Photographic Reconnaissance

The biggest offensive yet undertaken against tuberculosis is now being mounted by the U.S. Public Health Service. Next to the common cold, tuberculosis is perhaps the most crippling U.S. disease. There are at least 1,500,000 U.S. consumptives, and, though the T.B. death rate has been reduced, it still kills more people in the vigorous years between 15 and 35 than any other disease.

The new campaign is prompted in part by a 1944 upturn in the T.B. death rate, the first in decades. Last month Congress authorized a new Tuberculosis Control Division with $10,000,000 for its first year. Its chief is a Minnesotan, Dr. Herman Ertresvaag Hilleboe, 38, a stocky, energetic T.B. fighter for eleven years. He is the Navy's chief T.B. consultant.

Dr. Hilleboe has no dramatic new weapons for his offensive. Penicillin and most of the sulfa drugs have failed against the tubercle bacillus; the few drugs that do show promise (diasone, promizole, etc.) are still largely experimental.*

Part of Dr. Hilleboe's $10,000,000 will be used for further research on drugs. But the biggest weapon in his arsenal is simply a mobile X-ray machine, with which he hopes eventually to photograph every chest in the U.S. The machine, now equipped with a new electronic timing device, produces fast, small, high-quality X rays at one-fiftieth of the former cost, can take 500 pictures a day.

Health on Wheels. Since modern T.B. specialists can almost always overcome the disease in the early stages without drugs, Dr. Hilleboe will concentrate on catching incipient T.B. His division, using eight mobile X-ray units, has already X-rayed more than 1,000,000 war-factory workers. Previously, in the U.S., only 10% of T.B. cases were in early stages when first discovered; Dr. Hilleboe caught 62%.

He will send many more X-ray units into the field. Then he will turn over his pictures (and 85% of his $10,000,000 fund) to state health officers, who will carry on with treatment and control. Chief battleground will be the 92 biggest U.S. cities, whose T.B. death rate is a third higher than that of rural areas. Dr. Hilleboe's staff has recently discovered an amazing variation in T.B. incidence: San Antonio, the worst-rated city, has had ten times as many T.B. deaths (151 per 100,000) as Grand Rapids, which made the best showing. Negroes, Indians and Mexicans have three to six times as high a T.B. rate as whites; in Newark, N.J., the T.B. death rate for this group is 275 per 100,000; for whites, 40.

Last week Dr. Hilleboe's chief, Surgeon General Thomas Parran, remarked: "It looks as if we are going to be able to lick T.B. as a public health problem.

*From Rio de Janeiro last fortnight came a report of a sensational new serum, "sutulina," said to have cured guinea pigs and one human patient of T.B. The Chilean and Brazilian doctors who developed it admitted their experiments were in an early stage. U.S. experts awaited further details.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.