Polio: the Blessings of?
Brooks, Tom
Sometimes cant harms no one but those who speak it; sometimes, as the wretched mishandling of the polio problem by the Eisenhower administration shows, it can endanger thousands of...
...The release of one lot of vaccine was highly publicized with the plain suggestion that the reason it was cleared was because the protocol and plant appraisal program had established its safety...
...Hobby's "voluntarism," the Administration's mental block against regulation, and the public's silence goes to the American Medical Association...
...The money must be spent by February 15 of next year and while the law does not openly call for a degrading means test it does specify that free vaccine is only for children unable to afford it, letting the states decide who can afford the vaccine...
...Each batch of vaccine manufactured in Canada is double-checked— once by the manufacturer and the second time by the Canadian Health Department...
...This, we take it, is the morality of "free enterprise...
...The National Polio Foundation ordered 18,000,000 cubic centimeters of vaccine—sufficient for two injections for 9,000,000 children...
...A brief comparison with the Canadian experience—where a conservative government immediately treated the vaccine discovery as a matter of national interest and socialized both its production and distribution—helps indicate what went wrong in America...
...Through intelligent planning Canada cut its polio rate by more than two-thirds...
...He has renounced all claims to profit on his great discovery...
...Chemical Week, McGraw-Hill trade publication, has charged that part of one lot of vaccine which was cleared after the Public Health service started its recheck had already been used for inoculations...
...the short supply of the vaccine was indeed fortuitous when the following facts are considered: Original plans called for the vaccination of 60,000,000 children, the total number in the one to 19 group...
...Strangely enough, the Administration has gone so far in its desire to protect private enterprise that it seems to be providing a cover for Cutter, even to the extent of accepting the responsibility for the faulty vaccine...
...nor does this include his fee for injecting the serum...
...The U. S. Health Service decided to double-check in May after polio turned up in children inoculated by defective vaccine...
...However, a record number of cases in Massachusetts-2,841 on September 16 as against 521 on the same day last year—does not speak well for the way the vaccine was handled...
...the manufacturer's rundown of production and testing...
...Hobby must have wondered whether he too had not been infused with "creeping socialism...
...The credit for Mrs...
...Sometimes cant harms no one but those who speak it...
...Much, much later, Mrs...
...MEANWHILE, IN CANADA, the principal health officers of each of the ten Canadian provinces—plus five other appointees—acting as the Dominion Council of Health approved plans for the distribution of the vaccine...
...The Health Service hid behind a technicality of the law to absolve Cutter—which would indicate that in actuality the California concern is not entirely blameless...
...Hobby) was, after all, replaced by the sophisticated conservative (Mr...
...Still, a total of 446 cases of polio, 186 of them paralytic, were reported in vaccinated individuals as of September 8. Seventynine cases, with five deaths, prior to May 31 were directly the result of defective vaccine...
...Stock market speculators were frankly ad vised in April to buy the "vaccine stocks" in anticipation of the high profits to be made out of this summer's scarcity of vaccine...
...It is given to inoculees free of charge...
...Deep in her dear little heart Mrs...
...In the nation, 16,182 were reported by September...
...The Federal Government and the provinces split the cost at $1.50 for each triple dose...
...When asked about the possibility of patenting his process, Salk replied: "Can you patent the Sun...
...pays $4.20 for the three shots and is entitled to charge a retail prescription price of $6...
...This despite Mrs...
...Both governments were kept informed during the development and testing of the Salk vaccine...
...Perhaps it might have been mentioned that a part of this batch had already been used to vaccinate several hundred children...
...Admittedly, even during the big build-up in April, there were those who warned that polio would not be completely under control in 1955...
...Drew Pearson has reported that the manufacturers expect to make a cool profit of $10 million...
...A million children were vaccinated in Canada under the health program of the provinces...
...This is the price we pay because of the stupid phobia of "creeping socialism...
...The U. S. government initially carried on a spot-check and cleared vaccine on the manufacturer's protocol, i.e...
...The balance of 51,000,000 children were thus left as legitimate prey, in a free enterprise way, for any deal ranging from the Cutter Corporation's disgraceful priority offering of vaccine to children of its stockholders to sales of vaccine on the black market...
...What "might have been" is indi cated by comparable statistics from Canada, which reported 612 cases as of September 16 as compared to 2,268 last year...
...While the vaccine was being tested only one company (Parke-Davis) out of the seven producers took up an offer by the Polio Foundation to co• operate in further exhaustive work onn the vaccine before marketing the serum...
...Congress, subject to more conflicting pressures, has now authorized $30,000,000 to the states for the free distribution of the Salk vaccine...
...some 3,023 fewer than the 19,205 recorded at the same time last year...
...sometimes, as the wretched mishandling of the polio problem by the Eisenhower administration shows, it can endanger thousands of people...
...A shift, moreover, which has not offended the AMA...
...Her retirement is a neat illustration of the fact that the Eisenhower Administration is amenable to pressure of a kind...
...Hobby, in what was surely one of the most ob tuse remarks in human history, was to inform an interested Senate Committee: "No one could have foreseen the public acclaim for the vaccine...
...The effect of that drive was felt behind every development, or lack of development, in the polio mixup...
...Mxs...
...Reluctant to risk money when the outcome was still uncertain, the pharmaceutical houses rushed into production once the vaccine appeared safe with the evident desire of making a "killing" under the public pressure for mass inoculation...
...The mindless conservative (Mrs...
...No one who remembers the hopes of April 12 when the vaccine discovery was officially announced, can look at the summer's record of polio cases without dismay...
...Only two came down with polio...
...Coincidentally, free enterprise myopia appears to have seized the drug companies producing the vaccine...
...The disquieting fact is that the only group to do any planning was the AMA...
...By contrast, a private physician in the U.S...
...In 1949, the 140,000 members of the AMA were asked to cough up $25 apiece for a drive against "creeping socialism" and socialized medicine...
...The number of children vaccinated in the United States is, of course, much higher-6,500,000...
...When no trouble arose (after an appropriate interval) the remainder was cleared...
...Hobby's fears, hardly opens the back door to socialism...
...Priorities have been established on the basis of need for pro tection...
...Jonas E. Salk offers a sharp contrast to the attitude of the Administration, the AMA, and the drug companies...
...The U. S. Health Service Report on the Cutter vaccine released on August 26 did little but confirm the inadequacy of the government's testing procedure, without casting any light on Cutter's culpability...
...Folsom...
...Dr...
...OVETA CULP HOBBY was sacrificed to forestall any sustained political capital that might be made out of her performance...
...The Connaught Laboratories of the University of Toronto and the Institute of Microbiology of the University of Montreal, both non-profit organizations, are the sole producers of Canada's Salk vaccine...
...The vaccine is allocated to each province on the basis of population and becomes the property of the province...
...To say that the United States government did exactly nothing would be incorrect, for it was during this period that the Department of Health, Education and Welfare reduced its technical staff...
Vol. 2 • September 1955 • No. 4
