Word: salk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Doctors as well as parents are likely to be as confused about which measles vac cine to use as they are over Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. PHS licensed Merck Sharp & Dohme to distribute a live but attenuated vaccine, like the one developed by Dr. John F. Enders (TIME cover, Nov. 17, 1961) at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston. It is immediately available and is highly effective. But in many children, it causes some fever and a rash, so many pediatricians will simultaneously give the child a shot of gamma globulin in the opposite arm. This lowers...
...order to properly appraise the value of the two vaccines, one should examine their differences. Both are made from live polio viruses, cultured in test tubes on monkey kidney tissue. In the Salk process, the viruses are heated in formalin, killing them and making them safe for injection into the human blood stream. Fourteen days after the first shot, antibodies appear in the blood, giving a slight amount of protection against all three types of polio virus. Then a booster shot is administered and seven months later another booster, both raising the antibody level. A year later a fourth injection...
...Sabin live virus is taken orally, mixed with a syrup, on a sugar cube, or in a bonbon. Within one day it multiplies in the intestines, preventing the entry of the natural virus and protecting against non-paralytic polio, neither of which the Salk vaccine can do. Although one does of oral vaccine immunizes indefinitely against any one type of virus, three doses are needed for Types I, II, and III. The live virus, while too weak to attack the nerve tissue or produce symptoms of disease, causes the human host to produce the necessary antibodies. Furthermore, the virus retains...
...this means that Sabin vaccine costs little, is easy to administer, immunizes swiftly, protects thoroughly, and provides "hear-immunity." It is for these reasons that Brazil changed from Salk to Sabin vaccine when the U.S. made the latter available. For these reasons the Soviet Union orally inoculated over 90 million people before the United States even licensed the vaccine. Ceylon, Japan, Czechoslovakia, and other nations have bought vaccines from both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and as Dr. Sabin testified before Congress, the "live" vs. "dead" dispute "has entered into the field of competition for favor in uncommitted nations...
While many doctors will continue to apply dead virus shots, the PHS noted that, despite the Salk campaign,...outbreaks and even some severe epidemics still occur.... [even] among individuals who have had 3 or 4 doses of the vaccine." Thus, even in the United States, the final end of polio may come only with the use of oral vaccine...