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Witness History

The Cutter Incident

Witness History

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, History

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In April 1955, more than 100,000 children in America were inoculated with a defective batch of the brand-new polio vaccine. Because of a manufacturing mistake at a small company called Cutter Laboratories, the children were given live polio virus; around 160 were permanently paralysed and 10 died in the worst disaster in US pharmaceutical history. Simon Watts talks to Anne Gottsdanker, one of the victims of what became known as the Cutter Incident.

PHOTO: Anne Gottsdanker with her father Bob Gottsdanker in 1956 (personal archive)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

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searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

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Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

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Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

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searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds.

0:31.1

Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History on the BBC World Service

0:39.8

with me Simon Watts. Today we're going back to 1955,

0:44.6

and the tragic story of how mistakes

0:47.2

in the initial manufacturing of polio vaccine

0:50.8

led to hundreds of American children becoming seriously ill.

0:55.0

I've been speaking to a victim of what became known as the Qatar incident.

1:00.0

In April 1955,

1:05.0

1955, Anne Gotstanker was five years old.

1:09.0

Her parents decided to give her the brand new vaccine against polio before they went on a holiday to Southern California.

1:16.7

I was in kindergarten running and playing like all the other kids.

1:20.1

Then my brother and I were given the vaccine prior to a family trip down to

1:23.8

Colexico. I felt ill while I was down there.

1:27.3

Anne had a headache and she became nauseous. Her family got her back home

1:32.2

as soon as possible but the little girl was

...

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