Medicine: Tonsils & Bulbar Polio

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Doctors are pretty well agreed that it is unwise to remove tonsils or adenoids while polio is rampant: within a month or two after such an operation, an invasion by the polio virus is more likely to result in the oftentimes fatal bulbar form of the disease. Last week the A.M.A. Journal called the attention of U.S. family doctors to growing evidence that polio victims who have lost tonsils, adenoids, or both, at any time in their lives, are more susceptible to bulbar and bulbo-spinal attacks.

The Journal conceded that the case is not yet proved. (For one thing, doctors can only guess at a possible explanation—that the tonsils and adenoids are part of a defensive mechanism against the invading virus.) But, the editors concluded, the evidence is enough to make surgeons pause once again before they cut out tonsils, and ask: "Is this operation really necessary?"