New Fear over Flu

Heeding the advice of health officials, Charles Gabig, 71, a retired telephone engineer, and two housewives, Mrs. Julia Bucci, 75, and Mrs. Ella Michael, 74, last week joined hundreds of other elderly people in line for swine-flu shots at an Allegheny County clinic on Pittsburgh's south side. Within six hours all three were dead, apparently of heart or lung problems. Soon similar reports were coming in from other parts of the country. Half a day after getting his flu shot, an elderly Floridian collapsed in a bowling alley and died. In Michigan, three aged people succumbed. Two similar deaths occurred in Tennessee. By midweek, 35 people--most of them elderly--had died after receiving swine-flu shots. *

Priority Group. U.S. Government officials, already plagued by a succession of crises in the Administration's effort to inoculate 145 million Americans before year's end, promptly insisted that there was no link between the deaths and the vaccine. They pointed out that the average age of these 35 people was 71.2 years. At the time the deaths were the only ones among some 1 million people 65 or older and, in some cases, chronically ill (the group that has top priority in the vaccination program), who had received shots. Yet during any single 24-hour period, there are some 16 deaths in this age bracket among every 100,000 Americans. The gist of the official argument was clear: a similar survey of deaths among the elderly who had, say, just drunk coffee might well have shown a higher mortality rate. Nonetheless, even doctors sympathetic to the flu program warned elderly people with heart or other chronic diseases to be wary of the stress and strain of getting shots at public clinics.

The rash of scare headlines had predictable consequences, emptying crowded clinics everywhere. In New York City, only 7,500 people showed up a day after the first deaths were reported, compared with 21,000 on the previous day. Irritated by what he called the press's "body count" mentality, Dr. Theodore Cooper, HEW's assistant secretary for health, snapped: "Someone, I hear, dropped dead in South Carolina after reading the consent form [required of all those to be inoculated]. Should that be attributed to the swine-flu program?"

Still, the three deaths at the same Pittsburgh clinic on the same day were hard to explain by any reckoning. Though other Pennsylvania health authorities disputed him, Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht speculated that the shots might have been improperly injected into a vein (and thus directly into the blood) rather than into muscle tissue, possibly accelerating any adverse reactions. Even Dr. David Sencer, director of Atlanta's Center for Disease Control (CDC), which is directing the nationwide inoculation program, acknowledged that while he felt the Pittsburgh deaths were probably coincidences, "we can't sit back and assume that."

Within hours after news of the initial deaths, at least nine states closed flu-shot clinics. Meanwhile, samples of vaccine used in Pittsburgh--from a lot labeled 913339A, produced by Detroit's Parke, Davis & Co., one of four manufacturers--were rushed to the Food and Drug Administration's biologies bureau in Rockville, Md., where they were tested and given a clean bill of health. Reassured, several states ordered clinics reopened.

To rally public support for the $135 million program, President Ford bared his arm for a flu shot in the office of White House Physician William Lukash. "Now you guys get in line," Ford told reporters, urging them to follow his lead. (Only White House Photographer David Hume Kennerly did.) Despite the example set by Ford, Administration health officials will need all their persuasive skills to get their ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVE AMERICA program rolling again.

-A Justice Department official told TIME that one victim was Carlo Gambino, 74, New York City's most powerful Mafia boss (see MILESTONES).

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