Capsules

P: Six weeks after it started, Chicago's polio emergency (TIME, July 30) appeared to be slackening off. So far, said the U.S. Public Health Service, there have been 810 cases, of which 501 were paralytic. There have been 21 deaths. Even if the outbreak is brought under control in another fortnight, as doctors hope it will be, it still makes this the second worst polio year in Chicago's history (the worst: 1952). Only bright spot: not a single case of paralytic polio has cropped up among people who have received the full, three-shot Salk immunization.

P: Geneticists at the University of Utah pooh-poohed the popular fear that many types of cancer can be passed on by heredity. On the basis of a six-year study of several hundred Utah families, the geneticists concluded that only three extremely rare kinds can be transmitted as inherited characteristics. They are multiple polyposis (which may develop into intestinal cancer), retinoblastoma (cancer of the eye), xeroderma pigmentosum (which may become skin cancer).

P: In matings of guinea pigs where the female was "conditioned" by alcohol, 90% of the conceptions resulted in abnormalities, reported Dr. Dora Papara Nicholson of George Washington University. The preliminary findings, Dr. Nicholson believes, support her observations that abnormal births in humans are most frequent at the extremes of the social scale, where the most alcohol is consumed.

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