Word: globulin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
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...
...Houston, therefore, that the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis decided to conduct its biggest test of an inoculation which may make polio milder if it strikes and save the victim from permanent paralysis. There is no evidence that it can prevent polio. The material to be inoculated is gamma globulin, a blood fraction which contains antibodies against several diseases (TIME, Nov. 5). Tried in Provo, Utah on a scale too small to be decisive (TIME, April 28), it is to be given this week to half of 35,000 Houston youngsters aged one to six; the other half-the "control...
...best thing the U.S. public can do to help the polio fight this summer, said Dr. Weaver, is to stay away from gamma globulin, except where the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis directs its use in its controlled experiments...