Word: rubella
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...telltale rash of German measles (rubella) can come and go unseen during a night's sleep. In fact, the disease is generally so mild that a nationwide epidemic of it three years ago caused no panic. An estimated 30,000 pregnant women were among those infected, however, and rubella can wreak tragic damage in unborn children. For one of every two rubella babies, that damage includes at least a partial loss of hearing. "The deafness we are seeing now-the aftermath of the epidemic-is more severe than anyone anticipated," says Dr. Fred Linthicum Jr. of the children...
...Government's ambitious plans apply only to the common "seven-day" measles, or rubeola-not to be confused with the three-day "German" measles or rubella, for which a vaccine has not yet been perfected. Though rubella early in pregnancy has gained an evil reputation as a killer and crippler of the unborn, it is otherwise a mild and almost harmless infection. Not so with common measles. "Of all the childhood diseases that remain," says Dr. H. Bruce Dull of the National Communicable Disease Center, "measles is the one with the most risk...
Delicate Balance. The successful vaccine was made in a mere four years after the elusive rubella virus was originally persuaded to grow in the laboratory (TIME, Aug. 3, 1962). It was a virological feat equivalent to the running of the first four-minute mile.* Yet even this speed was not enough to save an estimated 30,000 U.S. babies from inborn defects such as cataracts, heart malformations and mental retardation. For in 1963-65, history's worst recorded epidemic of German measles swept inexorably across the U.S., disabling more infants than did the thalidomide disaster in Europe. In addition...
...rubella tamers are two pediatricians still in their 30s, Dr. Harry M. Meyer Jr. and Dr. Paul D. Parkman. Though German measles is almost invariably trivial for all but the baby in the womb, the raw virus could not be used as a vaccine because of the danger that newly vaccinated children might spread the infection to pregnant women. The researchers' task was to weak en the virus, and strike a delicate balance, leaving it infectious for those who are vaccinated, but noninfectious for their contacts. They decided to domesticate the virus in cultures of kidney cells from African...
...Spread. Drs. Meyer and Parkman spent two years growing 77 crops of rubella virus, each "seeded" from the preceding crop. At this point, they inoculated rhesus monkeys with what they called HPV-77 (for high-passage virus). Happily, the vaccinated monkeys showed no signs of rubella, but developed antibody against it, while their cagemates remained free of infection. The first human testing of the vaccine was equally sensitive: the subjects had to be children with no history of rubella, and no possible contact with pregnant women...