End of Infantile Paralysis?

A medical discovery that may turn out to be the greatest since penicillin was reported last week in the conservative Journal of the A.M.A.: Chicago researchers have found a way to make immunizing vaccines by subjecting live germs to ultraviolet light.* Their most important vaccine to date is for infantile paralysis in mice. Superior to any previous polio vaccine, it may mean that the day of infantile paralysis is nearly over.

Crux of the Chicago discovery is the use of ultraviolet rays strong enough to kill the germs but not strong enough to ruin their ability to create immunity when injected into a living body. To accomplish this, a special lamp had to be developed (details are being kept secret by the Office of Scientific Research and Development). Old-type ultraviolet lamps take so long to kill germs that they destroy immunizing power as well.

By the new, simple method the researchers have made vaccines against the colon bacillus, Salmonella enteritidis, Staphylococcus aureus (boils, septicemia, etc.), one type of pneumonia, one streptococcus, St. Louis encephalitis (sleeping sickness) virus, rabies virus. Tests on other germs, and vaccine trials during human epidemics, are yet to come.

* The researchers: Albert Milzer, Ph.D., Franz Oppenheimer, Ph.D., Sidney O. Levinson, M.D., Howard J. Shaughnessy, Ph.D., John L. Neal, Ph.C.

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