End of a War

Never before in history had a medical development been big, instantaneous news over a large part of the world. Such a momentous item as Fleming's penicillin moldered for years in musty libraries before laymen heard of it. Last week's report on the Salk vaccine was good for banner headlines everywhere, and was covered by the press as massively as the end of a major war--which it was. Ironically, poliomyelitis has always been a relatively uncommon disease with a comparatively low death rate.* Polio is actually less of a public-health problem than rheumatic fever and some forms of cancer which single out the young. But, largely because of its long-term crippling effects, no disease except cancer has been so widely feared in the last three decades. With polio's dramatic defeat, as the Detroit Free Press wrote, "The prayers and hopes of millions ... in all parts of the world were answered." Medals & Movies. President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the State Department to transmit information on the Salk vaccine and its effectiveness to 75 nations through U.S. Ambassadors, and the World Health Organization planned to duplicate this effort. The U.S. Department of Commerce put an immediate embargo on future shipments of the vaccine, and experts thought that the U.S. would have little to spare for export before 1957. Actually, relatively few countries have facilities to make the vaccine; only a few areas in the world have a serious polio problem, for clinical polio is a disease that goes with high standards of hygiene and sanitation. Highest recent incidence abroad: Canada, New Zealand, Scandinavia. "An American gift to the world" is what the Toronto Daily Star called the vaccine, and as far as Dr. Jonas E. Salk and his colleagues were concerned, it was literally a gift. They are not getting a penny from the vaccine's manufacture (the six pharmaceutical firms making the vaccine are selling it at cost to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, but will otherwise sell for normal profit, an average $1.50 per shot). But for Dr. Salk, at least, other rewards were multiplying. Judges headed by Dr. Charles W. Mayo picked him to receive $10,000, tax free, and a gold medal awarded by the Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co. New York Republican Steven Derounian offered a bill in the House to give "this doctor and humanitarian" a special Congressional Medal. Guatemala's President Carlos Castillo Armas bestowed on Salk the country's highest honor, the Order., of the Quetzal. Norwegian schoolchildren collected money for a painting to give him, and three Hollywood movie companies said they wanted to film his life story. Back to the Lab. In their own way, politicos paid tribute to Dr. Salk by ringing statements concerning fair and even distribution of the vaccine. The New York Post echoed New York's Health Commissioner Herman E. Hilleboe in screaming for federal controls. And what of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, with its 250 headquarters personnel and 3,100 chapters spread across the U.S.? Dr. Salk, who worked successfully to a sweeping solution of its problem, suggested that medical science should turn its biggest guns next on mental illness. To help science do this, an organization like the foundation would come in handy. As for Dr. Salk himself, he stayed awhile in Ann Arbor, where the telephone hardly ever stopped ringing and the telegrams piled up by the basket. Back in Pittsburgh for a well-earned weekend with his wife and three sons, Dr." Salk said: "The most important thing to me is to get back in the lab."

* Polio death rate is 1 per 100,000; rheumatic heart disease, 13; leukemia, 6.1.

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