Rashes to Research: Scientists and Parents Confront the 1964 Rubella Epidemic

Between 1964 and 1965, roughly 20,000 children who had been exposed to rubella in utero were born with heart, hearing, and vision problems, known collectively as Collective Rubella Syndrome. Historians and other scholars have written excellent histories of the epidemic and its role in altering discourses and legal rights of people with disabilities. The online exhibit "Rashes to Research: Scientists and Parents Confront the 1964 Rubella Epidemic," complements this work with a useful starter kit of primary sources on the epidemic and its aftermath fitting for high school and university level classes.

The exhibit, produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, is divided into three sections: Exhibition Collection, Digital Gallery, and Education Resources. The first of these contains two dozen interesting (if confusingly organized) primary sources. The second offers an institutional history of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, whose institutional antecedents included the NIH division responsible for the development of the rubella vaccine. The last section is the exhibit's most significant contribution, for its pair of thoughtful and wide-ranging lesson plans for high school and university students.

The two-day high-school lesson plan invites students to engage with primary sources from the exhibit on day 1 and to explore Medline Plus and ClinicalTrials. gov on day 2, using materials from the exhibit to explore how other contemporary health conditions affect them and their communities. In an extension option, students learn about oral history, read and evaluate an oral history, and then discuss how to find reliable source information in online venues. The university module covers the topics of motherhood, disability, legal and ethical history, and contemporary comparisons over four suggested class sessions. The modules offer a rich collection of secondary and primary source material to assign to students as well as helpful discussion questions. The plan for the class on disability, for instance, suggests assigning recent scholarship by Leslie Reagan and Lerita Coleman, along with exhibit materials including a 1965 Life magazine article, 1970 Public Health Service brochure, and 1977 film from the collection of Merck Sharpe and Dohme (maker of the MMR vaccine).

Both resources are well-pitched for anyone looking to bring thoughtful material into a syllabus on twentieth-century medicine, women's studies, disability studies or ethics, or into a high school curriculum on U.S. history and culture. The university module is designed with a just-right amount and mix of media. The high school lesson plan has just enough structure and flexibility to work well. There are a few glitches: the link to the group discussion guide for day 1 of the high school lesson plan is broken, and although the recommended primary sources are in the exhibit itself, the lesson plans don't link back to them. But on the whole the resources are a gold mine for educators.

The exhibit itself, viewers should know, is primarily an institutional history, and not one designed to captivate visitors with a thought-provoking account of rubella's history, or the history of the 1964–65 epidemic, or the development of the rubella vaccine. The flow of text on the home page isn't terribly intuitive. Items in the Exhibition Collection are not displayed chronologically, making it difficult to parse the logic behind their presentation. The Digital Gallery focuses on the history of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, starting with the NIH's creation of a Division of Biologics Standards to improve vaccine production oversight after a flawed polio vaccine paralyzed 113 children in the mid-1950s. To the exhibit's credit, it doesn't entirely shy away from too much complicated material, such as the conflict inherent in DBS's dual role in developing and testing vaccines, including the rubella vaccine—and its later licensing by Merck Sharpe and Dohme. But the gallery's—and the overall exhibit's—tone is one of triumph and achievement, not troubling conflicts and...