Test for Polio Vaccine

Hundreds of thousands of children in different parts of the U.S. will receive experimental shots of polio vaccine early next year, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis announced last week. Plans for the first mass-testing of a vaccine against poliomyelitis are now being made. The shots will have to be given by the end of May so that the vaccine will have time to do its work (if it can) before the epidemic season starts.

"Even if the vaccine tests are successful," said Foundation President Basil O'Connor, "this cannot be known before the end of 1954, so there will be no proven vaccine available next year." Neither will the test vaccine be available for every youngster whose worried parents want it. Test areas will be chosen for scientific reasons, and within those areas the test groups will be picked the same way. Estimated cost of the program: $7,500,000 of $26.5 million which the foundation has earmarked for polio prevention. The rest of the money will go for gamma globulin, which O'Connor calls "a stopgap measure" because it can only make polio less severe, not prevent it.

The vaccine, designed to be a true preventive, is made from dead virus by a process developed by the University of Pittsburgh's Dr. Jonas E. Salk (TIME, Feb. 9). Since the first announcement of his work, Dr. Salk said last week, 474 more subjects, both children and adults, have received the vaccine with no ill effects, and in most cases, with a prompt and dramatic increase in the blood-borne antibodies which give protection against polio. Cautious Dr. Salk made no claim that he had found the answer to the perils and paralysis of polio. There may be several ways of producing a safe and inexpensive polio vaccine, he said, but none is yet ready for general use. That goes for his vaccine, too.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.