Word: salk
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...medical preparation has been launched on its lifesaving career under a more brilliant spotlight than the Salk vaccine against paralytic polio. This very glare has made it harder for some to see certain essential facts-the vaccine is not always effective, and its potency is not assured. Now Dr. Jonas E. Salk (TIME Cover, March 29, 1954) has searchingly reviewed his vaccine's potency and performance. See MEDICINE, Calling the Shots...
Although the Salk vaccine against poliomyelitis has been generally effective -saving hundreds of lives and preventing thousands of cases of paralysis in four years-much of the material used in about 200 million U.S. inoculations has been no good. As a result, an all-out effort to improve the commercially produced vaccine is now being made. Until this succeeds, individuals who have already had three injections should get a fourth...
While the Salk vaccine proved to be "60% to 90% effective," polio remained, by shifting targets, a major problem. It used to be primarily a disease of the oft-diapered, well-scrubbed upper-income groups, whose infants were protected against the mild (often undetectable) infections that give immunity against later and more serious attacks. Things were different with the infants of the poor, who lived amid filth, got an infection in their first few months while still protected by passive immunity from inherited antibodies. Now the better-heeled families are dutifully getting Salk shots early and often. The people...
...Salk vaccine shots were so ignored in Detroit this summer that doctors and druggists had to return outdated supplies. Last week, with a growing epidemic, Detroit was the worst polio spot in the U.S. Statistics: 464 current cases (230 paralytic) and 14 deaths, against a total of 163 cases and two deaths by the same week last year. Well over half (279) of the victims were Negroes, mainly children under 15, centered in the city's low-income Negro sections. This week they could plead neither ignorance nor poverty. Polio was suddenly Detroit's best-publicized word...
...Michigan, mainly in Detroit), against 96 for the same week of 1957. In the week ending Aug. 30 the total fell only slightly to 126 cases, against 76 last year. Warned Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney: "The tragic fact is that many of the cases could have been prevented. Salk vaccine gives 70% to 90% protection against polio, but about 40 million Americans in the susceptible under-40 age group have not yet been vaccinated...