This book paints a pretty vivid picture of the race for a polio vaccine particularly with the competition between researchers to find a safe, effective, and viable candidate. Everyone usually thinks of vaccines as having a linear path to procurement but the inside story shows a much more competitive and at times acrimonious race. Of all drug development stories, this story is one of the most compelling due to the head to head competition between candidates and magnified by the public relations bravura of the involved scientists—declining ticker tape parades to ask for scholarships instead and declining the riches of patents only cements the stature of the senior researchers involved into a eusocial medical hall of heroes.

On a personal note, I will say one of my quiet regrets is that vaccinology and infectious diseases offers a potential path to magnified impact unmatched by any other medical specialty, that I never took. I don't complain necessarily about going into a surgical subspecialty since I was seduced by the immediate impact of my hands improving the condition of others, but nothing I do will ever have the impact on millions the same way that developing a vaccine for a aggressive disfiguring disease for the general population ever will.