Word: salk
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...past few years, some parents and their pediatricians have waged a grass-roots effort to change the way 4 million U.S. children are vaccinated each year. Their struggle has reawakened a 40-year-old scientific argument between two giants of preventive medicine: Dr. Albert Sabin and Dr. Jonas Salk. Last week the parents' campaign reached the highest levels of health policymaking when a CDC panel voted on whether to change U.S. policy...
...panel faced a difficult dilemma. For 30 years, doctors have had a choice between two competing polio vaccines. The first, pioneered by Salk, is made from viruses that have been inactivated or "killed." It protects those who are vaccinated but does not stop them from harboring live viruses in their intestines. Should they encounter polio "in the wild," they could become silent carriers and pass the pathogen on to others who have not been inoculated. If polio were to break out--as it did in the U.S. in the '50s, and as it has right now in parts of India...
...prevent someone who is just developing the infection from arriving in the U.S. and spreading it. One in five American children is unvaccinated for polio. These children, or anyone with a weakened immune system, could contract the disease. If the U.S. relied only on the Salk vaccine, a new epidemic could be unleashed...
...will be a tough sell. As Dr. Ram Yogev of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago points out, the Sabin vaccine worked so well that health workers may resist the change. Says Dr. Yogev, who favors the change himself: "Physicians respect Salk. But we love Sabin because we saw the epidemic. We were a part of it, and suddenly it disappeared...
Inconvenience and expense are also factors. The Sabin vaccine comes in a sweet-tasting liquid, but the Salk vaccine can only be injected. Parents and youngsters will not welcome another shot in the already packed vaccination schedule. The injections cost more ($4.99 a dose in the public market vs. $2.27 for the live virus) and may mean another trip to the doctor. Some are worried that the immunization rate, particularly in inner cities, will drop...