By KEN W. MacTAGGART
One year ago tomorrow a group of public health officials, medical society executives and laboratory workers, gathered, with, an army of newspaper reporters for one of the most Important medical announcements of the century.
They heard Dr. Thomas E. Francis Jr., medical statistician of the University of Michigan, announce the result of a six month study of the results of Salk polio vaccine's first mass use. Dr. Francis said that the vaccine had met all the expectations of those who had administered it to close to 500,000 Canadian and U.S. children.
Since then Salk vaccine has become an accepted necessity. it is used as the major weapon against polio which in recent years had become one of child- hood's worst afflictions and an Increasingly handicapping threat to adults. Today, laboratories throughout the world are on 24- hour-a-day programs for production of the fluid which promises to wipe out one form of polio entirely and to reduce drastically the effects of two other types.
Never before in medical history had the development of new treatment been followed by such swift and dramatic action, not even the discovery. by Banting and Best of insulin as a life-sustaining gift to diabetics. It is only 25 months since Jonas E. Salk, the mild-mannered, and) clear-spoken young researcher of Baltimore, announced his belief that he had a vaccine for polio. Yet millions of children will benefit this year.
It was during March, 1954, that Dr. Salk reported to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in New York that he had produced a vaccine and had inoculated 64 persons with it, including his own two sons. He had then, by the only known process at the moment, found that all of them had polio antibodies in their blood, yet had developed no polio Illness.
On the average, perhaps three out of four adults have polio antibodies in their blood. gained from unknown brushes with polio at some time in the past. So, for Salk's patients, all children, to all have such antibodies Indicated pretty clearly that he had induced at least most of them by his vaccine injections.
Promptly, the foundation re- quested two top U.S. laboratories to attend a conference with Dr. Rhodes, Dr. Robert Defries of the University of Toronto's Con- naught Medical Research Laboratories and others. Dr. Defries' organization held a vital key to the widening of Salk's secret; the laboratories had discovered method of producing polio virus rapidly and in quantity.
At the conference, Dr. Defries agreed, with the full approval of the university's board of governors, to go into big-scale production of virus, and to ship it to any laboratory for the manufacture of vaccine. The laboratories selected for the task were Eli Lilly of Indianapolis and Parke-Davis of Detroit.
In 1954 the big test was made. Three groups of children, selected from known polio areas in Canada and the U.S., were selected. About 460,000 received shots, three each over a seven week period of Salk vaccine. An equal number received nothing, continuing to live in close relation with those who did. Another group of equal size received shots of an innocuous colored fluid.
The result is history. Salk vaccine wholly arrested, apparently, the commonest but least deadly, type of polio. It reduced by nearly 90 per cent the second type. It cut by more than 60 per cent the third and deadly form. Most Important, perhaps, it radically reduced the serious effects of the major types, cutting deaths and crippling among those who had been inoculated.
In 1955, approximately 1,000,000 Canadian school children were vaccinated. During the months that followed, and especially after outbreaks of polio occurred among U.S. children who had been vaccinated, medical authorities watched almost breathlessly for results.
By the year's end, there had been 58 cases which had, indicated possible ill effects from the vaccine.
Special surveys were made of these by both the provincial and federal health authorities who had united to make the Canadian program possible. The 58 were finally, narrowed down to one case, and even then it was established after every investigation had been finished, that no untoward incident had followed use of the vaccine.
Against that, Canada's polio record had been slashed to one-third that of the average in recent years. Health officials still cautiously decline to attribute this wholly to the vaccine. They stress that a bad polio outbreak could still wreak havoc, especially among unvaccinated children and adults. But they will admit frankly that it would be hard to deny that the Inoculating of 1,000,000 children of the most susceptible polio age groups must have had something to do with the reduction of polio.
Certainly the vaccine program will be stepped up in 1956.
There have been Indications that it might not be possible to Inoculate as many children as had been hoped at first, Ottawa authorities said yesterday that thousands of Canadian children will have to go without shots because several big batches of the vaccine -- possibly enough to inoculate 300,000 -- were destroyed because they did not meet high standards for safety and protection.
But Ontario Health Minister Phillips claimed last night that he had been assured by Connaught Laboratories that enough vaccine would be available to carry out this year's program in Ontario.
In all, 2,452,000 doses will be administered in this province by June 19. In Toronto alone, 79,000 youngsters will be treated as Dr. Salk's war against polio marches into its second official year.