Word: salk
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After months of chauvinistic resistance against using the U.S. Salk polio vaccine, ostensibly because the British-made vaccine is better and safer (TIME, Aug. 26), the British government finally capitulated last week. Admitting that its own vaccine is in critically short supply, the Public Health Ministry ordered "forthwith" enough Salk vaccine to supplement British vaccine supplies for inoculation of all children under 15 and expectant mothers. The policy reversal came too late to do anything about this year's grim polio season in Britain: 3,732 cases reported through August v. 2,077 for the same period last year...
Some Britons (especially physicians) with U.S. connections are getting "unsolicited gifts" of American vaccine for their children. More U.S. vaccine is being smuggled in, sold on the black market. The Sunday Express asked angrily: "Why did the Ministry refuse to import the Salk vaccine offered by America [4,000,000 cc., offered last winter]? How can they pretend it is unsafe, yet at the same time allow the privileged few to accept presents of the vaccine from American friends...
Trouble was that of two firms licensed to make Britain's own modified Salk vaccine, only one had got into production, and this was far behind schedule. But the Ministry stuck to its guns, insisted that British vaccine is safer and more effective than the American.* British critics of the Ministry felt that it had put national pride above the welfare of polio victims in 1957. It was a good bet that with home-grown supplies still lagging, Britain would be importing straight Salk vaccine from the U.S. or Canada in time for next year's polio season...
...With Britain reporting more than 2,000 cases of poliomyelitis this year (three times the U.S. rate, in proportion to population), the government still banned importation of American-made Salk vaccine except as a gift from U.S. donors, relied on British vaccine, which is in short supply. Commented the Lancet: "If the American vaccine is safe enough for gifts of it to be allowed to enter the country, it is safe enough for people here to be allowed to buy it ... The present compromise [is] irrational...
Even so, only 20 million Americans have so far received the recommended three doses of Salk vaccine, Surgeon General Leroy Burney reported; 48 million others have had one or two shots. Though vaccine is again in brisk demand and short supply, Dr. Burney urged community health officials to plan now for mass inoculation, as soon as vaccine becomes available, of 41 million citizens under 40 who have had no shots...