Betting on G. G.

Two hundred or more parents, mostly mothers in sun dresses, stopped pushing toward the door of the community hall in West University Place, a suburb of Houston. They shushed the toddlers hanging on to their hands, or the infants in their arms, and bowed their heads. At the doorway the Rev. Thomas W. Sumners, president of the Greater Houston Council of Churches, raised his hand and intoned:

"O Gracious God . . . we do thank Thee for the research scientists, for the doctors, for the nurses, for all others who have had a part in bringing this revelation of Thy truth to Houston. Grant Thy blessing on their experiment . . . that the scourge of polio may be removed . . ."

Lollipops for Whimpers. The crowd pressed forward again. It was not yet 8 a.m., and already oppressively hot in Houston, Texas' biggest city (pop. 594,321). Because it is just the right size, and in the grip of a polio epidemic, Houston was chosen by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis for the first full-scale test of gamma globulin injections as a means of preventing the paralyzing effects of polio.

Planted at the head of the line was Patricia Ann Burnett, 5, a doctor's daughter. "Do you know why you're here, Patricia?" asked a radio announcer. "Yes," she replied. Her mother expanded the answer: "I think the effectiveness of gamma globulin is something we should all try to find out in this emergency."

At the door Patricia's mother got a card with a number on it. At the registration table she gave Pat's vital statistics and signed a release. Pat was weighed; then she lay face down on an examination table, her buttocks bared. Dr. Byron P. York, prominent Houston physician who volunteered for the job, picked up a syringe bearing the same number as Pat's card and gave her the shot. Pat's whimpering was soon stilled with a lollipop.

Neither Pat nor her mother, nor Dr. York, nor even Dr. William McDowell Hammon, the Pittsburgh epidemiologist in charge of the mass test, knew whether Pat got gamma globulin or ineffective (but harmless) gelatin. In that secrecy was the key to the whole experiment. The only way to find out whether gamma globulin can prevent paralysis from polio in humans as it has in monkeys (TIME, April 28) is to give it to tens of thousands of children, and give something else (to cut out the possible effects of suggestion) to an equal number of children under identical conditions.

To Be a Guinea Pig? The question, "Will my child get the real shot?" was uppermost in the minds of tens of thousands of parents who took children, aged one to six, through Houston's eight inoculation centers, which worked day after day and right through the Fourth of July holiday. Some mothers had pestered doctors, before the inoculations began, trying to arrange for their children to get gamma globulin. A few intended to go through with the experiment, and then blithely undermine it by having their family physician give their children a "sure" shot of "G.G.," as they have come to call it.

But the average attitude was well expressed at West University Place by a plump young matron holding a little girl in her lap. "My first reaction," she said, "was that I didn't want my child to be a guinea pig. But then I got to thinking." Other mothers nodded, recognizing the pattern of their own afterthoughts. "It can't hurt them," the plump one went on, "so we haven't lost a thing in coming. We've got a 50-50 chance with each child of getting gamma globulin, and if we get it we know it might be some help or protection against polio. And whether we get the G.G. shot or not, or even whether it does any good or not, we'll have done something to help find the answer to one question about polio. So my husband and I decided it's worth it."

By this week 12,674 Houstonians, an impressive start toward a goal of 35,000, had decided likewise. Next year, after the syringe numbers now locked in the safe of the company which packaged the G.G. and the gelatin have been checked against the incidence of polio and paralysis among the two groups of children, doctors will be able to tell the parents of Houston whether G.G. is a good bet.

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