Word: virus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Delicate Balance. The successful vaccine was made in a mere four years after the elusive rubella virus was originally persuaded to grow in the laboratory (TIME, Aug. 3, 1962). It was a virological feat equivalent to the running of the first four-minute mile.* Yet even this speed was not enough to save an estimated 30,000 U.S. babies from inborn defects such as cataracts, heart malformations and mental retardation. For in 1963-65, history's worst recorded epidemic of German measles swept inexorably across the U.S., disabling more infants than did the thalidomide disaster in Europe. In addition...
...rubella tamers are two pediatricians still in their 30s, Dr. Harry M. Meyer Jr. and Dr. Paul D. Parkman. Though German measles is almost invariably trivial for all but the baby in the womb, the raw virus could not be used as a vaccine because of the danger that newly vaccinated children might spread the infection to pregnant women. The researchers' task was to weak en the virus, and strike a delicate balance, leaving it infectious for those who are vaccinated, but noninfectious for their contacts. They decided to domesticate the virus in cultures of kidney cells from African...
...Spread. Drs. Meyer and Parkman spent two years growing 77 crops of rubella virus, each "seeded" from the preceding crop. At this point, they inoculated rhesus monkeys with what they called HPV-77 (for high-passage virus). Happily, the vaccinated monkeys showed no signs of rubella, but developed antibody against it, while their cagemates remained free of infection. The first human testing of the vaccine was equally sensitive: the subjects had to be children with no history of rubella, and no possible contact with pregnant women...
...London-Broadway musical by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, reproduced before an audience of attentive cameras. The result might easily be mistaken for a show's out-of-town run-through on a night when most of the original cast have been laid low by a virus; yet the film has a certain economy-style charm and a cheeky spirit of what-the-hell-have-we-got-to-lose-for even on stage, Stop the World was never more than a flimsy improvisation on which to hang a saucy, tuneful score...
...disease in chimpanzees, Dr. Gajdusek reports in Nature, seems essentially the same as kuru in man, except that the animals could not suffer impairment of speech or bouts of maniacal laughter. This evidence, plus data from a similar disease of sheep, called scrapie, strongly suggests that the virus theory is correct. In any case, the ability to reproduce such a disease in animals should aid neurological research...