Word: polio
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sternly, Ike said he would not waste his time on the Morse attack, but would be glad to give an opinion about his Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Despite some feeling among White House aides that Oveta Hobby's handling of the polio vaccine problem has been less than inspired, Ike gave her a clean bill. Secretary Hobby, he said, is "merely the agent of these great scientists and doctors." It was their testing procedures that were in question, he indicated, and it was their decision to hold up vaccine distribution...
...polio vaccine program was hopelessly bogged down. Supplies of double-checked vaccine were running out even faster than the sands of time remaining before schoolterm's end and the height of the epidemic season. The Public Health Service was not releasing any newly made vaccine. Last week it was not even releasing rechecked vaccine on hand, made by two manufacturers (Pitman-Moore Co. and Wyeth Inc.). The shortage was bound to get worse. At week's end, PHS was reported considering new, stricter testing procedures that would in effect call off the whole program this season...
Nobody yet knew how much danger there might be. Of five manufacturers that have shipped vaccine, two (Parke, Davis & Co. and Pitman-Moore) had spotless records: no reported cases of polio after use of their vaccine. But the U.S. (mostly western) total of such cases reached 78: after Cutter vaccine, 59 (five fatal); after Eli Lilly & Co.'s, 14; and after Wyeth's, five...
Getting Under the Skin? More startling and possibly just as significant, though no epidemiologist wanted to commit himself, was the fact that 23 cases had developed in the families of children who had come down with polio after getting Cutter vaccine. Eleven were adults, and one had died. This was a notably higher rate for family contact cases than would be expected, or than had been seen in last year's trials...
Also on its outside experts' advice, the PHS advised local authorities to go ahead giving second shots all through the polio season, because the "slight immunity resulting from the first dose of vaccine will most likely provide protection against any [harmful] effect." Yet even while the PHS talked of ways and means to continue the shots, and while parents were still being urged to let children be vaccinated, experts kept showing serious doubts as to the vaccine's safety under present testing procedures...