Word: bcg
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Middlebrook and Dr. Maurice Cohn put more than 1,000 guinea pigs into chambers rigged so that the ventilators blew in BCG-Bacillus of Calmette and Guerin, a strain of weakened microbes used in vaccination against tuberculosis (TIME, Sept. 23, 1957). Later exposed to virulent TB germs, these animals resisted disease and lived out their normal life span. Those in an untreated comparison group sickened and died. Follow-up tests by Dr. Sol Roy Rosenthal at the University of Illinois showed that BCG, wafted in 10 million times its own volume of air, "took" in 27 of 30 children...
...apparent effectiveness is confirmed, airborne vaccination will have a cost advantage over multiple BCG punctures in the arm, because it requires far less vaccine. And Dr. Middlebrook believes that his method will interfere less with the standard tuberculin skin test for TB infection. Obscured results in this test have been a major factor in U.S. opposition to wide use of BCG, though the N.T.A. convention heard from Northwestern University's Dr. Guy Youmans last week about a cheap, simple blood test which may reinforce and partly replace the tuberculin test. Most important to Dr. Middlebrook is the simplicity...
Doctors disagree sharply on the value of vaccination against tuberculosis with BCG, the Bacillus of Calmette and Guéerin (TIME, Sept. 23). Nearest approach to a consensus is that BCG is not to be recommended for people enjoying high standards of sanitation and health, but may be good for those with low resistance, living in overcrowded conditions, and those exposed to TB victims. Now the results of a long-term experiment show how effective the vaccine can be. In the Archives of Internal Medicine, three University of Pennsylvania researchers report striking benefits among American Indians who got BCG...
...Advantages. Advocates of BCG argue that even a small contribution toward reducing TB is worthwhile, point out that the vaccine was shown in Britain to be 80% effective in cutting down TB among exposed adolescents, a rate comparable to that of most other vaccines now in general use. They feel that the value of the tuberculin test has been exaggerated, that X rays and sputum tests are more important and more reliable. BCG vaccine is not perfectly standardized, but the University of Illinois' Research Foundation has pioneered a freeze-drying process by which the vaccine probably can be shipped...
Around the world, more than 100 million people have been vaccinated with BCG and in most countries health authorities are satisfied that it has done much good-always in combination with other methods of TB control. In 1949 the U.S.'s National Tuberculosis Association urged a wide vaccination program, much the same as the one now advocated by Dr. Riggins, but little was done about...