Infectious Diseases: Preventing the Incurable

So far as man and his domesticated animals are concerned, rabies is under control in the U.S. Last year only one person died of the disease—one-tenth of the toll ten years ago. The death rate among dogs is down by the same percentage; the rate among cats and farm animals has been halved in the past decade. Yet rabies is still so serious a problem that each year at least 30,000 Americans who have been bitten take the 14-day series of vaccine injections. Last week the U.S. Public Health Service assembled its top virologists and epidemiologists, along with state and...