Word: polio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Unless there is a dramatic and unexpected reversal of trends, 1959 will be the worst year for poliomyelitis in the U.S. since 1955, when the Salk vaccine became generally available. With the peak not expected for another month, the U.S. Public Health Service reported last week that polio is almost twice as prevalent this year as last. Latest tallies showed 1,462 cases (956 paralytic) so far in 1959, v. 877 (only 437 paralytic) for the same period in 1958. In the latest week reported, the increase was especially alarming: 257 cases-a 50% jump over the previous week...
...leukemia virus" got solid tumors, mainly in the parotid (salivary) glands. (Dr. Heller's theory: the Gross material had contained two viruses.) Dr. Stewart teamed with the NIH's Dr. Bernice E. Eddy to grow the solid-tumor virus in tissue cultures of monkey kidney cells (as polio virus is grown to make Salk vaccine...
National Immunity. Another theory developed in current polio studies: the big U.S. epidemics from 1948 to 1955 provided a kind of national immunity. Although 39 out of 100,000 people suffered serious attacks of the disease in those years, 500 to 1,000 out of every 100,000 got mild infections without knowing it and built up an immunity. Since 1955, the heaviest incidence of polio has been among children still unborn at the time of the big epidemics. Researchers note that in the first post-Salk vaccine year (1956), the worst polio was among one-year-olds...
Despite the continuance of polio, Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney of the PHS said last week that the Salk killed-virus vaccine has proved 90% effective. The trouble is that an estimated 40 million Americans in the susceptible undergo age group have not taken the shots...
...live-virus vaccine in the U.S. is Lederle Laboratories, which last week announced that it will boost its live-virus vaccine outlay to $8,000,000, build new production and testing facilities to produce annually 40 million oral doses of vaccine that offer immunity to the three types of polio viruses (TIME, March 16). Lederle has tested the live-virus vaccine on 700,000 people, is hopeful that current tests in South America and the U.S. will prove its effectiveness and safety. Said Lederle General Manager Lyman C. Duncan: "The day is nearing when every newborn infant will be given...