Word: salk
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...polio season made history by its unique sendoff: the statisticians had scarcely begun feeding figures into their machines for the new disease year, beginning in April, when the Cutter vaccine incident broke, and it became clear that some of the Salk vaccine contained live virus. Almost at once the nation's total of polio cases hit an alltime high for the date (147 in the last week of April), and kept on doing so for six straight weeks. The cases among the children inoculated with Salk vaccine (mostly by Cutter) and among their contacts (a total of 422) were...
...disease year totaled 4,500, fewer than in any year since 1951. This was encouraging, but Public Health Service experts would make no prediction on the basis of such preliminary data of how the disease year as a whole might turn out. One thing was sure: the Salk vaccination program, which had covered about 4% of the nation's population (among whom 10% of polio cases might be expected), had not gone far enough to have a major effect on overall figures. Only careful, detailed study will show the statisticians later on whether it has had a substantial effect...
After weeks of hesitation over whether to start a small test program with Salk polio vaccine and a few thousand volunteers, Britain's health authorities made up their minds last week. They canceled the whole thing as too dangerous. Said Dr. Graham Selby Wilson, director of the Public Health Laboratory Service: "I do not see how any vaccine prepared by [Dr. Jonas] Salk's method can be guaranteed to be safe...
Though Dr. Wilson slammed the door, he did not bolt it. "We are hoping," he went on, "to modify the Salk vaccine in such a way that the highly virulent strains of which it is composed [meaning especially the Mahoney strain] will be replaced by less virulent strains...
...Public Health Service released 300,000 shots of Salk polio vaccine, first to be approved in more than a month. Significantly, PHS also announced a major research program aimed at improving the Salk vaccine, mainly by using other strains of virus (than the dangerous Mahoney) and by improving tests for potency and safety tests in monkeys...