SALK POLIO VACCINE

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27666, 24 May 1955, Page 13

SALK POLIO VACCINE

Talks On Future Use

(Rec. 11.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, May 23. Poliomyelitis experts, vaccine makers, and Federal officials met in Washington today in an effort to decide the future of the United States vaccination programme. The conference, held, behind closed doors, was called by the SurgeonGeneral, Dr. Leonard Scheele, to consider the adoption of new Federal vaccine safety standards and to act on a Government proposal that vaccine supplies be retested. Dr. Scheele said the conference would in particular review the findings of a team of Government experts who spent two weeks inspecting the supplies and manufacturing methods of four producers of the Salk vaccine. Federal health officials were silent about the conference. But a high drug industry official and other sources listed these as the chief issues before the specialists: (1) A Federal proposal that supplies of the vaccine be retested, although this could delay the clearance of the vaccine by more than a month. (2) The adoption of stiffer safety standards for the vaccine before its release. (3) Whether to release vaccine held up for rechecking without completely retesting it. (4) Whether all vaccine supplies should be held up indefinitely—perhaps until autumn—to give scientists time to work out a more sensitive testing system. A key industry official said some experts favoured this move because they suspected poliomyelitis cases among inoculated children might indicate that there was something in the vaccine that present tests did not detect. Sculptor and Model Charged.— A sculptor, many of those statues are in German churches, and his model will go on trial at Itzehoe this week accused of murdering the woman’s husband. They are Horst Buchholz, aged 30, and Ruth Blaue. They are accused of having murdered Mrs Blaue’s husband, John Blaue, a former naval officer, in 1946. The police allege that Blaue was given an overdose of sleeping tablets, battered to death, and dumped in a water-filled sand quarry. —ltzehoe (West Germany), May 22.