Word: rubella
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...lowly cause of what is usually a lowly and unimportant disease, German measles (or rubella), long enjoyed the unsavory reputation of being the only virus clearly convicted of killing or crippling babies in the womb. But many other viruses are now emerging from researchers' culture tubes to qualify as enemies of the unborn...
...virus of German measles, or rubella, has been isolated and cultivated in test tubes, Government researchers at the National Institutes of Health announced last week. This long awaited discovery will make it possible to protect unborn babies against the malforming effects that the virus often produces when the mother becomes infected during the first three months of pregnancy...
German Measles (rubella). Work goes on in several labs, including Enders', to get this unclassified virus to grow in tissue cultures. Since the illness in children is so mild, the raw virus could probably be used to infect girls before puberty; the danger is that if they escape childhood infection, exposure during the first three months of pregnancy may cause crippling or fatal damage to the fetus...
...dozen conferees paid tribute to Sir Norman McAlister Gregg, 68, the Sydney ophthalmic surgeon who saw a local epidemic of cataracts in the newborn in 1941. By detective work he found that in all but ten of 78 cases the mothers had had German measles (rubella) in the first four months of pregnancy. Around the world, Gregg's findings were soon confirmed. Thus a common infection, almost invariably mild in children but which may be severe in adults, was convicted as a crippler and killer of the unborn...
Apparently the rubella virus inflicts its severest damage on whichever tissues happen to be developing fastest when the infection strikes. Toronto's Dr. Andrew J. Rhodes gave this timetable: rubella causes cataracts in the sixth week, deafness by infection in the ninth, heart defects fifth to tenth weeks, dental deformities sixth to ninth weeks...