Vaccines: Two Against Measles

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The U.S. Public Health Service skipped almost a month of red-tape requirements and issued quick licenses to two manufacturers of measles vaccine last week.

The speedup was to get the vaccines into doctors' hypodermic syringes in time for the March-through-May period when measles outbreaks come to a peak.

Doctors as well as parents are likely to be as confused about which measles vac cine to use as they are over Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. PHS licensed Merck Sharp & Dohme to distribute a live but attenuated vaccine, like the one developed by Dr. John F. Enders (TIME cover, Nov. 17, 1961) at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston. It is immediately available and is highly effective. But in many children, it causes some fever and a rash, so many pediatricians will simultaneously give the child a shot of gamma globulin in the opposite arm. This lowers or eliminates the fever. Merck will distribute the gamma globulin with the vaccine.

Also licensed was a killed-virus vaccine made by Charles Pfizer & Co., which will have supplies ready in about a month. This vaccine causes no fever or rash, but it requires three injections spread over several weeks.