Polio Imbroglio

As the big freeze hit Atlanta last week, signaling the approach of the annual low point in polio infection, the U.S. Public Health Service called its committee on poliomyelitis control into session there to plan for the spring and summer campaign when the disease attacks again. Hostilities promptly broke out within the council of war itself, mainly over the relative merits of the Salk injected and the Sabin oral vaccines. The chief antagonists were the National Foundation's crusty perennial chairman, Basil O'Connor, and the University of Cincinnati's inventive, acidulous Dr. Albert B. Sabin.

Lawyer O'Connor did not want the committee (including spokesmen for 28 public-health agencies and similar groups) even to discuss the easily swallowed, live-virus vaccine, which can be administered in candy form. His argument: nobody knows when it will be available, and the public, confused by talk of the two, may neglect to get the Salk shots. When Dr. John B. Johnson of the National (Negro) Medical Association contrasted the slow U.S. pace of oral vaccine development with Russia's high-speed drive,* Dr. Sabin snapped: "It requires leadership to get these things done. We simply need leadership." Dr. Robert N. Barr, representing state health officers, blew up: "That's a damned insult, Mr. Chairman! I object to that statement." But Sabin would not withdraw it. "The National Foundation has supported [with $1,200,000] all the research work I've ever done on the oral vaccine," said Sabin, "but the foundation has shown no interest in bringing fruits of this research to the people. If it would now underwrite the production of oral vaccine, we would soon have enough for the U.S. and some to give away."

In this acrid atmosphere, the committee could only play it safe. It recommended immediate, intensified efforts to get Salk shots into young children and young adults, the two most vulnerable age groups. Dr. Sabin won a grudging endorsement: "The PHS should continue to make every effort to encourage the early production and ready availability of an oral polio vaccine." Best estimates were that it would not be ready much before next winter--too late to take effect in the peak polio months.

* The Soviet Union's top polio authority, Professor Mikhail Chumakov, boasted last week that 77 million Russians have taken Sabin vaccine (made in Moscow), and that the threat of seasonal polio epidemics has gone.

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