Medicine: Polio in Detroit

Salk vaccine shots were so ignored in Detroit this summer that doctors and druggists had to return outdated supplies. Last week, with a growing epidemic, Detroit was the worst polio spot in the U.S. Statistics: 464 current cases (230 paralytic) and 14 deaths, against a total of 163 cases and two deaths by the same week last year. Well over half (279) of the victims were Negroes, mainly children under 15, centered in the city's low-income Negro sections. This week they could plead neither ignorance nor poverty. Polio was suddenly Detroit's best-publicized word, and alarmed officials began a four-week program of mass inoculations at $1 per shot, or no cost at all if a patient cannot afford it.