Medical Mythmaking Splendid Solution:
Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio
By Jeffrey Kluger
Putnam, 2004, $25.95 Polio: An American Story
By David M. Oshinsky
Oxford University Press, 2005, $30.00 April 12 was the day, 50 years ago, that the U.S. Public Health Service licensed the killed-virus vaccine against poliomyelitis developed by Jonas Salk. In the decades since, a great myth has grown to dominate the popular imagination. Its name is "The Conquest of Polio," and Salk is its hero.

On the anniversary day and minute, the Smithsonian Institution tolled the bell on its oldest building 50 times to open an exhibit at the National Museum of American History centered on Salk and the vaccine. That morning, the science correspondent for National Public Radio extolled the polio conquest and the Salk vaccine in the first part of a three-part series. Publications marked the occasion -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Smithsonian magazine, and a dozen others. In the weeks before, two new books had appeared. Six more are now in the works.