Questions Without Answers

The Cutter question seemed finally answered. It was a rash of polio cases following use of Cutter vaccine that had first halted the vaccination program. For weeks, experts have broadly suggested that some live virus must have slipped through the killing and testing process in the manufacture of the Cutter product. Last week, for the first time, a virologist flatly asserted that he had found live virus in Cutter specimens. He was Dr. Louis P. Gebhardt, professor of bacteriology and director of the polio research laboratory at the University of Utah. The chilling thought, of course, was that what happened to Cutter might have happened to other manufacturers. Said a spokesman for California's Cutter Laboratories: "If Dr. Gebhardt's finding is confirmed by the U.S. Public Health Service, it will be evidence for the need for the new, more stringent safety tests established last week." Meanwhile, a lot of questions about the vaccine's future remained unanswered.

To sweep up some of the dust kicked up by the polio row in his Department of Health. Education and Welfare, President Eisenhower had picked Nelson Rockefeller. Under Secretary in the Department and a presidential troubleshooter, Rockefeller drafted a formal progress report on the vaccine situation, which Ike released last week. Full of the obvious lessons from the vaccine mix-up ("From the delay science has gained new knowledge, new safeguards"), the report carried one bit of near-news: enough vaccine to complete the two free shots for the first-and second-graders, run by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, "should be released within 60 days." That would mean that the shots would be completed in mid-August.

This at once raised two tough questions:

P: What is the next highest priority group? The matter was too inflamed even for the emollient Rockefeller touch, and HEW passed it. Best guess: children one to four years old will win. But this might be a poor choice: the mass trials in 1954 indicated that the vaccine is far more effective for children over six.

P: Is it wise to give children their first shots in August and September, months that mark the height of the polio season in virtually all the U.S.? This question involves a cruel choice: vaccine given in August may give life-saving protection against polio in September. But any injection at that time may provoke a paralytic reaction from virus already smoldering in the system, which might otherwise have done no harm. As of last week, most Government experts seemed inclined to go ahead anyway, but many a doctor was doubtful. Newark and other New Jersey cities postponed vaccinations.

While the vaccine program was virtually halted last week, waiting for the Public Health Service to retest and release more of the dammed-up vaccine from manufacturers' warehouses, polio was speeding its seasonal march. Latest figures showed a week's total of 240 cases, the same as a year ago, but almost double the five-year average for the corresponding week. Since the disease year's beginning (April 1), there were 1,226 cases (113 of them after vaccination*), and the same comparisons held. It was too early for the figures to prove anything, but there was little comfort in them.

* Since these figures were officially released, twelve more such cases have occurred.

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