Medicine: Influenza Vaccine

• Share

An influenza vaccine that really works would be a medical Something—interesting but improbable. This week the improbability became cold medical fact. In the Journal of the A.M.A. an Army commission on influenza announced that it had made the vaccine by growing influenza virus in fertile hens' eggs. One of the commission's members is Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., generally considered No. 1 U.S. influenza man.

After preliminary tests on some 200 inmates of the Ypsilanti (Mich.) State Hospital, a massive test was given last autumn to 12,500 people in eight U.S. areas. Half were vaccinated with small injections of virus inactivated by chemical treatment. Half were "vaccinated" with some phony material. During the recent flu epidemic, out of every five persons in the test who got flu only one had been vaccinated. Only variation from this average was California where, Dr. Francis says, "a number of factors" may have thrown the figures off.

Dr. Francis has been harrying influenza since 1935 when, at the Rockefeller Institute, he first used ferrets to prove that influenza is solely a virus disease. (So far, two viruses have been identified, type A and type B.) In 1941 Dr. Francis found that many people with colds or hay fever have a substance in their noses which makes the virus harmless. He also found that, at least for a while, people who have recovered from flu have protective substances in their blood.