Tricky Enemy

In some form, poliomyelitis is probably one of the commonest diseases. Current medical opinion is that nearly everybody gets it, but usually in so mild a form that it seems to be only a sick headache, or a low fever, not unlike a cold. Millions of such cases are never recognized. The lucky victim, once his system has thrown off the virus, appears to be immune to further attacks.

In its severe form, polio or "infantile paralysis" is an uncommon disease. Last week, scare headlines reported that 1949 had already produced about 11,000 cases in the U.S.--a record total for so early in the year. But even so, there were 13,000 who had escaped the disease for every one who was stricken. Comparing 1949 with former years, health officers in New York City, Detroit and Chicago saw reason to hope that the outbreak was at or near its peak, and would soon taper off.

Usually the peak comes in the 36th week of the calendar year or the 26th week of the "polio year" (which begins after the low point in mid-March). This year, since the disease got off to a flying start in an early hot spell, the peak may well come early. In the South, where polio strikes sooner, new cases reported have already leveled off and should decline from now on; the North may have to wait three or four weeks for a drop.

Funds & Fancies. Because it strikes tragically at children, polio has received more publicity (especially after Polio Victim Franklin Roosevelt became President) than many a deadlier ailment.* To loosen purse strings, fund raisers have played on parents' heart strings. They have emphasized the bafflement of medical science in the face of so tricky an enemy as polio. Over the years, parents have become so impressed that they can scarcely think of polio without panic.

Last week, professional polio fighters decided that the scare campaign had gone too far. Dr. Harry M. Weaver, research director of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, declared that false rumors about polio can do more harm than the disease itself. Dr. Weaver stressed the positive gains made in polio research (on which the Foundation has spent almost $11 million, will spend $2,000,000 this year). In fact, these boil down to the knowledge that there are at least three types of polio virus (and possibly several strains of each type), and that the virus is usually transmitted by some sort of contact with other infected persons--most often in the home.

Flies & Freezers. Scientists still do not know how the virus is transmitted (although it has been found on flies), or why polio is a hot-weather disease (although the virus can live a year in the deepfreeze), or why it has become more severe in the last half-century, especially in countries with high living standards. They do not know why it has become less common in New England, and far more serious in Kansas and California.

Most of the new knowledge is negative, but it is on the side of more calm and less panic. This week it became known that great numbers of cases diagnosed and reported as polio may not be polio at all. Three researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine reported that they had isolated a virus which causes a disease like non-paralytic polio. They found it last year in so-called polio victims in several cities. Still unnamed, the disease apparently does no lasting harm.

There is no accurate comparison between polio conditions this year or in 1948 (with 27,680 cases) and those in 1916 (with 30,000). In reality there must have been two or three times as many cases in the 1916 epidemic which went unrecognized and unreported. As diagnosis and reporting improve each year, more mild cases get hospital treatment, which is all to the good. They also get into the statistics and the headlines.

* Examples among children: leukemia, rheumatic fever.

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