Syphilis & Radio

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was Governor of New York, he considered the control of venereal disease his State's biggest public health problem. To lead the attack on something which Society rates below the polite conversation line but which causes a larger economic loss to the country than any other disease, he took Dr. Thomas Parran Jr. from the U. S. Public Health Service, where he had long been Assistant Surgeon General in charge of venereal disease control. As New York State's Commissioner of Health (salary $12,000), Dr. Parran began to spend $15,000 to $20,000 a year for prophylactic stations, clinics, moving pictures, lectures and pamphlets to teach New Yorkers the ravages of syphilis and gonorrhea, and to cure as many of those infected as could be induced to apply for treatment. Commissioner Parran wrote and lectured on the subject whenever he had the opportunity. Such an opportunity was presented to him last week in the form of 15 minutes broadcasting time scheduled over 60 stations of the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Dr. Parran's was to be the fifth of a series of 19 lectures on medical economics which the Rockefeller-sponsored National Advisory Council on Radio in Education is broadcasting over CBS under the general title of "Doctors, Dollars and Disease." The American Medical Association disapproves that series because, if the socialization of medicine which the lecturers advocate ever becomes a reality in the U. S., doctors may some day find themselves the hirelings of Government.

One night last week the CBS audience that habitually listens to "Doctors, Dollars and Disease," tuned in to hear Dr. Parran on "Public Health Needs." Instead they got 15 minutes of orchestra music. Next day a few of them learned why. Dr. Parran had prepared a talk on syphilis. Infantile paralysis, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and cancer are diseases which broadcasters frequently discuss over the radio but Columbia Broadcasting drew the line at Dr. Parran's subject. Nonetheless, he appeared at CBS's Manhattan studio to tell the nation about syphilis. Would he alter his prepared text to conform with what the company considered good public taste? Indeed he would not. Thereupon CBS refused him a microphone. Next day Dr. Parran resigned from the National Advisory Council on Radio in Education because its Secretary-Director Levering Tyson had not backed him up. He also set up a vigorous cry against radio censorship.

In a formal statement CBS gave its position thus: "Editorial responsibility for what the Columbia Broadcasting System puts out over the air must be assumed, and is assumed, by Columbia itself. In deciding what is proper for us to broadcast, we must always bear in mind that broadcasting reaches persons of widely varying age levels and reaches them in family and social groups of almost every conceivable assortment. For this reason we do not believe that it is either wise or necessary to discuss, and sometimes even to mention, some things which may more properly be discussed in print, where each person may individually and privately concern himself with the subject."

Retorted a thoroughly vexed New York Health Commissioner: "A hopeful view of relief from this dangerous malady might be more welcome to the half million persons in the United States who acquire this disease each year than the veiled obscenity permitted by Columbia in the vaudeville acts of certain of their commercial programs."

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