Word: globulin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tests (paid for by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) in Provo, Utah, Sioux City, Iowa, and Houston (TIME, July 14). In all, 54,772 children aged one to eleven got inoculations while polio epidemics were raging. Half the children received shots of gamma globulin, the small fraction of human blood which contains protective antibodies. The other half received useless (but harmless) gelatin. Nobody, not even the doctors, knew at the time which child got which shot...
...were known, the records went to the foundation, which checked each victim's syringe number against the manufacturer's list to see whether the child had had G.G. or gelatin. The results reported by Dr. Hammon were heartening: of more than 27,000 children who received gamma globulin, only 2 developed paralytic polio; of an equal number who received gelatin, 64 suffered some paralysis. And, Dr. Hammon added, it looks as though the attacks were milder and shorter-lived for children who had G.G. than for the others...
...then shipped to the Belgian Congo for four years as a medical missionary. Not until he was 28 did he enter Harvard Medical School. Many of his recent years as an epidemiologist have been spent in trying to persuade his colleagues (including those at the National Foundation) that gamma globulin was worth a major trial. Lately, and in the tests themselves, Dr. Hammon has had great help from Philadelphia's Dr. Joseph Stokes Jr. (TIME, Nov. 5, 1951) who tried to use the antibodies in blood against polio 20 years...
...evident missionary zeal, Dr. Hammon was quick to point out that gamma globulin is far from being the weapon of final victory over polio (that is likely to be a vaccine). Its chief drawbacks: ¶It gives only "passive," short-lived immunity (five weeks' protection from an average dose). "Active," permanent immunity must still be developed by each individual in fighting off a mild attack by the polio virus-the kind of attack that often goes unnoticed or is mistaken for a cold...
...demand. It takes almost a pint of blood to make an average shot of G.G. (7 cc). To give protection for a single polio season to all the 41 million U.S. children under 15 might take 100 million shots or more, and there simply is not that much gamma globulin available, nor the blood or plasma to extract it from...