invented calculus. British mathematicians fell in behind Newton while those on the continent went the other way. Prof. Jerison from MIT argues the refusal of the British to use Leibniz’s notation set British maths back by a 100 years.

Yes, and this is a very nice example of modern science, which now basically accepts it was a tie, I'm not sure about Jerison's observation that is a bit subjective. For the lay person, Newton's Dotted notation was very heavy reading.

btw., You have to put the outcome of those Calculus examples in context with the communications technology of the time, a international debate conducted in letters could mean a year or more before you get a response to a point! In local terms the public debate was often over before an international response even arrived.