Exit Polio?

On the strength of reports through late October, the Public Health Service predicted last week that the 1955 U.S. polio epidemic will prove to have been the lightest in four years. So far reported: 25,727 cases v. 33,078 for the same period in 1954. Projecting to the calendar year's end.* PHS foresaw a total of about 29,000 cases--in the same range as 1951's low tally of 28,386. Equally encouraging: the polio mortality rate in 1955 is expected to be the lowest in several years, with 750 to 800 deaths v. 1,500 last year.

The Salk vaccine had nothing to do with most of the improvement in the figures, because only a small proportion of potential victims received it--and many of these got only one injection, of doubtful efficacy. However, the vaccine proved its usefulness: the drop in epidemic severity was much more marked in the 7,000,000 inoculated in the 5-to-9 age groups than among non-inoculated--25% to 50% fewer cases. On the strength of these figures--and with prospects for improved, safer vaccine--Crusader Basil O'Connor of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis predicted that the U.S. will wipe out the paralytic form of the disease in seven to ten years.

*The "disease year" ends when there are fewest cases, at the end of March. The 1955-56 disease-year figures will show the same trend as the calendar year, differ only in percentage-point details.

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