VACCINE NOT TO BE FURTHER USED

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 80, 28 December 1935, Page 11

VACCINE NOT TO BE FURTHER USED

Infantile Paralysis

DECISION OF NEW YORK AUTHORITIES (Received December 27, 7.40 p.m.) New York, December 26. City health officials announced today that they had stopped the use of the poliomyelitis virus vaccine against infantile paralysis after a report in the journal of the American Medical Association declaring that 12 cases of paralysis, six of which were fatal, developed from injections. Dr. William Park, co-developer of the vaccine, said he had used it. on 9000 children with only one fatality and one “doubtful case.” Meanwhile research workers at the Rockefeller Institute announced that they had extensively tested a chemical method for combating paralysis. .It had been used on monkeys and a few humans with considerable success and no untoward symptoms. It consists of dropping or spraying into the nose solutions either of sodium, alum or tannic acid.

A New York cable on July 6 stated that an anti-poliomyelitis vaccine which had been under development for two years by the New York City Health Department, with successful tests on animals, was being shipped to North Carolina, where the most serious outbreak of infantile paralysis had broken out since the Los Angeles epidemic in 1934. On July 28 it was reported that serum which was sent to southern areas proved entirely effective when used for inoculation against infantile paralysis. According to statements by medical officials, over 10,600 children living in the sections affected by epidemics were inoculated, and in not a single case did they become affected with the disease. Furthermore, no illeffeets were felt from the injections.