Epidemic & Vaccine

The epidemic of infantile paralysis in Los Angeles and San Francisco is not so dangerous as indicated by the number of cases (TIME, July 2), proclaimed Surgeon General Hugh Smith Gumming of the U. S. Public Health Service last week. He did not think that the situation warranted any discouragement of normal business, recreation or tourist traffic.

General Cumming's optimism sprang from the unprecedentedly light mortality of the disease, which sometimes kills as many as 27 out of 100 victims. California's present mortality is less than 1.5%. Why this is so no authority has ventured to guess. In other respects the spread of the epidemic has been typical. It began in May and apparently has reached its mid-summer peak. It shows lighter incidence in San Francisco (90 cases) and Alameda County (106 cases), where the population has been long urbanized and exposed to the disease, than in Los Angeles County (949 cases) where a large part of the population comes from the rural and unexposed Midwest.

In California blood from persons who have had infantile paralysis was being used as a preventive. Such immunity could last only a few weeks.

In Manhattan last week Dr. Maurice Brodie, 30, assistant professor of bacteriology in New York University, was certain that he had a poliomyelitis vaccine which confers long-time immunity. Likewise did his chief. Dr. William Hallock Park, 72, whom New York City is retaining as director of the Department of Health's bureau of laboratories although he is beyond the retirement age. Likewise did Dr. Brodie's colleague Dr. Josephine Bicknell Neal, 54. and Dr. Henry Wirt Jackson, 48, and Technicians Judith Figarsky, 24, and Anne Goldberg, 22.

Infected Rhesus monkeys supplied the material for the vaccine. Just as the monkeys were dying of infantile paralysis, Dr. Brodie killed them, snatched out their spinal cords which contained the virus of the disease, macerated the cords in a solution of formalin to kill the virus. This virtually is what other investigators of the infantile paralysis problem are trying. Dr. Brodie seems to be the first to apply the vaccine to humans.

In principle the vaccine should create antibodies in the blood of Dr. Park and friends. Their fortified blood should be able to destroy or neutralize living infantile paralysis virus. This means immunity.

The Press tried to make heroes of those who submitted to injections of the Brodie vaccine. Reporters flocked to the laboratories. Laughed old Dr. Park: "I had a good night's sleep and didn't even think about the injection. I got up this morning at 7:30 o'clock. Breakfast consisted of fruit, ham and eggs and coffee. I got to the office at 9:30 a. m. and began to work. I feel fine. Danger? Pooh, pooh! We won't know for a week or ten days what the reactions are."

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