U.S. & Russian Vaccine

While the number of Asian influenza cases in the U.S. reached an estimated 1,500,000 last week, there was an encouraging note in the controversy about effectiveness of the vaccine. Criticism has been based largely on the fact that many vaccinated subjects show no detectable antibodies against flu virus circulating in their blood. At Manhattan's New York Hospital Dr. Edwin Kilbourne confirmed this finding: of 140 vaccinated colleagues, only 12% showed good antibody response. But this is only a preliminary, technical test of the vaccine's potency. Virologist Kilbourne studied hospital workers exposed to live flu virus. He found that of 20 who had been vaccinated, only one get the disease, while of 44 unvaccinated, 23 got it. Possible explanation: the antibody level had shot up when it was most needed. Dr. Kilbourne's plea: despite criticism, the vaccine should be used as widely as possible.

Soviet scientists meanwhile announced that they were well on the way to inaugurating a method of vaccination against Asian influenza that should--at least in theory--be markedly superior to the U.S. method. In the London medical journal Lancet, five researchers at Moscow's Institute of Virology reported that they had taken virus from flu patients during the summer. The Moscow virologists cultivated the specimens in fertilized eggs for a few days, then dropped one-half a cubic centimeter of virus-laden fluid into the noses of 30 volunteers. Two had a fever of 101.3DEG for two days; all had stuffy noses. After a couple of weeks, their blood registered a healthy level of antibodies against Asian flu.

Most U.S. virologists agree that inoculation with a live (though weakened) virus gives better protection against future infections than a vaccine of the current U.S. type, in which the virus has been killed with formaldehyde. But for safety's sake they have settled for the weaker, killed vaccine. The bolder Russians, who frankly anticipate an intensified onslaught by Asian flu in the next few months, confidently say their vaccine "may present a real means of protecting the population." But no conscientious U.S. physician would think of using a vaccine which gave a two-day fever to 7% of patients--it is too much like giving the disease itself.

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